Fifteen winters, night upon night, and a woman warm and welcoming to her body feet like ice, hands and arms like ice; he thought of such love and sighed.

Wait Until Spring, Bandini

John Fante

This is a journal of journeys, urban excursions which take place both now and then, in times plural and space singular; one city, many cities.

London Made Us

Robert Elms

Mary was a little bit taller than the other girls her age and had brownish crinkly hair. She was quite thin, because she didn't always have exactly enough to eat. She liked honey and whistling and the colour blue and finding out.

The Little Snake

A.L. Kennedy

Simon Garfield talks at Ideacity about the importance of letter writing in our current technology driven era, unpacks famous love letters and why they are important historically.

Undere the Skin – the official film trailer.

He has a curious way of moving through his rubbish.

The Hoarder

Jess Kidd

There are a thousand places to hide a child in London, even a remarkable child. And if she is remarkable there are a thousand buyers waiting . . .

Things in Jars

Jess Kidd

The island disappeared inside a dark pall of smoke and debris, lit by fires churning underneath. Apprehension grew inside them.

The Pacific (The Official HBO/Sky TV Tie-In)

Hugh Ambrose

Science is a story. History is a story. These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true.

Weight

Jeanette Winterson

He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed 'Truth! Truth! Truth!' we have no choice left but confess - he was a woman.

Orlando

Virginia Woolf

In middle age I wholly lost my way and found myself within an evil wood far from the right straight road we all should tread

HELL

Alasdair Gray & Dante Alighieri

My greatest wish - other than salvation - was to have a book.

Life Of Pi, Illustrated

Yann Martel

I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Rebecca West

The message had been carried through the dawn chorus and into the cold pink morning. Effie Truelove was going to die on Friday.

The Chosen Ones

Scarlett Thomas

A perfect fusillade of single answering tones came from seal after seal, travelling rapidly northward, until at the further end of the reef it ceased.

The People Of The Sea

David Thomson

humans are mysterious, even to themselves, and it is this mystery that keeps them going. It is the mystery that makes love possible.

Humans: An A-Z

Matt Haig

I could never run fast enough or far enough. Robby was inside me. Wherever he was, running for his life, he carried part of me with him.

Brothers and Keepers

John Edgar Wideman

There was no need of lock, of door, of wall: this was a prison whose bars were ten thousand miles of water.

The Secret River and Searching for The Secret River

Kate Grenville

Behind every great woman is a man who tried to stop her.

Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere

It was a chain of stories clinging to stories, of love clinging to love. It was an inheritance he did not know how to pass on.

The Valley at the Centre of the World

Malachy Tallack