Extracts

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

Lady Annabel Goldsmith, who describes herself as an “incredible mother, rather a good mistress, but not a very good wife” to billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith, is hosting a birthday party.

So, no doubt you’re wondering what came first: the music, or the photographs of Robert Plant’s trouser snake

Starbursts blink from streetlights like they’re sharing a secret as I wake to find myself slumped in the back of a cab, without any recollection of how I got here, or where I’m going.

Growing up, Kate Sheahan played football as the only girl in boys’ teams.

'Barry was an awesome dad to many children, just not his own.'

Thea’s scream rips through the clearing, startling the birds from the trees in a flurry of flapping wings.

It wasn’t the happiest of beginnings. Tilly tried to pretend it would be okay . . .

Even in the summertime the sea here glistens a chill, leaden blue, the late afternoon shadows darkening the water.

Yes, quite a lot of people do ask me how I lost the little finger of my left hand.

I was twenty-four when Christian was born, much younger than I’d ever expected to become a father.

Alone in the quiet of Wish & Co after closing time, Marnie Fairchild decided to give it a try.

Do you remember when I was a hero, Eddy? Back when everyone thought I saved you, before my face looked like a broken dinner plate.

Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur...

Six twangy notes of guitar were all it took for every man in a hundred-metre radius to unbuckle his belt, drop his pants and do a dumb dance in his undies.

Alice Kent turned up the volume on her car radio as Eric Clapton, playing her favourite number, ‘Layla’, came on.

I stare down at the young man who stands below me ankle-deep in the mud of the banks of the Thames.

He’s here somewhere. I know it. And the girl might still be alive.

Yia-Yia knew many stories of gods and heroes, giants and nymphs, and the Three Fates who spun and measured and cut the thread of life.

The child sails in a crowded boat to the end of the Zyder Zee.

Last week’s performance by the West Moonah Women’s Choir at the Festival of Voices offered up generous serves of the ‘singalong, sway and smile’ repertoire the choir’s audiences have come to rely on.

We’d been driving for about seven thousand years. Or at least that’s how it felt.

There was no possibility of walking to the library that day. Morning rain had blanched the air, and Miss Darlington feared that if Cecilia ventured out she would develop a cough and be dead within the week.