Bloomsbury Reader imprint: 830 books

'She was too restless to work or write. She thought of Richard, of her unmanageable desires and her un-abatable ambitions... My life is in pieces, I am nothing, I have achieved nothing; yet I will, she thought' In the month after the 1918 Armistice a young woman, Hervey Russell, comes to London...

When a country is invaded and occupied for a long time, the rents that appear in human relationships are not all, or always, due to the brutality of the invader - his kindness can be equally dangerous and disturbing. What happens to a French girl who marries a Young German, decent and well-meaning,...

Much of the action of The Black Laurel takes place in Berlin, 1945. But it is not a novel about Germany. It concerns a group of English people whose duties or interests place them in Berlin during the first summer of the Occupation. They are involved with each other through their position in occupied...

With literary ability, clarity of style, and astonishing inventiveness, Storm Jameson tells the story of people who - as may happen to any one of us at any time - are forced to make a supremely momentous decision. The author's intellectual curiosity, combined with her grasp of social, political and moral happenings, make this novel a powerful and admirable piece of work.

Our story begins with the birth of Mary Hanskye in 1841 as the Industrial Revolution is changing the face of pastoral England. While still a child, Mary comes under the influence of her uncle, one of England's great shipbuilders. Soon she is a young woman involved in a loveless marriage arranged by...

Aristide Michal's wife Lotte is not his wife, nor is his son Philippe his son. He is deeply attached to both, and to the modest little Hotel Moderne Aristide he is running in a village in the hills behind Nice and Cannes, with its admirable small restaurant, and its faithful café circle which includes...

First published in 1962, this is a light comedy with a chorus. The action takes place on seven days,spread over a period of between four or five weeks during May and June 1958. During that time, Sarah Faulkner, celebrated diseuse, who has come home to rest after four years of touring in Europe...

Sergeant Jebb - S.J. as he is called - is a distinguished British historian. He has shaped his life pretty much as he wished, subordinating personal responsibilities and professional rewards to his private standards of integrity and scholarship. Or so he believes, until a crucial few days force...

First published in 1957, this astonishing novel describes a seductive world in which the action of the story unfolds: cultivated, privileged, secure, the close-knit world of an Oxford college, epitomized by the Master and the Master's house, a haven of good taste, intelligence and aristocratic nonconformity....

First published in 1992, this is the story of Frances Donaldson and a wonderfully multi-faceted life. As the daughter of the playwright Frederick Lonsdale, she grew up in the frivolous world of 1920s cafe society, yet she became a committed socialist. As the wife of Lord Donaldson, who was on the...

Part Bildungsroman, part hymn to the city of Glasgow, Jericho Sleep Alone is without a doubt the finest book written about the Scots-Jewish experience. From Bar Mitzvah to an unfulfilling teaching career, Jericho Eli Broock finds himself a perennial outsider and unlucky in love, neither his...

The story of Cambridge is one of curious conflict: an unrelenting struggle for independence by a squalid fenland settlement, which entirely changed its purpose as, down the centuries, a great University grew in its midst. Yet it was this unwelcome intruder, seen today as an island of ancient glory...

Above them the great rock bulged out like a too clever forehead, too clever for anything to grow upon, too smooth for anyone to climb… It might be the only place on earth which is so high and difficult to get to, that people can't reach it. When Sangita the Ranee of Bidwar is caught up in...

In this pastiche of Sherlock Holmes we find Sherlock's sister Charlotte to have superior genius, wit and charm with no fewer crimes to solve with the inimitable assistance of Mary Watson.