Penguin The Coroner's Daughter Hughes Andrew

Unwanted and unloved, fourteen-year-old Marie Anne Lawson is everything her mother doesn't want her to be - adventurous, outspoken and unusual. As soon as she's old enough, Marie Anne is dispatched from Northumberland to London to live with her Aunt Martha to learn to be a lady and perfect her musical talent • Life in London proves to be more difficult than she could ever have imagined. Only the friendship of her Aunt's companion and the praise of her music tutor prevents her from falling into despair • When Anne Marie is suddenly sent back to the Manor, will she find the strength to be who she really is

Henry Fielding's picaresque tale of a young man's search for his place in the world, The History of Tom Jones is edited with notes and an introduction by Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely in Penguin Classics • A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighbouring squire - though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. But when his amorous escapades earn the disapproval of his benefactor, Tom is banished to make his own fortune. Sophia, meanwhile, is determined to avoid an arranged marriage to Allworthy's scheming nephew and escapes from her rambunctious father to follow Tom to London

Published in 1886, The Bostonians begins with the arrival in Boston of Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer in search of a career. Through his cousin, Olive Chancellor, Ransom comes to meet Verena, the beautiful daughter of a charlatan faith-healer and showman. When they hear Verena talk, Olive hopes to win the girl over to the feminist cause, Ransom is attracted to her looks, and a battle for possession of the girl begins • With its discussion of the situation of women and its uncompromising depiction of the city and the media, The Bostonians is a modern novel which is immediately accessible and relevant today

Blackpool, summer 1942 • Meet the Ballroom Girls: Sylvia, Pearl and Joy. Three girls dancing through the turbulence of WWII • Sylvia is the spoiled only child of an ambitious mother, Lorna Ellis, who runs a dancing school in Blackpool. Approaching 21, Sylvia is under pressure to scoop up prizes by fair means or foul • Pearl is the oldest daughter in a large, chaotic family who all work at the Pleasure Beach. She often sneaks away to watch ballroom contestants in their glittery finery. She dreams of joining them, but will she ever be anything other than an outsider looking in? • Joy is an evacuee who lost her parents to the Blitz. Now she lives and works in a shabby boarding house and works as a cleaner. Though shy and modest, she falls in love with the newest dance craze - the American Jitterbug

The FBI man was convinced, in short, that Maigret was a big shot in his own country but that here, in the United States, he was incapable of figuring out anything . . .well, Maigret happened to believe that men and their passions are the same everywhere • Maigret is touring the United States to observe American policing methods, when a visit to a coroner's inquest in Arizona draws him into the tragic story of a young woman and five airmen in the desert

Andrew Rawnsley's bestselling The End of the Party lifts the lid on the second half of New Labour's spell in office • Through riveting inside accounts of all the key events from 9/11 and the Iraq War to the financial crisis and the parliamentary expenses scandal, Rawnsley takes us through the triumphs and tribulations of New Labour. With entertaining portraits of the main playershe exposes the astonishing feuds and reconciliations between Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson • Andrew Rawnsley is associate editor and chief political commentator for the Observer. For many years he presented BBC Radio 4's Sunday evening Westminster Hour, and he has also made a number of highly acclaimed television documentaries

The multi-million copy bestseller, Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a moving and poignant novel about grief, family and betrayal • Families have secrets they hide even from themselves • It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr David Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will haunt five lives for ever • For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her care to a nurse • As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a little girl must make her own way in the world as best she can

The greatest expression of his talent for witty, observant explorations of what it means to 'live well', Henry James's The Ambassadors is edited with an introduction and notes by Adrian Poole in Penguin Classics • Concerned that her son Chad may have become involved with a woman of dubious reputation, the formidable Mrs Newsome sends her 'ambassador' Strether from Massachusetts to Paris to extricate him. Strether's mission, however, is gradually undermined as he falls under the spell of the city and finds Chad refined rather than corrupted by its influence and that of his charming companion, Madame de Vionnet, and her daughter, Jeanne. As the summer wears on, Mrs Newsome concludes that she must send another envoy to confront the errant Chad - and a Strether whose view of the world has changed profoundly

The Miltons are a powerful old New York family - the kind of family that used to run the world. And in 1935, they still do. Kitty and Ogden Milton seem to have it all: an elegant apartment on the Upper East Side, two beautiful little boys, a love everyone envies. When a tragedy befalls them, Ogden comforts Kitty the only way he knows how - they go sailing, picnic on a small island off the coast of Maine, and buy it • For generations the Miltons of Crockett Island revel in a place that is entirely their own. But it's 1959, and the world is changing: Ogden's firm hire a Jewish man, Len Levy, who earns the admiration of not only his boss, but his boss's beautiful young daughter. When Len and his friend visit the island, the Milton's principles and prejudices are challenged like never before

The Salpetriere asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope • Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister, she has shunned religion and placed her faith in Doctor Charcot and his new science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family

The grape harvest at the Cambon family's magnificent Provencal vineyard is always a cause for celebration • But not this year • When the crop is accidentally destroyed, leaving the estate facing ruin, Clarisse Cambon knows exactly who to blame - her English daughter-in-law Jane • It's just the latest incident in a decades-long feud that has left Jane feeling like an uninvited guest in her husband Luc's family. But when tragedy strikes and Jane uncovers a shocking secret at the family's heart she wonders if she ever really knew any of the Cambons, especially her husband, at all • Now she is left with a terrible choice - walk away and see everything the Cambons believe in fall apart, or stay to expose the truth and risk being caught in the storm?

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago • Olivia, the beautiful eldest Davenport daughter, is ready to do her duty and marry. . . until charismatic civil rights leader Washington DeWight sweeps into town and sparks fly • Her younger sister, Helen, is more interested in fixing cars than falling in love-unless it's with her sister's betrothed • Amy-Rose, childhood-friend-turned-maid to the Davenport sisters, dreams of opening her own business-and marrying the one man she could never be with, Olivia and Helen's brother, John. But Olivia's best friend, Ruby, also has her sights set on John Davenport, though she can't seem to keep his interest