Sebastian Faulks

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A fine and profoundly intelligent novel' ELIZABETH DAY 'A yearning, wistful, lovelorn novel, intent on exploring the price of being human' Sunday Times 'Faulks on his best form' Telegraph 'Fascinating . . . impeccably researched . . . At the heart of this rich, dark story, however, is not politics but psychology . . . Faulks's committed fans will be left looking forward to the next instalment of this thought-provoking trilogy'...

Terrified, a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes and pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire. Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse, a father too ashamed to acknowledged his son. A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends shivers through the skull. Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians risk their bodies and hearts in search of connection...

Set mainly in France during World War II, this is the story of Charlotte Gray, a young Englishwoman who finds herself working for the French Resistance. This is the third novel in Faulks' trilogy, following The Girl at the Lion D'Or and Birdsong.

London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life.

In this unique and compelling anthology, Sebastian Faulks has collected the best fiction about war in the 20th century. Ranging from the First World War to the Gulf War, these stories depict a soldier's experience from call-up, battle and comradeship, to leave, hospital and trauma in later life.

The British invented the novel, with the publication of 'Robinson Crusoe' in 1719. Sebastian Faulks argues here that the novel helped invent the British. He examines many enduring fictional characters from over the centuries such and shows us how they mapped and inspired the British psyche, and continue to do so.

From Thomas Hardy's football report to Dan Brown's visit to the cash till, this title presents the work of the great and the not-so-great. Philip Larkin's 'Lines in Celebration of the Queen Mother's 115th Birthday', first banned, then cut by the BBC, appears here.