The Battle for Big School by Sarah Tucker

Blurb from the back of the book;
There are 50 places at The Oaks, the best grammar school in Letchbury, and 1,000 children applying. Competition is fierce and parents are prepared to do everything and anything to get their child one of the coveted spaces. Close friends Lily, Julie, Karen and househusband Paul aren’t overly concerned. [...]

South of the River by Blake Morrison

From the back of the book; -
‘South of the River’ opens on the new dawn of Labour’s election victory in 1997, and ends five years later. But this is not so much ’state of the nation’ as state of our souls, marriages, families, hopes and careers - a sharp and sexy portrait of a dysfunctional [...]

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber

From Amazon;-
Meet Sugar, a nineteen-year-old prostitute in nineteenth-century London who yearns for escape to a better life. From the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, she begins her ascent through society, meeting a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters on the way. They begin with William Rackham, an egotistical perfume magnate whose empire is fueled [...]

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

From the back of the book;-
Matilda is a young girl in Bougainville, a tropical island where the horror of civil war lurks. Mr Watts, the only white person, is the self appointed teacher of the tiny school where the only textbook is Dickens’ Great Expectations.
The book is narrated by Matilda, a young teenager. In the [...]

Double Fault by Lionel Shriver

Synopsis from Waterstone’s
‘Love me, love my game’, says twenty-three year-old Willy Novinsky. Ever since she picked up a racquet at the age of four, tennis has been Willy’s one love, until the day she meets Eric Oberdorf. She’s a middle-ranked professional tennis player and he’s a Princeton graduate who took up playing tennis at the [...]

Rumours of a Hurricane by Tim Lott

Synopsis from Amazon; -
The death of homeless man Charlie Buck is unremarkable to everyone except the few passers-by who witness his drunken–and apparently voluntary–fall beneath a speeding lorry. No loved ones or friends attend his last breaths in hospital–his possessions amount to a National Insurance card, a digital watch and a newspaper obituary for a [...]

The Simple Rules of Love - Amanda Brookfield

Synopsis from Amazon;-
For some families, a year can feel like a lifetime. The Harrisons are a large and extremely close-knit family. But with the grandchildren fast becoming adults and elderly Pamela struggling to adapt to widowhood and the emptiness of Ashley House, the four children of the middle generation find themselves equally lost in a [...]

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller

Synopsis from the back of the book;-
Meet Pippa Lee, a thoroughly modern heroine.
She is the devoted wife and mother of a brilliant man thirty years her senior, proud mother of grown up twins, and an adored friend and neighbour. But when once she was content with this seemingly enviable world, Pippa finds her life beginning [...]