Most Popular Books by Helen Dunmore

A brilliant, seat-of-your-pants hostage-taking and daring SAS rescue mission of the Iran Embassy in London in 1980, this is Ben Macintyre at the very height of his story-telling powers. On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Prince’s Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There, they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued—all on television, over a Bank Holiday weekend—in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod. This mission marked a fundamental turning point in global history, when Middle Eastern terrorism arrived in the West. Britain had experienced IRA terrorism before, but never an international terrorist incident on this scale. It was a precursor to the brutal Iran-Iraq War that would follow, in which millions perished. Yet there exists to this day no full account of the week-long siege and gripping rescue. Drawing on interviews with police, hostages, terrorists and key SAS figures, and cutting through the sensationalism and misinformation, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre (author of Sunday Times #1s Colditz, The Spy and the Traitor and SAS: Rogue Heroes) goes deep into the archives with exclusive access to tell the story of what really happened and give the first definitive account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS—and itself.

“An unconventional thriller [and] a page turner . . . As much a surprising love story as it is a tale of spies” (The New York Times Book Review). In 1960 London, the Cold War is at its height, and a spy may be a friend or neighbor, colleague or lover. Two colleagues, Giles Holloway and Simon Callington, face a terrible dilemma over a missing top-secret file. At the end of a suburban garden, in the pouring rain, Simon’s wife, Lily, buries a briefcase containing the file deep in the earth. She believes that in doing so she is protecting her family. What she will learn is that no one is immune from betrayal or the devastating consequences of exposure. “Dunmore’s strategy, placing a triangle of past and present loves within a spy novel, yields an unexpected dividend. Even the most ordinary elements of life—the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her children, meeting someone special, what remains unsaid within a marriage—become viscerally exciting.” —The New Yorker “Exposure is many things at once—an espionage thriller, a forbidden-love story, an immigrant’s tale . . . A novel you won’t be able to shake.” —Entertainment Weekly “One of those books that you read with your heart in your mouth, your mind fully engaged, and with a sense of desolation as you note the dwindling number of pages left before it comes to an end.” —Chicago Tribune

Sapphire lives in two worlds. On land she walks the rocky shores of the Cornwall coast—but under the sea she can swim like a seal by the side of her Mer friend Faro. Now both of Sapphy''s worlds are threatened. In the profound depths of the ocean, where the Mer cannot go, a monster called the Kraken is stirring. He has the power to sweep Ingo away and shake the land from its foundation. Because of her mixed blood, Sapphire can enter the Deep. With a great whale as her guide, she will journey to a place so far from the sun, no light can find it—and confront an evil that''s even darker.

In the heat of Rome''s long summer, the poet Catullus and his older married lover, Clodia Metelli, meet in secret. Living at the heart of sophisticated, brittle and brutal Roman society at the time of Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, Catullus is obsessed with Clodia, the Lesbia of his most passionate poems. He is jealous of her husband, of her maid, even of her pet sparrow. And Clodia? Catullus is ''her dear poet'', but possibly not her only interest . . . Catallus'' relationship with Clodia is one of the most intense, passionate, tormented and candid in history. In love and in hate, their story exposes the beauty and terrors of Roman life in the late Republic.

Catherine and her brother, Rob, don''t know why they have been abandoned by their parents. Incarcerated in the enormous country house of their grandfather, they create a refuge against their family''s dark secrets as the outside world moves towards the First World War. As time passes their sibling love deepens and crosses into forbidden territory.

A British World War I veteran returns to Cornwall in this “enthralling novel of love and devastating loss” from an Orange Prize winner (Good Housekeeping). Cornwall, 1920: Infantry officer Daniel Branwell has returned to his coastal hometown after the war. Unmoored and alone, Daniel spends his days in solitude, quietly working the land. However, all is not as it seems in the peaceful idylls of the countryside; and although he has left the trenches, Daniel cannot escape his dreadful past. As former friendships reignite, Daniel is drawn deeper and deeper into the tangled traumas of his youth and the memories of his best friend and his first love. Old wounds reopen, and old troubles resurface—though none so great as the lie that threatens to ruin Daniel’s life, the lie from which he cannot run. Told with breathtaking poise and exacting suspense, The Lie is a haunting journey through the mind of a tormented man as he tries to fit the pieces of his shattered past together. “Devastating and triumphant . . . wholly satisfying. Endings are often the hardest beast for an author to tame, but Dunmore does it, with elegance, vigor and clarity.” —The Denver Post

A sequel to the Whitbread Novel Award-nominated The Siege is set in the precarious world of Stalin''s 1952 Leningrad and follows a young doctor''s desperate effort to protect his family, which has been threatened if he fails to save the life of a secret police officer''s seriously ill son. Reprint.

