EASY READS

The awakening sensations of first love and its ritual initiations are the focus of the stories contained in this collection.

Perfect Catch is a bundle of poems, plays and collaborations between Ian McMillan and various musicians, theatre groups, radio producers and ordinary and extraordinary people. Poetry is a community art for this writer, not a craft pursued in a lonely room!McMillan's verse provides a snapshot of the modern world. He has read in schools, trains, football grounds, radio studios and even stranger locations all over the world.

These stories offer a mixture of despair, hope and humour. Themes of love, friendship and loss run through the collection, giving a sense of the contemporary lives of ordinary people.

Harry Silver returns to face life in the 'blended family'. A wonderful new novel about modern times, which can be read as a sequel to the million selling Man and Boy, or completely on its own Man and Wife is a novel about love and marriage - about why we fall in love and why we marry; about why we stay and why we go. Harry Silver is a man coming to terms with a divorce and a new marriage. He has to juggle with time and relationships, with his wife and his ex-wife, his son and his stepdaughter, his own work and his wife's fast-growing career. Meanwhile his mother, who stood so steadfastly by his father until he died, is not getting any younger or stronger herself. In fact, everything in Harry's life seems complicated. And when he meets a woman in a million, it gets even more so... Man and Wife stands on its own as a brilliant novel about families in the new century, written with all the humour, passion and superb storytelling that have made Tony Parsons a favourite author in over thirty countries.

Alan Sillitoe is without doubt one of the most distinguished writers of the twentieth century, renowned for the themes of class and authority that run throughout his fiction. This impressive collection contains his greatest short stories, including his early classic, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. This volume, which includes previsouly unpublished stories, demonstrates the potency and timelessness of Sillitoe's work.

This is London 1945, when all nice people are poor. Muriel Spark sets us down among the girls of good family but slender means as they fight it out, from their Kensington hostel to the last clothing coupon until this charmingly light-hearted period in their lives descends into horror and tragedy.

Writer, comedienne and actress Meera Syal explores the ties that bind three Indian women living in London. With a satirical eye on the media, the strengths and limits of female friendships, mixed race relationships, infidelity and arranged marriages, Syal steers her characters through some significant growing up. Selected for World Book Day 2003 - England.

These short stories deal with ideas about mutability, improvement and escape into new worlds, and involve characters who constantly fail to understand themselves or anyone else. They also celebrate the small success or fragment of knowledge which can contribute to a person's experience of life.

Many years ago Mr Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction which grew to be an international best-seller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself out of touch with the modern world.
He decides to take a holiday and comes to the ancient village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date. But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers he is staying among.
He meets Ellen Thomas, a reclusive artist, young Johnny Spence, an absconding school boy, and the tough-minded Paula who works at the local pub. As he comes to know his neighbours better, Mr Golightly begins to examine his attitude to love, and to ponder the terrible catastrophe of his son's death. And as the drama unfolds we begin to learn the true and extraordinary identity of Mr Golightly and the nature of the secret sorrow which haunts him links him to his new friends.

Moving between London and Cairo, this is the final volume of Young's trilogy featuring Angeline Gower, and ties together all the loose ends of the complex plot. It is a careful study of the issues surrounding mixed-race relationships and single motherhood placed in the context of an action-packed mystery.