Author surnames U-Z

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)

When Bonnie runs away from home she leaves her mother Grace and sister Rita heartbroken. Each of their lives are in turmoil but their (read more)

When Bonnie runs away from home she leaves her mother Grace and sister Rita heartbroken. Each of their lives are in turmoil but their love for each other will see them through the most troubled of times. Worthing, 1947 Widowed Grace Roberts comes home from her factory job one day to find that her eldest daughter Bonnie has run away to London.

Utterly distraught she has no choice but to carry on with her life, struggling to make ends meet for her and youngest daughter Rita. Her boss, Norris Finley is a powerful and calculating man. He promises to assist Grace, but his help will come at a hefty price...Pregnant Bonnie arrives in London eager to be reunited with George so they can begin their new life together.

But while she waits anxiously on the platform at Victoria station, he never turns up. Unable to return home as she can't bear the thought of bringing shame to her family, she is left to fend for herself and her unborn baby. Disturbed by the apparent relationship between her mother and Norris, Rita flees home and meets Emilio who she marries. (hide)

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life - and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he (read more)

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life - and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he's a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary.

But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies - and, most alarmingly, his former self - Francis seems to have other ideas. (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)

From Salley Vickers, bestselling author of Miss Garnet's Angel, comes The Boy Who Could See Death, an enchanting and unsettling collection (read more)

From Salley Vickers, bestselling author of Miss Garnet's Angel, comes The Boy Who Could See Death, an enchanting and unsettling collection of short stories. Eli is an ordinary boy with an extraordinary gift. It will shape the course of his whole life but, he learns the hard way, he must keep it hidden from those who know him best.

Seeing death is a mixed blessing. Eli is not the only one defying the world's expectations of him. Cousin Francesca, a charming spinster and a favourite with the children, is harbouring kleptomaniac tendencies.

Sarah Palliser, living alone next to a ramshackle graveyard, is more scared of the small box under her stairs than the ghosts outside her window. Meanwhile dreamy artist Nan is nursing a growing obsession with wolves in Britain and the recently widowed Frances finds herself inventing an exotic imaginary boyfriend to pass the time. Push through an unassuming front door on an unremarkable street or peer into the glowing fluorescent windows of an urban office block and within you'll find strange and unforgettable scenes, normal people caught in situations they do not quite comprehend...Salley Vickers is a master of the uncanny and the unexpected. (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)

It's been almost thirteen years since we last saw Cannie Shapiro, the heroine of Good in Bed, whose journey towards happy-ever-after (read more)

It's been almost thirteen years since we last saw Cannie Shapiro, the heroine of Good in Bed, whose journey towards happy-ever-after made millions of women the world over laugh, cry and recognise themselves. The last decade of Cannie's life has brought some surprises. Her life story, in fictional form, became an unexpected bestseller, and Cannie has since retreated from fame's fallout, writing science-fiction under a pen name and praying that all her daughter inherited from her father, Cannie's ex-boyfriend Bruce Guberman, are her curls and her eye-colour, and not his predilection for smoking pot.

Meanwhile Cannie's best friend, Samantha, is looking for love in all the wrong places, and Cannie's husband, Peter, has decided that he'd like to have a baby, and the family's first choice for a surrogate is none other than Cannie's flamboyant kid sister ... (hide)

When Lieutenant Charles Acland is flown home from Iraq with serious head injuries, he faces not only permanent disfigurement but (read more)

When Lieutenant Charles Acland is flown home from Iraq with serious head injuries, he faces not only permanent disfigurement but also an apparent change to his previously outgoing personality. Crippled by migraines, and suspicious of his psychiatrist, he begins to display sporadic bouts of aggression, particularly against women, especially his ex-fiancee who seems unable to accept that the relationship is over. After his injuries prevent his return to the army, he cuts all ties with his former life and moves to London.

Alone and unmonitored, he sinks into a private world of guilt and paranoid distrust ...until a customer annoys him in a Bermondsey pub and he attracts the attention of local police investigating three murders which appear to have been motivated by extreme rage ...Under suspicion, Acland is forced to confront the real issues behind his isolation. How much control does he have over the dark side of his personality? Do his migraines contribute to his rages? Has he always been the duplicitous chameleon that his ex-fiancee claims? And why -- if he hates women -- does he look to a woman for help? (hide)

In 1486, after being caught in the arms of her lover, the Lancastrian King Henry VII, Lady Cicely Plantagenet is estranged from her (read more)

In 1486, after being caught in the arms of her lover, the Lancastrian King Henry VII, Lady Cicely Plantagenet is estranged from her second husband, Sir Jon Welles. Henry has been coercing her to his bed by threatening harm to Jon and her Yorkist cousin, Jack de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, whom Henry suspects of plotting support for a contender to the throne. But Cicely has a great affinity with Jack, with echoes of the intense feeling she shared with her uncle, and father of her son, the Yorkist King Richard III.

And with Jack as Richard's chosen heir she believes he should be King of England. With Jack drawing Cicely into his treasons there are flickering shadows around every corner and she should know better than to trust them. In this web of duplicity, Henry Tudor and his throne loom large, threatening to steal Cicely's great love once again. (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)