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is a chilling tale by Helen Dunmore. ''It was nothing, she tells herself, but her body knows better.'' Florence lives in the country, lapped by miles and miles of darkness. She feels safe there - until a noise wakes her in the middle of the night. Protection is a short story by bestselling author Helen Dunmore that will cause your skin to prickle and make you ask yourself how far you would go to protect your family.

Revolutionary turmoil in France threatens to cross the English border—and tear apart an increasingly tense marriage—in this “brilliant” gothic thriller (Publishers Weekly, starred review). It is 1792, and Europe is seized by political unrest. In England, Lizzie Fawkes has grown up among Radicals who’ve followed the French Revolution with eager optimism. But Lizzie has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a developer who is heavily invested in Bristol’s housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. As the strain of financial setbacks and the secrets of his past converge upon him, his grip on what he considers his rightful property—including Lizzie—only grows tighter...From an Orange Prize winner and Whitbread Award finalist, this is a novel with a “charged radiance” (The New York Times) that explores romanticism and disillusionment, terror and love, and the dangerous lines between them. “Dunmore knows how to let a narrative move like an arrow in flight...A man rows from Bristol to a glade where he has left his dead wife overnight. He must bury her fast, where no one will find her. From the start, Birdcage Walk has the command of a thriller as we keep company with John Diner Tredevant, an 18th-century property developer building a magnificent terrace in Clifton, high above the Avon Gorge. Lizzie, his second wife, does not know the details of what happened to his first. Nor do we know as much as we might suppose...The novel’s cast is marvelous and vivid.”—The Guardian “Explores the impact of the French Revolution on 1790s England within the context of a gothic romance set in Bristol...[a] magnificently complex villain.”—Kirkus Reviews

A whisper on the tide Sapphire''s father mysteriously vanishes into the waves off the Cornwall coast where her family has always lived. She misses him terribly, and she longs to hear his spellbinding tales about the Mer, who live in the underwater kingdom of Ingo. Perhaps that is why she imagines herself being pulled like a magnet toward the sea. But when her brother, Conor, starts disappearing for hours on end, Sapphy starts to believe she might not be the only one who hears the call of the ocean. In a novel full of longing, mystery, and magic, Helen Dunmore takes us to a new world that has the power both to captivate and to destroy.

In a seaside town of sandy beaches and ocean breezes, Sapphy has never felt so far from the sea. The crowded shore at St. Pirans is nothing like the cove at Sapphy''s old home, where she first found her way into the underwater world of Ingo. But Ingo''s pull is strong, and it always finds a way. Soon Sapphy and her brother, Conor, are swimming beneath the waves again, riding the currents and teasing their Mer friend Faro. As Sapphy goes deeper into Ingo, she learns to feel more at home in the sea—even as she begins to be aware of its dangers. There''s the danger of going in too deep, and breaking the delicate balance between Sapphy''s life on land and her life in Ingo. There''s the mysterious disappearance of Sapphy''s father, an experienced sailor who should never have drowned. And then there''s Ingo itself—a restless power as old as the world, as strong as the tides, and more dangerous than anything Sapphy has ever known.

As they search for their missing father near their Cornwall home, Sapphy and her brother Conor learn about their family''s connection to the domains of air and of water.

Bestselling British author Helen Dunmore--novelist, poet, and first-ever winner of the Orange Prize for the year''s best fiction by a woman--delivers a "haunting . . . twisting, sensually written tale" ("The New York Times Book Review") of betrayal and fierce love. It is the story of Louise, a tough and introspective Londoner, trapped in a subtle battle between two brothers.

The crossing of Ingo is an ancient and dangerous coming-of-age ritual: a journey to the bottom of the world. Sapphy and Conor have been called to take part, the first of human blood ever to make an attempt. But Ervys and his followers are determined to stop them: dead or alive. Helen Dunmore builds her classic, much-loved series up to a breathtaking finale.

