Spanning the second half of the last century, My Former Heart, Cressida Connolly's mesmerising first novel, charts the lives of three generations of Iris's family, the mother who walked away from her child. Ruth will be deserted again, many years later, by a husband she loves, but not before she has had two children by him. She leaves London to live with her uncle, where she creates a new life for herself with another woman. And we follow the lives of her two children, trying to make a place for themselves in the world in the shadow of the family that precedes them.

With its large cast of fascinating characters, this is an outstanding novel about families and their ability to adapt.

This is the story of the Willoweed family and the English village in which they live. It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room windows, "quacking their approval" as they sail around the room. "What about my rose beds?" demands Grandmother Willoweed. Her son shouts down her ear-trumpet that the garden is submerged, dead animals everywhere, she will be lucky to get a bunch. Then the miller drowns himself…then the butcher slits his throat…and a series of gruesome deaths plagues the villagers. The newspaper asks, "Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?" Through it all, Comyns' unique voice weaves a text as wonderful as it is horrible, as beautiful as it is cruel. Originally published in England in 1954, this "overlooked small masterpiece" is a twisted, tragicomic gem.

This, arguably Sylvia Townsend Warner's most luminous collection of stories, was first published in 1966 and includes 'A Love Match', hailed by the Los Angeles Times as 'a supreme example of her technique.' It is the tale of Celia and Justin Tizard, sister and war-scarred brother, whose uncommon closeness becomes the talk of a small English village. Sylvia Townsend Warner was one of the most talented and well-respected British authors of the twentieth century. Today she is shamefully under-read. Her short stories have been particularly neglected—and yet, intelligent, lyrical, beautifully crafted, they constitute some of the very best of her work.

In 1980 Germany, under Cold War tension, a mole is suspected in the British Embassy. When the clever diplomat Nicky Fleming dies suddenly and suspiciously, it’s convenient to brand him the traitor. But was his death an accident, murder, or suicide? As the government digs into Nicky's history, his wife, Letty, relocates with her three children to a remote Scottish island hoping to salvage their family. But the isolated shores of her childhood retreat only intensify their distance, and it is Letty's brilliant and peculiar youngest child, Jamie, who alone holds on to the one thing he's sure of: his father has promised to return and he was a man who never broke a promise.

Exploring the island, Jamie and his teenaged sisters discover that a domesticated brown bear has been marooned on shore, hiding somewhere among the seaside caves. Jamie feels that the bear may have a strange connection to his father, and as he seeks the truth, his father's story surfaces in unexpected ways. Bella Pollen has an uncanny ability to capture the unnoticeable moments in which families grow quiet. A novel about the corrosive effects of secrets and the extraordinary imagination of youth, The Summer of the Bear is Pollen's most ambitious and affecting book yet.

Layla is just thirteen when the men with the beards and guns burn down her beloved father's school and begin to terrorise the Swat valley region of Pakistan. She has to flee, exchanging the tranquil beauty of the Himalayas for the squalor of a camp for refugees from the Taliban near Peshawar. With her life torn apart by tragedy, Layla must choose between the old fashioned way of life with her family—or a journey into independence which could threaten her very survival. Trying to find out what lies behind mysterious deaths at the camp is foreign correspondent Ellen Thomas. As a strong woman in a man's world, Ellen is used to risking her life to uncover the truth. United by the gentle schoolteacher who had risked his life to save books, the paths of Layla and Ellen collide in a common cause.

Jill McGivering has worked in journalism for 25 years. She is currently a senior foreign news correspondent with the BBC. She has already written non-fiction, short fiction and plays. The Last Kestrel was her first novel.

This novel is about two very different girls growing up in a tough Yorkshire town in the 1970s—spoilt Gemma, who seems to have everything, and neglected Pauline, who has less than nothing. But that is not the only story. A tale of penny sweets, suburban back gardens, swimming trips and Butlins holidays makes way for something altogether more sinister. And it is this story that will pull you towards its unimaginable climax, leaving you—haunted? Heartbroken? Angry? This is the story that won't let you go. This is the story you won't be able to forget. This is What They Do in the Dark.