Anita Brookner

When cautious Emma Roberts goes to France to carry out research into 17th century garden design, she finds a reliable diversion from her studies....

Beatrice considers herself to be delicate and sensitive, idle and confused. Forced into early retirement, she has an unashamed and romantic desire to be rescued by the ideal man....

Enigmatic Claire is 30 and lives alone. When she meets Martin Gibson, a faded scholar, she becomes inordinately interested....

Paul Sturgis is a retired bank manager who lives alone in a dark little flat. He walks alone and dines alone, seeking out and taking pleasure in small exchanges with strangers....

As the solitary child of mild and gentle parents, Jane is fascinated and astounded by her exotically European aunt, Dolly....

Born in 1948 and unready for the sixties, they had high hopes of the lives they would lead....

Hartmann was a German, Fibich an orphan of World War II. Forty years on their friendship endures....

Born to elegant but frivolous parents, Harriet grows up ignored and unguided, and retains a curious innocence....

Fay Langdon and Julia Morton might have met far earlier, since Fay was once a successful singer and Julia a famous diseuse. From the outset, theirs is a precarious friendship....

When Rachel becomes involved in the lives of the Livingstones it is with an acute appreciation of their home - beautifully furnished and richly decorated....

When Anna Durrant is reported missing her friends seem unconcerned at her disappearance. After all, her life has been one of concealment....

Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams....

Moving between Nice and London, The Bay of Angels makes the point that not everyone needs conventional relationships to be happy....

At seventy-three, Herz is facing an increasingly bewildering world. He cannot see his place in it or even work out what to do with his final years....