**FROM THE AUTHOR OF INSIDE THE WAVE, THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017** Rebecca was abandoned by her mother in a shoebox in the backyard of an Italian restaurant when she was two days old. Her life begins without history, in the dark outdoors. Who is she, where has she come from and what can she become? Thirty years later, married to Adam, she gives birth to Ruby, and to a new life for herself. But when sudden tragedy changed the course of that life for ever, and all the lives that touch hers, Rebecca is out in the world again, searching . . . Mourning Ruby explores identity and maternal ties and is bestselling author Helen Dunmore''s eighth novel. ''Moments that bring the reader to tears . . . a fascinating - often brilliant - novel'' The Times ''Bold and unusual . . . miraculously written, Dunmore''s drama of loss and regeneration pieces together shattered lives'' Daily Mail ''Emotionally restrained, beautifully observed'' Daily Telegraph Helen Dunmore has published eleven novels with Penguin: Zennor in Darkness , which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead ; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby; House of Orphan; Counting the Stars and The Betrayal, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. She is also a poet, children''s novelist and short-story writer.

Haunting, uplifting, beautiful- the final work from Helen Dunmore Helen Dunmorepassed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives- A girl alone, stretching her meagre budget to feed herself, becomes aware that the young man who has come to see her may not be as friendly as he seems. Two womenfrom very different backgrounds enjoy an unusual night out, finding solace in laughter and an unexpected friendship. A young manpicks up his infant son and goes outside into a starlit night as he makes a decision that will inform the rest of his life. A womanimprisoned for her religion examines her faith in a seemingly literal and quietly original way. This brilliant collection of Helen Dunmore''s short fiction, replete with her penetrating insight into the human condition, is certain to delight and move all her readers.

''House of Orphans'' is a spellbinding story of love and loneliness, of the differences between change and revolution, and of the terrorism that lurks everywhere in times of change, even in our private midst.

The love affair between a neglected wife and a mysterious soldier is “a perfect ghost story” from the acclaimed author of The Siege and The Betrayal (The Independent). In the winter of 1952, Isabel Carey moves to the East Riding of Yorkshire with her new husband, Philip, a doctor. While he spends long hours on call, Isabel finds herself lonely and vulnerable, trying to adjust to the realities of being a country housewife. One evening, Isabel is woken by intense cold. Hunting for extra blankets, she discovers an old Royal Air Force greatcoat hidden in the back of a cupboard. Sleeping under the coat for warmth, she starts to dream and is soon startled by a knock at her window—where a young RAF pilot stands outside, wearing that same coat. His powerful presence both disturbs and excites Isabel. And soon, their unexpected connection sparks an affair that will change them both irreparably. “Written in crisp, enthralling prose,” The Greatcoat is an atmospheric tale of love and war that blurs the line between the real and the imaginary (The New Yorker). “Dunmore’s gift, familiar from The Siege and The Betrayal, is to use a finely drawn domestic setting to show the great events of European history on a human scale. She doesn’t need ‘horror’ to spook her readers; our past is bad enough.” —The Guardian “The most elegant flesh-creeper since The Woman in Black.” —The Times (London) “The sense of déjà vu surrounding the story makes it all the more chilling . . . Tense and engaging.” —The New Yorker

This is a story of Simone, a judge with a husband on the brink of bankruptcy and breakdown. Simone struggles to shield her children from the chaos, then one day she receives a letter from someone she has tried to forget but who hasn''t forgotten her

''Tonight it is the concert. Two Prodigies of Nature are coming to play in my lady''s ball-room. As soon as the concert begins I understand why the whole world comes to stare and listen.'' Scipio is eleven years old and a lady''s page. He plays the harpsichord, speaks French and German, and sings in Italian. But what was appealing and remarkable in a small child is no longer so in a ''hobbledehoy''. And after he meets the two child prodigies, Wolfi and Nannerl, at a concert, Scipio''s fate will change forever.

One morning a woman wakes up and finds her body has disappeared. She tries revenge on her lovers, solitary celibacy, marriage and magic as she struggles to get it back. Another woman watches a clump of cells that will be her next baby swim towards her like a space-ship on an ultrasound scan. A third strips naked to bathe in the cold waters of Balnacarry. These powerful poems express the loneliness, comedy and pleasures of life in the body. They explore sexuality and the huge changes of pregnancy and age=ing. They ask what it is really like to think, feel and write ''with two hearts beating inside me''. Women have often been told they must choose between children and artistic creativity. Helen Dunmore challenges the falsity of that choice, as her fifth collection of poems appears at the same time as her new baby.

The ways in which the present longs for the past, questions it, tries to get in touch with it, and stretches the power of memory to its limits, are central to this new collection by Helen Dunmore. These are poems and stories of loss and extraordinary rediscovery.

Most of the country is unnatural. Even apparently wild places such as moors and commons were created by a complex chain of decisions: to fell trees, to graze animals, to drain land. Helen Dunmore''s The Raw Garden relates these changes wrought in the landscape through centuries of human intervention to the fascinating and sometimes terrifying state of change made possible by recent advances in genetic engineering. This book of closely linked poems celebrates a familiar world of landscape and human relationships, but at the same time it leads us to explore and question our own "sense of the natural".

