Most Popular Books by William Boyd

Sally Gilmartin can’t escape her past. Living in the idyllic English countryside in 1976, Sally is haunted by her experiences during the Second World War. She also suspects someone is trying to kill her. With mounting fear, Sally confides with her daughter Ruth; a woman struggling with her own past. Sally drops a bombshell. She is actually Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré recruited as a spy by the British prior to the Second World War. For the past thirty years, Eva has led a second life hiding from the ghosts of her past. Eva reveals her secret to her daughter through a series of written chapters for a planned book. As Ruth delves into her mother’s writing, she learns the shocking truth. Eva was recruited in Paris prior to the Second World War, following the death of her brother Kolia; also a British spy. Taught by an enigmatic spymaster named Lucas Romer, Eva learned the art of espionage and was made part of a unit specializing in media manipulation. Above all, she was taught ‘Rule Number One’ of spying: trust no one — a rule broken when she and Romer began a dangerous love affair. The affair had tragic consequences. In 1941, Eva and Romer were assigned to the United States. They were given the task of manipulating the American media into motivating the public to support entry into the war on the Allied side. While in New York, Eva’s affair with Romer set in motion events that culminated in her betrayal and her flight from the British Secret Services. She found eventual refuge in a new life as Sally Gilmartin. Thirty years later, Eva’s identity unravels with her confession to her daughter. Ruth struggles with the truth, and her own recent past fills her with self-doubt and insecurity. A failed relationship in Germany resulted in a son and an eventual return to England. Her mother’s confession leads Ruth to the realization that her mother is entangling her in one final mission — a showdown with Eva’s past betrayer. Restless twists and turns through the double life of one remarkable woman. Through Eva’s life, William Boyd asks the intriguing question — How well do we truly know someone?

From the award-winning, internationally best-selling author, a beguiling romp of a novel, at once intimate and panoramic, about the adventures and misadventures of a nineteenth-century everyman "Picaresque, big-hearted and moving, this is Boyd at the top of his game." —The Guardian One man, many lives . . . Cashel Greville Ross experiences more of everything than most, from the rapturous to the devastating, from surprising good luck to unexpected loss. Born in 1799, Cashel seeks his fortune across the turbulence of multiple continents, from County Cork to rural Massachusetts, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, embedded with the East Indian Army in Sri Lanka, sunning himself alongside the Romantic poets in Pisa. He travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, even a father. And he experiences all the vicissitudes of existence, including a once-in-a-lifetime love that will haunt the rest of his days. In the end, his great accomplishment is to discover who he truly is—which is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.

William Boyd’s masterful new novel tells, in a series of intimate journals, the story of Logan Mountstuart—writer, lover, art dealer, spy—as he makes his often precarious way through the twentieth century.

A social satire on Britain, featuring an insurance claims adjustor who descends from East European gypsies. He navigates the shoals of class with an invented past, matching wits with executives trying to diddle his company.

In the small African republic of Kinjanja, British diplomat Morgan Leafy bumbles heavily through his job. His love of women, his fondness for drink, and his loathing for the country prove formidable obstacles on his road to any kind of success. But when he becomes an operative in Operation Kingpin and is charged with monitoring the front runner in Kinjanja’s national elections, Morgan senses an opportunity to achieve real professional recognition and, more importantly, reassignment. After he finds himself being blackmailed, diagnosed with a venereal disease, attempting bribery, and confounded with a dead body, Morgan realizes that very little is going according to plan.

***William Boyd''s new novel, The Romantic, is available to pre-order now*** ''Brilliant. A Citizen Kane of a novel'' Daily Telegraph __________________________________ Meet John James Todd: Scotsman, auteur, Rousseau-fanatic - and ''subversive element'' Born in 1899, John James Todd is one of the great, failed geniuses of the last century. His reminiscences, collected in The New Confessions, take us from Edinburgh to the Western Front, the Berlin film-world in the Twenties to Hollywood in the Thirties, Forties and beyond. Suffering imprisonment, shooting, marriage, fatherhood, divorce and McCarthyism, Todd is a hostage to good fortune, ill-judgement, bad luck, the vast sweep of history and the cruel, cruel hand of fate . . . __________________________________ ''A magnificent feat of storytelling and panoramic reconstruction'' Observer ''Paced and plotted with sinewy, unfailing skill . . . Boyd has given us a work of rich, ripe and immensely enjoyable entertainment'' Sunday Times ''Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation'' Independent

***William Boyd''s new novel, The Romantic, is available to pre-order now*** ''One of the comic masterpieces'' Daily Telegraph ______________________________________ Henderson Dores is an Englishman in New York - and completely out of his depth. He should be concentrating on his job as an art assessor, but his complicated personal life keeps intruding. And that''s before we even get to his sense of alienation, of being a fish out of water. For Henderson is a shy man lost in a country of extraverts and weirdos. Subway poets, loony millionaires, Bible-bashers and sharp-suited hoods stalk him wherever he goes. But it is only when he''s sent to America''s deep South to examine a rare collection of paintings that matters take a life-threatening turn. Still, if it doesn''t kill you, they say it can only make you stronger . . . ______________________________________ ''Boyd''s humour, timed to a tee, always raps out the truth'' Mail on Sunday ''Extremely funny. Boyd does not pass up a single comic turn'' Sunday Telegraph ''Splittlingly shrewd and engaging'' Guardian ''The wry laughter never stops . . . the shrewdest pages yet from a master of witty manipulation'' Observer

