Sian Thomas

"No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith. Michael Coveney's biography shines a light on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades. From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Burton,...

The new novel from the best-selling author of I Don’t Know How She Does It takes us on an unforgettable journey into first love, and—with the emotional intensity and penetrating wit that have made her beloved among readers all over the world—reminds us of how the ardor of our youth can ignite our adult lives.
Wales, 1974. Petra and Sharon, two thirteen-year-old girls, are obsessed with David Cassidy. His fan magazine is...

"Childhood sweethearts Nicole and Tom are a normal, loving couple, until a massive lottery win changes their lives overnight. Soon they've moved into a custom-built state-of-the-art Glass Barn on the stunning grounds of Lancaut Manor in Gloucestershire. They have fancy cars, expensive hobbies, and an exclusive lifestyle they never could have imagined. But this dream world quickly turns into a nightmare when Tom is found dead in the swimming pool....

From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of Birdsong, new fiction about love and war—five transporting stories and five unforgettable lives, linked across centuries.
In Second World War Poland, a young prisoner closes his eyes and pictures going to bat on a sunlit English cricket ground.
Across the yard of a Victorian poorhouse, a man is too ashamed to acknowledge the son he gave away.
In a 19th-century French

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A twisty, compulsive thriller full of jolting shocks and startling secrets involving two sisters, a disappearance, a double murder, and a reporter determined to find the truth. Everything changed the night she disappeared . . .On a summer's night in 1994, sixteen-year-old Flora Powell vanished from her sleepy seaside town without a trace. Their hearts shattered, Flora's mother, her sister Heather, and Heather's best friend Jess had to somehow carry...

A man's body is discovered in a church yard, the sign of the cross carved into his abdomen. Later he is found to be Alan Jacobs, a troubled psychiatric nurse. It seems to Jenny Cooper, Severn Vale District Coroner, this is likely to be an open and shut suicide case, but something tells her to probe a little deeper.

After another tragic death, Jenny's suspicions turn toward a powerful new global phenomenon: the politically ambitious and intoxicatingly

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In World War II Poland, a prisoner closes his eyes and pictures a sunlit cricket ground. Across the yard of a Victorian poorhouse, a man is too ashamed to acknowledge the son he gave away. In a 19th-century French village, a servant understands the meaning of the Bible story her master is reading. In 1971, a girl steps out of a Chevy with a song . A few years from now, in Italy, a scientist discovers links between time and the human brain, and her...

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the two World Wars. Upon the death of her German baron father, Billi moves from the family château to live with her vibrant and erratic English mother on the French Riviera. From there she is sent for schooling in England, where she lives an itinerant life, boarding among...

Rupert is consumed by one obsession: that his horse is proclaimed champion. To defeat his rival he must abandon his empire at Penscombe, his wife Taggie, and chase winners worldwide. When Gala moves to Penscombe as carer for Rupert's father, Rupert himself is attracted to her. When Gala begins working in the yard, her carer's job is taken by a devastatingly handsome man who seems keener on caring for Taggie; the game of musical loose boxes begins…...

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Bedford's autobiographical novel paints a vivid picture of life in 1920s Europe between the wars.
Sybille Bedford placed the ambiguous and inescapable stuff of her own life at the center of her fiction, and in Jigsaw—her fourth and final novel, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize—she did it with particular artistry. “What I had in mind,” she was later...