Showing results by publisher "Sceptre" in All Categories

The awkward and lovable hero of Andrew Sean Greer's bestselling and prize-winning novel Less returns in this unforgettable road trip across America. 'Wildly, painfully funny' David Sedaris 'Unforgettable' Elizabeth Day 'The joyfulness of this book is a balm' Madeline Miller 'What a joy' Katie...

The new novel from bestselling author Graham Norton In his tense and darkly comic new novel Norton casts a light on the relationship between mothers and daughters, and truth and self-preservation with unnerving effect. Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son...

When Adela discovers she has a terminal illness, her thoughts turn to Tereza, the American-raised daughter she gave up at birth. Leaving behind her moody, grown son, Roman in their native Czech village, she flies to the United States to find the long-lost daughter who never knew her. In New York City, Tereza is working as the star researcher for two suspicious biotech moguls hellbent on developing a 'god pill' to extend human life indefinitely. But before Tereza can find a cure for Adela, her mother dies mysteriously.

As riots erupt on the streets of Lahore, Inspector Faraz returns to his birthplace, the red-light district in the ancient walled city where women still pass on the profession of courtesan to their daughters. Plucked from it as a small boy by his influential father, Faraz has kept his roots well hidden. Now his father has sent him back: to cover up the murder of a young prostitute. It should be a simple task in the marginalised community, but Faraz finds himself unable to obey orders or to resist searching for the mother and sister he left behind.

Angus Mooney is not happy—he's been murdered, cut off in the prime of his life. He feels humiliated—he's never even believed in an afterlife. (How wrong he'd been). He's confused—death has provided more questions than answers. And he desperately misses his audacious and fiery wife, Gracie, who's expecting their first child. The only upside is that Angus has found a way to see what his murderer is up to and how Gracie is faring. The downside: Gracie and his murderer are getting uncomfortably close, and a worldwide pandemic means the afterlife is about to get very crowded.

An alternative biography of Mary, Queen of Scots through the textiles of her life from the author of Sunday Times bestseller Threads of Life. I felt that Mary was there, pulling at my sleeve, willing me to appreciate the artistry, wanting me to understand the dazzle of the material world that...

In this deliciously strange debut collection, Leon Craig draws on folklore and gothic horror in refreshingly inventive ways to explore queer identity, love, power and the complicated nature of being human. Some say that hell is other people and some say hell is loneliness . . . In the thirteen...

A new novel from the acclaimed author and broadcaster as part of Quick Reads 2022 and World Book Night. Helen is a retired teacher living on the Irish coast. She enjoys the peace and quiet - despite the burden of Margaret, her unpleasant sister. Margaret arrived three years ago for a short...

A gripping untold war story: using exclusive new archive material, letters and diaries, this is the story of the prisoners of war in internment camps during the Second World War. The police came for Peter Fleischmann in the early hours. It reminded the teenager of the Gestapo's moonlit roundups...

The remarkably honest and brilliantly entertaining memoir of one of our finest acting Dames whose long and celebrated career includes her much-loved performance as Livia in I, Claudius and who was married for 20 years to the hell-raising Hollywood star Peter O'Toole. Siân Phillips has a long...

'It is Hustvedt's gift to write with exemplary clarity of what is by necessity unclear.' Hilary Mantel, Guardian Feminist philosophy meets family memoir in a fresh essay collection by the award-winning essayist and novelist Siri Hustvedt, author of the bestselling What I Loved and Booker...

When Arifa Akbar discovered that her sister had fallen seriously ill, she assumed there would be a brief spell in hospital and then she'd be home. This was not to be. It was not until the day before she died that the family discovered she was suffering from tuberculosis. Consumed is a story of sisterhood, grief, the redemptive power of art and the strange mythologies that surround tuberculosis. It takes us from Keats' deathbed and the tubercular women of opera to the resurgence of TB in modern Britain today.

Private spies are influencing our elections, shaping the future of Hollywood, effecting government policies and the fortunes of companies. More deviously, they are also peering into our personal lives as never before, using off-the shelf technology to listen to our phone calls, monitor our emails and decide what we see on social media. Spooked takes us on a journey into a secret billion-dollar industry in which information is currency and loyalties are for sale.

One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy's life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim's brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back.

'Indispensable, engaging and brilliant book about the pervasiveness of loneliness in the twenty-first century and its far-reaching impact...a hopeful book that couldn't be more important or timely.' Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read Even before a global pandemic...

'A beautifully accessible exploration of how numbers shape our lives, and the importance of accurately interpreting the statistics we are fed.' - Angela Saini, author of Superior Even if you don't consider yourself a numbers person, you are a numbers person. The time has come to put numbers in...

In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his youngest child to Australia. Like his brother Alfred before him, sixteen-year-old Edward is expected to learn to apply himself in what his father considers to be the new land of opportunity. Posted to a remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward...

BLOOD BROTHERHOODS is the enthralling new history of Italian organised crime by the author of the international bestseller COSA NOSTRA. Mafia. Camorra. 'Ndrangheta. The Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is far from being Italy's only dangerous criminal fraternity. The south of the country hosts...

Shame and longing can flow through generations, but the secrets of the heart will not be buried for ever. It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony a group of young friends, including bride and groom, drive out to the beach. There is an...

Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she's not about to jump, but they don't believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up. Oscar hopes that leaving New York for a few months will give Mina the space to heal. They travel to London, to an apartment wall-papered with indigo-eyed birds, to Oscar's oldest friends, to a canal and blooming flower market. Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women.