Amanda Craig

At eighteen, Emma Kenward runs away from her dull Sloane home to try her luck as a painter in Tuscany. Waspish, idealistic, and far too clever for her own good, she is at the awkward age when women choose their futures—and their identities. Once in Italy, Emma blossoms and is taken up by a mixture of characters, including the local...

Thirty-nine, divorced, jobless: Benedick Hunter is going nowhere, heading in the exact opposite direction he expected. So when he comes across a children's book that his mother, Laura, wrote, he decides that her life and work—haunting stories replete with sinister woods, wicked witches, and brave girls who battle giants—hold the key to finding out why his own life is such...

'A brilliant piece of storytelling that revels in the world of expat old ladies in Tuscany, and should be the book that everybody's reading this summer' — Andrew O'Hagan 'In the Tuscan hilltop village of Santorno, the setting for Amanda Craig's entertaining and bracing new novel, the Three Graces of her title are preparing for a spring wedding. Adorning this...

In the worst day of the year, and on the twelfth day of Christmas, a group of people come under siege in Cross St, North London. A gang is hunting for a child who has been drawn into crime with tragic results; there is a riot outside the church where asylum seekers have been sleeping, and many cities have descended...

'A highly enjoyable story about female resilience... with a twist that is all the more compelling for its unexpectedness' Sunday Times 'She's such a skilful storyteller, who vividly dramatizes our lives with wit, wisdom and compassion' Bernardine Evaristo 'Amanda Craig anatomises the state of the nation with wit and empathy' Jonathan Coe 'An irresistible summer read' Guardian A typically sharp...

This gripping, moving and hilarious novel introduces seven characters, each of whom has a profound effect on each other's lives. Each must choose between probity and self-interest in love and work. Some compromise themselves completely; others oscillate between vice and virtue. Others are redeemed by twists of fate. For in a vicious circle, nothing is certain except change. For five...

A Private Place is set at Knotshead, a school catering to the children of the rich, famous, liberal, and deluded. With its progressive curriculum, complacent staff, and beautiful grounds, it looks like Paradise. However, the clever, the odd, and the bookish are relentlessly persecuted as pupils make their own rules in a bubble of privilege and prejudice. When Alice, the...

Rich or poor, five people, seemingly very different, find their lives in the capital connected in undreamed-of ways. There is Job, the illegal mini-cab driver whose wife in Zimbabwe no longer answers his letters; Ian, the idealistic supply teacher in exile from South Africa; Katie from New York, jilted and miserable as a dogsbody at a political magazine, and fifteen-year-old...

When Polly and Theo Noble book the Casa Luna, near Cortona, for their summer holiday, they plan a civilised Anglo-American house-party with Theo's brother Daniel, Daniel's girlfriend Ellen, and Polly's old schoolfriend Hemani in an idyllic Tuscan setting. Their children Tania and Robbie will have Hemani's son, Bron, to play with, and Theo's mother, Betty, is expected to keep her...

'A very good read indeed' - MATT HAIG 'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' - INDIA KNIGHT 'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' - SARAH PERRY 'One of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists' - ALISON LURIE The Lie of the Land follows Quentin and Lottie Bredin, a modern couple unable to afford a divorce. Having lost their...