"The novel takes place entirely in the environs of Egdon Heath, and, with the exception of the epilogue, covers exactly a year and a day. The narrative begins on the evening of Guy Fawkes Night as Diggory Venn drives slowly across the heath, carrying a hidden passenger in the back of his van. When darkness falls, the country folk light bonfires on the surrounding hills, emphasizing--not for the last time--the pagan spirit of the heath and its denizens."...

The Return of the Soldier recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, and sheds light on their fraught relationships. The successful treatment of the traumatised returned soldier is a fundamental element of The Return of the Soldier. Unlike...

The enduring love story and satirical comedy by a master of the English novel. A young vicar's ambition drives him into a costly bargain in this classic tale from one of the Victorian era's finest novelists. Set in rural England in the fictitious county of Barsetshire, the fourth novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire brilliantly examines the intersection of romance and social class. Mark Robarts is a young, ambitious vicar from the village of Framley,...

Mozley's debut, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, is a rugged, potent work whose concentrated mixture of lyricism and violence recalls Cormac McCarthy. A taciturn giant of a man, a bare-knuckle fighter who is the "fastest and toughest... in Britain and Ireland," builds a house for himself and his two children in the Yorkshire woods, where "the soil was alive with ruptured stories that cascaded and rotted then found form once more and pushed up...

As a snowstorm rages outside, Oxford high society gathers to ring in the new year at the citys most exclusive party. This is a soiree no one will forget not least because a guest is found dead in his car the next morning. It seems the young man tragically froze to death overnight after crashing into a snowdrift, but when WPC Trudy Loveday and coroner Clement Ryder are called in to investigate, they discover a tangled web of secrets that plainly points...

Hannah Shay has finally shown the town of Black Falls what she's worth. Her Three Sisters Café is a success, and she's soon to become a prosecutor. When the café becomes an epicenter for investigators trying to pierce a violent crime ring that's leaving bloody trails on nearby Cameron Mountain, Hannah suspects a man from her past is involved. Then Sean Cameron returns to the snowy cold of his Vermont hometown to unmask his father's killer.

The village of Marsdale is a quiet corner of the world, cradled in a remote dale in England's lovely Lake District. The rhythm of life in the deeply religious, sheltered community has not changed for centuries. But in 1936, when Waterworks representative Jack Ligget from industrial Manchester arrives with plans to build a new reservoir, he brings the much feared threat of impending change to this bucolic hamlet. And when he begins an intense and troubled...

"In the wink of an eye, as quick as a flea, / The Devil he jumped from me to thee. / And only when the Devil had gone, / Did I know that he and I'd been one ... Every autumn, John Pentecost returns to the farm where he grew up, to help gather the sheep down from the moors for the winter. Very little changes in the Endlands, but this year, his grandfather--the Gaffer--has died and John's new wife, Katherine, is accompanying him for the first time....

Janet Byfield has everything Wendy Appleyard lacks: she's beautiful; she has a handsome husband, a clergyman on the verge of promotion; and most of all she has an adorable little daughter, Rosie. So when Wendy's life falls apart, it's to her oldest friend, Janet, that she turns. At first it seems as to Wendy as though nothing can touch the Byfields's perfect existence in 1950s Cathedral Close, Rosington, but old sins gradually come back to haunt the...

The pettiness of an English seaside town. It is described by Florence Green, a middle-aged widow who buys a house for a bookshop, something the town has not had for over a century. Leading her enemies is Mrs. Gamart who wanted the house for an arts center.