Shtum

Perfect for fans of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. This is how a family keeps a secret...and how that secret ends up keeping them. This is how a family lives happily ever after...until happily ever after becomes complicated. This is how children change...and then change the world. This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress.

A brother chosen. A brother left behind. And a family where you'd least expect to find one. Leon is nine, and has a perfect baby brother called Jake. They have gone to live with Maureen, who has fuzzy red hair like a halo, and a belly like Father Christmas. But the adults are speaking in low voices, and wearing pretend faces. They are threatening to give Jake to strangers.

For as long as anyone can remember, Britt-Marie has been an acquired taste. It's not that she's judgmental or fussy or difficult - she just expects things to be done in a certain way. A cutlery drawer should be arranged in the right order, for example - forks, knives, then spoons. We're not animals, are we? But behind the passive-aggressive, socially awkward, absurdly pedantic busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams and a warmer heart than anyone around her realises.

Driven by money, power and success, Gabriel has worked ruthlessly to get to the very top of the banking game. He's not going to let the inconvenience of a terminal brain tumour get in his way. But the tumour has other ideas. As it grows, it appears to be doing strange things to Gabriel's personality. Whether he likes it or not, he seems to be becoming less selfish, less mercenary, less unlikeable. Once he could dismiss the rest of humanity as irrelevant. Now he's not so sure.

Maisie Brennan is standing on a podium on the 20th anniversary of the death of her son, trying to find the first breath that will help her start talking to a room full of strangers. A daunting task at the best of times, but she's also menopausal and one hot flush away from totally losing it. But as Maisie begins her story, she relaxes and, word by word, disappears into her past, back to the day when one mistaken action led to a chain of events that changed her life forever....

This is the story of Lizzie Vogel, a 15 year old girl who finds herself working in a ramshackle old people's home in the English suburbs. It is the late 1970s and the place is in chaos - there's a much swisher old people's home nearer the supermarket with better parking which is taking all the best patients; Matron seems to be utterly without qualifications, and Lizzie has no idea what she's doing.

England,1976. Mrs Creasy is missing, and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, 10-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands. And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined.

There are three things you should know about Elsie. The first is that she's my best friend. The second is that she always knows what to say to make me feel better. And the third...might take a little bit more explaining. Eighty-four-year-old Florence has fallen in her flat. As she waits to be rescued, Florence wonders if a terrible secret from her past is about to come to light; and, if the charming new resident is who he claims to be, why does he look exactly like a man who died 60 years ago?

Calling Major Tom is a funny, uplifting tale of friendship and community about a man who has given up on the world...but discovers in the most unlikely way that it might not have given up on him. We all know someone like Thomas. The grumpy next-door neighbour who complains to the residents' committee about the state of your front lawn. The man who tuts when you don't have the correct change at the checkout. The colleague who sends an all-company email when you accidentally use the last drop of milk.

Hendrik Groen is 83¼ years old, and he has decided that it is time to make something of his life. He may be rich in years, but he refuses to give in to all the trappings of old age just yet. Hendrik's hilarious and touching diary documents his life as an OAP living in a care home. When he recruits some similarly young-at-heart friends to join his Old but Not Dead Club, Hendrik proves that love can blossom, rules can be broken and fun is within reach, even at their age.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

Having been married for over 40 years, 69-year-old Arthur Pepper is mourning the loss of his wife. He finally musters the courage to go through her possessions and happens upon a charm bracelet that he has never seen before. What follows is a surprising adventure that takes Arthur on an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s life - a journey that leads him to find healing, self-discovery, and love in the most unexpected of places.

Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else's forehead and pulled the trigger. This is the story of how we got there. Beartown is a small town in a large Swedish forest. For most of the year it is under a thick blanket of snow, experiencing the kind of cold and dark that brings people closer together - or pulls them apart. Its isolation means that Beartown has been slowly shrinking with each passing year.

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but not how to live. Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world....

A poignant, funny and engrossing exploration of family life centred around a cataclysmic event and its aftermath, from the author of Night Waking and Signs for Lost Children. Adam is a stay-at-home dad who is also working on a history of the bombing and rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. He is a good man, and he is happy. But one day he receives a call from his daughter's school to inform him that for no apparent reason, 15-year-old Miriam has collapsed and stopped breathing.