Bloomsbury

Florence is the only European city I can think of whose most famous citizens, at least in the last 150 years or so, have all been foreigners.&' Thus David Leavitt writes in this lively account of expatriate life in the city of the lily. His narrative begins by asking why Florence has always proven to be such a popular destination for suicides, then...

Maja was five years old when her black Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean to London, leaving her with one complete memory: a woman singing - in a voice both eerie and enthralling - at their farewell party. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja herself is a singer, pregnant and haunted by what she calls 'her Cuba'....

Longlisted for the National Book Award 2014 Someone begins on the stoop of a Brooklyn apartment building where Marie is waiting for her father to come home from work. It is the 1920s and in her Irish-American enclave the stories of her neighbours unfold before her short-sighted eyes. As the years pass Marie's own history plays out against the...

Did Patrick Mount, philosopher and visionary, discover the secret of sheer bliss? And why did he disappear? If Connie Benson, his former lover, knows the secret, she's not telling. A reclusive artist, she has kept her final portrait of Mount under wraps for over thirty years. Finally, she has decided to unveil it at a London exhibition. But...

Billy England and his sister Girl are clever, stylish and damaged. Billy is a teenage "e;catastrophe theorist"e; which is handy since their mother has gone missing, and when they last saw their father his Elvis hair was in flames. Girl has a mission. She knocks on a door of a selected house and pretends any Prozac woman who answers is her...

Oscar Mandinga, great-grandchild of the founders of a small hamlet deep in the Cuban hinterland, is a sardonic teller of tales  some taller than others. But one day Oscar wakes to find himself utterly alone, the sole descendant of his family line. He is not sure what to do or where to go, but in the midst of this uncertainty, he holds fast to what...