Sandel is an evocative portrait of boarding-school and Oxbridge life and the intense, often romantic friendships that flourish there. It is also a novel of sexual awakening, whose light touch disguises the profound emotions that such friendships generate; the relationship portrayed is partly of equals and partly, as often happens, one where it is the younger partner who decides whether and how it should persist.

    Andre's father, in a desperate effort to save him from the coming holocaust, hands him over to his captivating uncle Rudolf, an internationally famous singer of popular operettas. Rudolf is a sublimely gifted lyric tenor, a dashing leading man who is the object of many women's affections-but also an artist who lives in the shadow of his own unachieved potential as an opera star. Rudolf takes the boy to back to London, renames him Andrew, turns all his attention and sardonic humor upon him, and gradually sculpts him into a gentleman.Vivid, often lighthearted scenes of Andrew's worldly life with Rudolf are intertwined with the unfolding secrets of his forgotten past as Andre, which have shadowed his otherwise happy life. Told in matchless prose, Uncle Rudolf captures in fine detail the mood of 1940s Europe--and reveals the emotions of a man whose achievement falls short of his brilliant promise. It is a wise, knowing, elegant story about the sacrifices we make for those we love.

    Bennett is openly gay, while Judd is a Marxist.One night a house man walks in on Martineau and a boy from another house together in the dark room. Martineau commits suicide because of the shame of having been found in a homosexual embrace, and chaos erupts as teachers and the senior students try their hardest to keep the scandal away from parents and the rest of the outside world. However, the gay scandal gives the army-obsessed house captain Fowler, who dislikes both Bennett and Judd, a welcome reason to scheme against them.

     Changing Trains is a fictionalised memoire that will transport you back to the glorious 1980s - that time just before mobile devices, the internet and social media changed the world - and one working class boy's journey of discovery and sexual self awareness.

    Forty years later a journalist hovers near the truth, buried long ago by the panicked authorities.Kirkston Abbey is no place for the weak: its rules are harsh and its discipline savage. So the struggling Jonathan Palmer cannot believe his luck when Richard Rokeby - tough, handsome, aloof - befriends him.But Rokeby's possessive friendship is suffocating and, what starts out as an innocent game amongst friends, takes a shocking turn as Palmer finds himself powerless to stop Rokeby from unleashing a horrifying fate on them all.A brilliantly clever psychological thriller, The Wishing Game launched Redmond to his bestseller status.

    It is goodbye to a Berlin wild, wicked, breathtaking, decadent beyond belief and already -- in the years between the wars -- welcoming death in through the door, though more with a wink than a whimper.~from the back cover

    An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist. Moving backward to the war years and the painful repercussions of an act of conscience, and forward through the lives and careers of two men, The Gustav Sonata explores the passionate love of childhood friendship as it is lost, transformed, and regained over a lifetime. Moving between the 1930s and the 1990s, this fierce and beautifully orchestrated novel explores the vast human issues of racism and tolerance, flight and refuge, cruelty and tenderness. It is a powerful and deeply moving addition to the beloved oeuvre of one of our greatest contemporary novelists.

    Handsome, charismatic, a powerful athlete and oarsman, David Sparsholt seems at first unaware of the effect he has on others--especially on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist, himself also destined to become a writer. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove from the action: a place of transience and uncertainty, the fears and rigors of the blackout both encouraging and concealing unexpected liaisons. Between these two young men of very different backgrounds an unusual friendship develops, one whose consequences will unfold over the many years that follow.Alan Hollinghurst's masterly new novel evokes the intimate lives of three generations of Sparsholts in a sequence of vividly rendered episodes: a childhood holiday in Cornwall; eccentric social gatherings at the Dax family home; the adventures of David's son Johnny, in pursuit of love and a career as a painter in 1970s London. Changes in taste, morality, and private life are explored in a group portrait of friends brought together by art, literature, and love. Champions of the Modern live to see modernity itself becoming history, while more personal, life-changing crises and scandals--including that which gives this novel its title--recede into the past, leaving their ambiguous traces. And as gay men and women live in increasing freedom and openness, and the gay scene evolves into new forms and possibilities, The Sparsholt Affair becomes a meditation on human transience, even as it expresses the countervailing longing for permanence and continuity.Witty, tender, epic in scope yet rich in observation, The Sparsholt Affair is a dazzling new work of fiction by a writer justly hailed by the Wall Street Journal as "one of the best novelists at work today."

    No one knew why Robin abandoned a brilliant university career to start a new life at an eccentric island monastery, but it was thought to have something to do with the surprise engagement of Candida, Robin's childhood playmate and Jake, their mutual friend.

    Quick-witted, resilient, and eager to please, she adapts to this cloistered world, learning rigid conformity and subjection to authority. Passionate friendships are the only deviation from her total obedience. Convent life is perfectly captured by Antonia White.

    Likely intended as the first chapter of a novel tracing the emotional roots of the Brideshead narrator, the title story is a sensitive, convincing portrait of a young man emerging from schoolboy conformity to a tentative criticism of the "subhuman, wholly respectable" world around him. The other stories--brilliant entertainments in the manner of Waugh's early comic novels--include "By Special Request" (written as an alternative ending to A Handful of Dust) and "Incident in Azania," a return to the scene of Black Mischief. A worthy and welcome addition to Waugh's published works, these stories display all the outrageous wit and satiric intelligence for which Time awarded him "a roomy cell in the murderer's row (Swift, Pope, Wilde, and Shaw) of English letters."

    David Stark, an adolescent and mainstay of a family of women nearing physical or emotional collapse, hitchhikes from Southern California to San Francisco to locate a wandering sister and encounters adulthood.

    In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.

    Deep in the Cambridgeshire fens, Laura is living alone with her 12-year old daughter Beth, in the old tollhouse known as Ninepins.

    But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys: Gretchen is now a friend, and her quirky and charming daughter Margaret a sort of surrogate child. And Jean doesn't mean to fall in love with Gretchen's husband, Howard, but Howard surprises her with his dry wit, his intelligence and his kindness — and when she does fall, she falls hard.But he is married, and to her friend — who is also the subject of the story she is researching for the newspaper, a story that increasingly seems to be causing dark ripples across all their lives. And yet Jean cannot bring herself to discard the chance of finally having a taste of happiness...But there will be a price to pay, and it will be unbearable.