Author surnames U-Z

Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation. (read more)

Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation. Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers or the heartbreak of a single mother with artistic pretensions, Yates ruthlessly examines the hopes and disappointments of ordinary people with empathy and humour. (hide)

This gorgeously designed retelling of The Nutcracker will make the perfect Christmas present for ballet fans everywhere! In snow (read more)

This gorgeously designed retelling of The Nutcracker will make the perfect Christmas present for ballet fans everywhere! In snow white covered St. Petersburg, young dancer Stana's dreams have finally come true - she has been chosen to play the lead role in Tchaikovsky's new ballet, The Nutcracker. But with all eyes looking at her, can Stana overcome her nerves and dance like she's never danced before? From the author of the bestselling The Sinclair Mysteries, Katherine Woodfine, and Waterstone's Book Prize winner, Lizzy Stewart, this sumptuous and magical retelling of The Nutcracker will transport you on a journey fay beyond the page. (hide)

Two women separated by time are linked by the most famous murder mystery in history, the Princes in the Tower. Lady Katherine Grey (read more)

Two women separated by time are linked by the most famous murder mystery in history, the Princes in the Tower. Lady Katherine Grey has already suffered more than her fair share of tragedy. Newly pregnant, she has incurred the wrath of her formidable cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, who sees her as a rival to her insecure throne.

Alone in her chamber in the Tower, she finds old papers belonging to a kinswoman of hers, Kate Plantagenet, who forty years previously had embarked on a dangerous quest to find what really happened to her cousins, the two young Princes who had last been seen as captives in the Tower. But time is not on Kate's side - nor on Katherine's either... (hide)

"It's quite simple Mr Ellington. When you find Fowler, just ask where we can find the truth." With these words, private detective (read more)

"It's quite simple Mr Ellington. When you find Fowler, just ask where we can find the truth." With these words, private detective JT Ellington embarks on a seemingly simple case of tracking down a local GP with a dubious reputation and retrieving a set of stolen documents from him. For Ellington, however, things are rarely straightforward.

Dr Fowler is hiding a terrible secret and when he is gunned down outside a Bristol pub, his dying words send JT in pursuit of a truth more disturbing and deadly than he could possibly have imagined. M.P. Wright's debut novel Heartman was long listed for the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. (hide)

This is a lyrical and moving new novel from the author of Legend of a Suicide. Aged nine, Caitlin spends almost every afternoon at (read more)

This is a lyrical and moving new novel from the author of Legend of a Suicide. Aged nine, Caitlin spends almost every afternoon at the local aquarium while her mother works overtime at her construction job. Caitlin's whole world is her school, her mother, occasionally her mother's boyfriends, and the fish at the aquarium.

She has no friends at school, apart from Shalini, who is making a paper mache Hindu reindeer with her, and no other family. But Caitlin has made a friend at the aquarium; an old man who seems to know something about Caitlin, something she doesn't even know about herself. (hide)

Jack and Meredith are non-identical twins; the only similarity between them is their lives rapidly falling apart. Jack's high-flying (read more)

Jack and Meredith are non-identical twins; the only similarity between them is their lives rapidly falling apart. Jack's high-flying career in advertising has crashed and burned. Meredith's world is also crumbling - a decomposing yogurt in her fridge now a symbol of her failed marriage.

Her children, Jemima and Luke, offer little support, too consumed with the worlds of online dating and amateur taxidermy. All their lives, Jack and Meredith believed their father to be dead. One day, a throwaway comment leads Jack to question this, but with their mother fading ever-deeper into the grip of dementia, answers are hard to come by.

As revelations start to untangle, the twins soon learn that what you seek is not always what you find. (hide)

Following in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, Joseph Zobel's semi-autobiographical 1950 novel Black Shack Alley chronicles (read more)

Following in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, Joseph Zobel's semi-autobiographical 1950 novel Black Shack Alley chronicles the coming-of-age of Jose, a young boy grappling with his identity in colonial Martinique. As Jose transitions from childhood to young adulthood and from rural plantations to urban Fort-de-France on a quest for upward mobility, he bears witness to and struggles against the various manifestations of white supremacy, both subtle and overt, that will alter the course of his life. (hide)

The 10th-anniversary edition of the No. 1 international bestseller and modern classic beloved by millions of readers HERE IS A SMALL (read more)

The 10th-anniversary edition of the No. 1 international bestseller and modern classic beloved by millions of readers HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. 1939.

Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. (hide)

'If The Book Thief was a novel that allowed Death to steal the show... [its] brilliantly illuminated follow-up is affirmatively full (read more)

'If The Book Thief was a novel that allowed Death to steal the show... [its] brilliantly illuminated follow-up is affirmatively full of life.' Guardian'This is a tale of love, art and redemption; rowdy and joyous.' Times'Bridge of Clay is one of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time' Washington PostHere is a story told inside out and back to frontFive Dunbar brothers are living - fighting, loving, grieving - in the perfect chaos of a house without grown-ups. Today, the father who left them has just walked right back in.

He has a surprising request: Who will build a bridge with him?It is Clay, a boy tormented by a long-buried secret, who accepts. But why is Clay so broken? And why must he fulfil this extraordinary challenge?Bridge of Clay is about a boy caught in a current, a boy intent on destroying everything he has in order to become everything he needs to be. Ahead of him lies the bridge, the vision that will save both his family and himself. (hide)

There is something special about the ancient cathedral of Chartres, with its mismatched spires, astonishing stained glass and strange (read more)

There is something special about the ancient cathedral of Chartres, with its mismatched spires, astonishing stained glass and strange labyrinth. And there is something special too about Agnes Morel, the mysterious woman who is to be found cleaning it each morning. No one quite knows where she came from - not the diffident Abbe Paul, who discovered her one morning twenty years ago, sleeping in the north porch; nor lonely Professor Jones, whose chaotic existence she helps to organise; nor Philippe Nevers, whose neurotic sister and newborn child she cares for; nor even the irreverent young restorer, Alain Fleury, who works alongside her each day and whose attention she catches with her tawny eyes, her colourful clothes and elusive manner.

And yet everyone she encounters would surely agree that she is subtly transforming their lives, even if they couldn't quite say how. But with a chance meeting in the cathedral one day, the spectre of Agnes' past returns, provoking malicious rumours from the prejudiced Madame Beck and her gossipy companion Madame Picot. As the hearsay grows uglier, Agnes is forced to confront her history, and the mystery of her origins finally unfolds. (hide)