James Anderson
The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy

Welcome to Alderley, a magnificent mansion in the heart of the West Country where a grand house party is taking place. The preparations have been made, the guests have been invited, and the staff are on hand. What could possibly go wrong? Let the entertainment begin. The theft of the diamond necklace and the antique pistols might all be explained, but the body in the lake - that really was a puzzle. 'Don't expect me to solve anything,' Inspector Wilkens announced modestly when he arrived. And at a gathering that included English aristocracy, foreign agents in disguise, a ravishing baroness, a daring jewel thief, a Texas millionaire and, of course, the imperturbable butler, it was going to take some intricate sleuthing to uncover who killed whom and why.

Angela Carter
Love

With surgical precision, Love charts the destructive emotional war between a young woman, her husband, and his disruptive brother as they move through a labyrinth of betrayal, alienation and lost connections. This revised edition has lost none of Angela Carter's haunting power to evoke the ebb of the 1 960s .

• Angela Carter, born in 1940, lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. She died in February 1992.

'One of the century's finest writers' - SUNDAY TIMES

Spanning almost a hundred years, this rich and evocative true ~ story recounts the lives of three generations of remarkable Chinese women. Their extraordinary journey takes us from the brutal poverty of village life in mainland China, to newly prosperous 1930s Hong Kong and finally to the UK. Their lives were as dramatic as the times they lived through. Helen Tse's grandmother was forced to work as an amah after the violent murder of her father. Crossing the ocean from Hong Kong in the 1950s, Lily honed her famous chicken curry recipe. Eventually she opened one of Manchester's earliest Chinese restaurants. But thanks to gambling and the Triads, they lost it. It was up to Helen and her sisters to re-establish their grandmother's dream.