In a collection of short works, a cafeteria cook confronts her pen pal, a boastful writer is put in his place, a future government ruthlessly controls conception, and a soulful woman remembers her past.

They stand by side on the rock, facing out to sea. They are hidden from land here. Even spies would see nothing of them. It is spring 1917 in the Cornish coastal village of Zennor, and the young artist Clare Coyne is waking up to the world. Ignoring the whispers from her neighbours, she has struck a rare friendship with D.H. Lawrence and his German wife, who are hoping to escape the war-fever of London. In between painting and visits to her new friends she whiles away the warm days with her cousin John, who is on leave from the trenches, harbouring secrets she couldn''t begin to understand. But as the heat picks up, so too do the fear and the gossip that haunt the village. And the freedom to love will come at a steep price. ______________________________________________ **Winner of the McKitterick Prize** ''Highly original and beautifully written'' Sunday Telegraph ''Electrifying . . . Helen Dunmore mesmerizes you with her magical pen'' Daily Mail ''Deceit gives Helen Dunmore''s novel a jagged edge. Secrets, unspoken words, lies that have the truth wrapped up in them somewhere make Dunmore''s stories ripples with menace and suspense'' Sunday Times ''We believe in Clare''s intelligence, talent and passion. A triumph'' Independent on Sunday

Talking to the Dead is bestselling author Helen Dunmore''s fourth novel. There''s nothing closer than sisters . . . Unloved by their distant mother, Isabel and Nina cemented their bond in childhood when tragedy struck the family. Many yeas later, with the difficult birth of Isabel''s first child, it is Nina who comes to stay and help out her older sister. But Nina has other, important reasons for being under her sister''s roof - not least of these is Isabel''s husband, Richard. The tragedy that drew two sisters together so many years ago still has the power to wrench them apart . . . ''A writer of quiet deadly power . . . it takes two paragraphs to hook you. Don''t resist'' Time Out ''Dunmore''s capacity for hauntingly psychological storytelling is on brilliant display'' Sunday Times ''Flies off the page, startling the reader with its brilliance'' Financial Times Helen Dunmore has published eleven novels with Penguin: Zennor in Darkness , which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby; House of Orphan; Counting the Stars and The Betrayal, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. She is also a poet, children''s novelist and short-story writer.

Despite her romantic dreams of travelling in exotic countries, Colette finds herself on holiday in a small coastal town with little to get excited about. But she soon finds that it''s not where you go, it''s the people you meet that really matters.

The Apple Fall is a remarkably assured first book of poems. It is a celebration of the lives of all kinds of women, from figures such as Virginia Woolf and Zelda Fitzgerald to the anonymous peace campaigners of Greenham Common. Helen Dunmore''s poems are concerned with that web of family which constricts or supports us: about becoming a mother and living closely with children; about the many facets of solitude. Helen Dunmore has a strong command of rhythm, and writes with fluency and sensitivity to achieve both precision and sensuousness. Her poems are fresh and direct, combining authority with lightness of touch - rare qualities in contemporary poetry. The Apple Fall is a book of poems with the widest appeal.

Tanya has gone from being an only child to having four brothers and sisters in one fell swoop. Quads are a nightmare. The house is full of dirty nappies, and her parents are so shattered that her dad falls asleep at work...Which doesn''t make his (ex) boss very happy. Tanya''s diary seems to be the only thing that''s listening to her any more...

Tara begins her visit with Gran unhappy and bored, but when the man in the apartment downstairs allows others in the building to use his garden, she not only has a place to play, she learns what it was like to be a child during World War II. Includes facts about evacuees and victory gardens.

This literacy programme for juniors offers fiction, poetry and non-fiction reading and writing materials for shared, guided and group reading and writing, and teaching materials. "Comets" should capture the imagination of more able pupils, and software integrates ICT with literacy teaching.

A short story by Helen Dunmore from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre.

In this companion novel to the Ingo series, myth and reality collide when Morveren, a young girl from a Cornish island, discovers a Mer boy, Malin, half-buried in the sand dunes. New conflicts erupt between the worlds of sea and air, and storm clouds of danger gather as Morveren and her twin sister, Jenna, struggle to protect Malin. An enthralling battle of loyalties begins when Morveren and Jenna learn that even your closest friends can betray you, and that a tragic reality lies beneath their island’s legends.

Cambridge Reading is a major reading scheme which provides stimulating books and support materials for the teaching of reading and the development of literacy throughout the primary years.