When Elspeth Huxley's pioneer father buys a remote plot of land in Kenya, the family sets off to discover their new home: five hundred acres of Kenyan scrubland, infested with ticks and white ants, and quavering with heat.

Reno mounts her motorcycle and sets a collision course for New York. In 1977 the city is alive with art, sensuality and danger. She falls in with a bohemian clique colonising downtown and the lines between reality and performance begin to bleed.

Flaneuse [flanne-euhze], noun, from French. Feminine form of flaneur [flanne-euhr], an idler. In this book, the author defines her as 'a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk'.

Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the great French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert. As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of a stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels.

Bob Winrush was a freight dog, flying consignments of goods and sometimes people to all the corners of the world. Until, one day, he walked away from a deal that didn't smell right - something a 'freight dog' should never do. Now working as a private pilot for an Emirate prince in Dubai, he finds that moment of refusal catching up with him.

As he's about to commit a massive act of violence, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why 'Hell is Red River, Idaho, in the 1970s'. This book seeks an understanding of why human beings hate.

Annette runs away from her finishing school but learns more than she bargained for in the real world beyond; the fierce and melancholy Rosa is torn between two Polish brothers; Peter is obsessed by an indecipherable ancient script.

Life for Cristal has been upside down for a long time. She can't even remember a time before the war began. Before potatoes for every meal and bombs raining down from the sky. Before being forced to shelter in the dark, damp cellars. Then one day, Cristal's home is turned into a pile of rubble and dust five metres high.