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Castigated for offending against public decency, Madame Bovary has rarely failed to cause a storm. For Flaubert’s contemporaries, the fascination came from the novelist’s meticulous account of provincial manners. For the writer, subject matter was subordinate to his anguished quest for aesthetic perfection. For his twentieth-century successors the formal experiments that underpin Madame Bovary look forward to the innovations of contemporary fiction. Flaubert’s protagonist in particular has never ceased to fascinate. Romantic heroine or middle-class neurotic, flawed wife and mother or passionate protestor against the conventions of bourgeois society, simultaneously the subject of Flaubert’s admiration and the butt of his irony – Emma Bovary remains one of the most enigmatic of fictional creations. Flaubert’s meticulous approach to the craft of fiction, his portrayal of contemporary reality, his representation of an unforgettable cast of characters…’Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?’ Flaubert’s heroine, Emma, is a bored provincial housewife who abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. Flaubert published published MADAME BOVARY in 1857. The book created a sensation when Flaubert was prosecuted for offending public morals and later acquitted.

This is the story of K, his arrival in a village where he is never accepted, and his ensuing relentless struggle with authority in order to gain entrace to the castle that seems to rule it. K’s isolation and confusion, his desperation for the approval of elusive and anonymous powers, epitomises Kafka’s vision of twentieth-century alienation and anxiety.

Set in the turbulent days of the founding of Hong Kong in the 1840s, Tai-Pan is the story of Dirk Struan, the ruler – the Tai-Pan – of the most powerful trading company in the Far East. He is also a pirate, an opium smuggler, and a master manipulator of men. This is the story of his fight to establish himself and his dynasty as the undisputed masters of the Orient.

This is the stunning new novel from bestselling author Mike Gayle, for fans of The Keeper of Lost Things and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. A powerful and bittersweet story of an unexpected male friendship and an unlikely love story, a thought provoking storyline told with Mike’s distinctive wit and insight, touching on issues which affect us all. This uplifting tale reminds us of the simple courage at the heart of every human being.

Ever since The Incident, James DeWitt has stayed on the safe side.

He likes to know what happens next.

Danny Allen is not on the safe side. He is more past the point of no return.

The past is about to catch up with both of them in a way that which will change their lives forever, unexpectedly.

But redemption can come in the most unlikely ways.

Of all Camus’ works, this unfinished book has the most dramatic and extraordinary history – legend has it that the manuscript of THE FIRST MAN was extracted from the car wreck in which he died.

The unfinished manuscript of The First Man was discovered in the wreckage of car accident in which Camus died in 1960. Although it was not published for over thirty years, it was an instant bestseller when it finally appeared in 1994. The ‘first man’ is Jacques Cormery, whose poverty-stricken childhood in Algiers is made bearable by his love for his silent and illiterate mother, and by the teacher who transforms his view of the world. The most autobiographical of Camus’s novels, it gives profound insights into his life and the powerful themes underlying his work.

Borges’ stories have a deceptively simple, almost laconic style. In maddeningly ingenious stories that play with the very form of the short story, Borges returns again and again to his themes: dreams, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gaucho knife-fighters, transparent tigers and the elusive nature of identity itself.

A tragedy about the power of the imagination and the strange, claustrophobic world of childhood.At home, Paul shares a private world with his sister Elisabeth, a world from which parents are tacitly excluded. Their room is where the Game is played, the Game being their own bizarre version of life. All that they do outside is effectively controlled by the rules of the Game — but unfortunately the rules of the Game prescribe that two children must die.

Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time.

After the early death of her philandering husband, Etsuko moves into her father-in-law’s house, where she numbly submits to the old man’s advances. But soon she finds herself in love with the young servant Saburo. Tormented by his indifference, yet invigorated by her desire, she makes her move, with catastrophic consequences.

A band of thirteen-year-old boys reject the stupidity of the adult world. They decide it is illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call ‘objectivity’. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship’s officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first, but it is not long before they conclude that he is, in fact, soft and romantic. They regard this disillusionment as an act of betrayal on his part – and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

Half-brothers Michel and Bruno have a mother in common but little else. This is the story of two brothers, but the subject of the novel is in its dismantling of society and its assumptions, a dissection of modern lives and loves

In the compelling new novel, Home Stretch, Graham Norton demonstrates his keen understanding of the power of stigma and secrecy – with quietly devastating results.

‘Graham is a lovely writer and this is by far his best. The passage of time is beautifully handled, and the emergence of Ireland into the modern world is a joy to read… There’s a lovely kindness and a fundamental goodness at the heart of this book. A great read!’ RUSSELL T. DAVIES

‘A real page-turner, the kind of warmth and magical storytelling that puts me in mind of the late, great Maeve Binchy… a writer of real strength and talent.’ LORRAINE KELLY