The diverse life of a south London district, as seen by a lonely widower running a dry cleaning shop.

The bleak story of the 12-strong Hegarty family, narrated by 39-year-old Veronica as she mourns the suicide of one of her siblings. Winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize.

An academic who has taken a sabbatical in Cardiff to nurse her ailing mother, finds herself drawn into the romantic orbit of a married doctor, and his teenage son.

When an Englishman working to help the Australian government forcibly "assimilate" aboriginal children is murdered, his daughter blanks the memories, but is later forced to face a traumatic past.

Two sisters enjoy what appears to be an enchanted childhood in late 70s Rhodesia, until the arrival of their orphaned cousin dooms their idyll.

The dreary peace of a boarding house in 1918 Southwark is disturbed by the arrival of a happy-go-lucky butcher intent on seducing its female inhabitants.

Thirteen-year-old Baby is daughter to a dead mother and a heroin-addict father. Moving from one city to another, she decides to leave home and make her own way through the grimy streets of Montreal.

Two years after the Iranian revolution, Isaac Amin is arrested. Months of interrogations and torture lie ahead, with only recollections of the indolent days of his youth in Shiraz as sustenance.

A dark exploration of a couple who keep an unwanted child in a cage, before leaving her to starve to death.

For the most part, Perry L Crandall's family pretend he doesn't exist. But then he wins $12m in the lottery and people start coming out of the woodwork.