Tessa Hadley

The award-winning author of The Past once again "crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural" (Washington Post), in a collection of stories that elevate the mundane into the exceptional. The author of six critically acclaimed novels, Tessa Hadley has proven herself to be the champion of revealing the hidden depths in the deceptively simple. In these short stories it's the ordinary things that turn out to be...

"Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer's evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: she is at the hospital. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach, with his generous, grounded spirit, was the irreplaceable one they couldn't...

When she abandons an academic career and returns home to Wales to care for her ailing mother, Kate Flynn finds her life at loose ends, until she meets childhood friend David Roberts and David's teenage son, Jamie.

After the death of his mother, Paul abandons his family to live life on the edge with his daughter from a previous marriage who is pregnant and living in a run-down council flat, while Cora rebels against her marriage and society.

**THE PERFECT GIFT FOR BOOK LOVERS THIS CHRISTMAS** A WATERSTONES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH In this love letter to reading, curated by Pandora Sykes in aid of the National Literacy Trust, bestselling and beloved writers share their favourite books: the ones they hold most dearly, that they return to time and again and that helped make them the writers they are. WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM : NICK HORNBY * RUTH OZEKI * ANN...