Literature

From the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes‘Gloriously glamorous, and brilliantly plotted: Dead to Her is everything I love in a novel’ Clare Mackintosh, bestselling author of I Let You Go‘An absolute rollercoaster of a ride: twist upon twist, expertly handled – I actually gasped out loud several times’ Lucy Foley, bestselling author of The Guest ListSomething old…When Marcie met Jason Maddox, she couldn’t believe her luck. Becoming Jason’s second wife catapulted her into the elite world of high society. But underneath the polite, old money manners, she knows she’ll always be an outsider, and her hard-won life hangs by a thread. Something new…Then Jason’s widowed boss brings back a new wife from his trip to London. Young, beautiful, reckless – nobody can take their eyes off Keisha. Including Jason. Something you can never, ever undo…Marcie refuses to be replaced so easily. People would kill for her life of luxury. What will Marcie do to keep it?‘A marvellously compelling read’ Liz Nugent, bestselling author of Lying in Wait‘Dark, hypnotic and immersive’ Harriet Tyce, bestselling author of Blood Orange‘So deliciously dark and twisted, and that setting was just perfection’ Lisa Hall, bestselling author of Between You and Me ‘A wonderful, spooky romp…like Dallas meets Tales of the Unexpected!’ Richard Osman, author of The Thursday Murder Club‘Set in the racially charged high society of the American deep South, this is the clash of two ambitious, beautiful trophy wives, each with her own secrets’Daily Mail‘Warning: you won’t put this down…twisty, addictive’Sunday Telegraph

An astonishingly frank and deeply autobiographical account of homosexual relationships in an era when love between men was not only stigmatised, but also illegal, E.M. Forster’s Maurice is edited by P.N. Furbank with an introduction by David Leavitt in Penguin Classics.Maurice Hall is a young man who grows up confident in his privileged status and well aware of his role in society. Modest and generally conformist, he nevertheless finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. Through Clive, whom he encounters at Cambridge, and through Alec, the gamekeeper on Clive’s country estate, Maurice gradually experiences a profound emotional and sexual awakening. A tale of passion, bravery and defiance, this intensely personal novel was completed in 1914 but remained unpublished until after Forster’s death in 1970. Compellingly honest and beautifully written, it offers a powerful condemnation of the repressive attitudes of British society, and is at once a moving love story and an intimate tale of one man’s erotic and political self-discovery.In his introduction, David Leavitt explores the significance of the novel in relation to Forster’s own life and as a founding work of modern gay literature. This edition reproduces the Abinger text of the novel, and includes new notes, a chronology and further reading.E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was a noted English author and critic and a member of the Bloomsbury group. His first novel, Where Angels Fear To Tread appeared in 1905. The Longest Journey appeared in 1907, followed by A Room With A View (1908), based partly on the material from extended holidays in Italy with his mother. Howards End (1910) was a story that centred on an English country house and dealt with the clash between two families, one interested in art and literature, the other only in business. Maurice was revised several times during his life, and finally published posthumously in 1971.If you enjoyed Maurice, you might like Forster’s A Room With a View, also available in Penguin Classics.