It''s 1969, and, having just celebrated his forty-fifth birthday, James Bond--British special agent 007--is summoned to headquarters to receive an unusual assignment. Zanzarim, a troubled West African nation, is being ravaged by a bitter civil war, and M directs Bond to quash the rebels threatening the established regime. Moving from rebel battlefields in West Africa to the closed doors of intelligence offices in London and Washington, this novel is at once a gripping thriller, a tensely plotted story, and a masterful study of power and how it is wielded--a brilliant addition to the James Bond canon. ''A formidable literary achievement... It succeeds wonderfully.'' DAILY MAIL ''A terrific twisting thriller... A tremendous Bond story.'' SUNDAY TIMES

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERVienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, sits in the waiting room of the city''s preeminent psychiatrist as he anxiously ponders the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis. When the enigmatic, intensely beautiful Hettie Bull walks in, Lysander is immediately drawn to her, unaware of how destructive the consequences of their subsequent affair will be. One year later, home in London, Lysander finds himself entangled in the dangerous web of wartime intelligence - a world of sex, scandal and spies that is slowly, steadily, permeating every corner of his life...

In his first collection of stories, William Boyd, winner of the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards, introduces unlikely heroes desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives.From California poolsides to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, here is a world populated by weary souls who turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life''s inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a young stewardess with stories of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence in "The Coup". In the title story, an arrogant, sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimates the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. With droll humor and rare compassion, Boyd''s enthralling stories remind us of his stature as one of contemporary fiction''s finest storytellers. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

William Boyd Chisum is an accomplished musician, singer, songwriter and author. His first book ""Chasing the Wind,"" an autobiography, was published by Morgan James Publishing in 2006. In 2007, Boyd received both the Grammy and Dove Award Nominations for his song, ""He Still Moves the Stone."" There are few people more qualified to write a children''s book explaining God''s grace than William Boyd Chisum. A life time of surgery, over sixty orthopedic procedures, his sixteen years in and out of Children''s hospitals, has given Boyd a keen insight into the meaning and application of God''s ""Grace"" to our daily lives. Coloss 3: 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

In the heart of a civil war–torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man. . . . Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelties of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science, and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.

When he is hired as the personal piano tuner for a brilliant pianist, Brodie Moncur suddenly finds himself swept up into a life of luxury that he could never have imagined. But while accompanying his new employer on tours from Paris to St. Petersburg, Brodie falls madly in love with the Russian soprano Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive—and forbidden. Though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie’s passion for Lika only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive, and, finally, more dangerous. A tale of dizzying passion and brutal revenge; of artistic endeavor and the illusions it can create; of the possibilities that life offers and the cruel speed with which they can be snatched away, Love Is Blind is a dazzling work of historical fiction that unfolds across fin de siècle Europe.

"A perfect-pitch story of love and redemption" (The New York Times), Boyd''s atmospheric new novel confirms his reputation as heir to the grand narrative traditions of Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham. In 1936 Los angeles, as her long-estranged father tells architect Kay Fischer the story behind her secret parentage, he plunges readers into a tale of grisly murders and an illicit passion that still obsseses him 30 years later.

It’s summer 1968, and the world is reeling from war and assassinations, protests and riots. In a sunny British seaside town, a producer, a novelist, and an actress are enduring their own more private crises on the set of a disaster-plagued movie. All are leading secret lives—one is in the closet; another is an alcoholic; and the third is sleeping with her costar—and as the shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable. Pressures build inexorably—and that’s before the FBI and CIA get involved. Someone is going to crack—or maybe they all will. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Trio is an enthralling novel that asks the vital questions: What makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn’t?

The first play by bestselling author William Boyd, Longing adapts two of Chekhov''s short stories to weave a comic tale, at once exotic and familiar.

“William Boyd seems singularly blessed with both an innate love of storytelling and the talent to render those stories in swift, confident prose.” —The New York Times From William Boyd, award-winning author of Brazzaville Beach and Restless, comes a stunning literary mystery about crime and punishment: Ordinary Thunderstorms. One of the most accomplished writers of our time, Boyd has written a profound and gripping novel about the fragility of social identity, the corruption at the heart of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.

That''s why we shout and scream at each other. Clears the air. A kind of truth begins to emerge. We see clearer. Pip and Meredith have had a bust-up. It was only about their opinion of a film, but it''s led to more significant differences coming to light. Pip has been having an affair for the past three months with a young colleague at work. Meredith''s slate doesn''t seem to be entirely clean either. As their families and friends become embroiled in Pip and Meredith''s separation, past prejudices, harsh judgements and painful truths come to light. The arguments that ensue go beyond just being about Pip and Meredith, and what they should do about their marriage. In nine taut scenes, William Boyd explores what it is to argue with those we love - and those we should love. He looks at our propensity to judge others and our power to hurt. Alongside this, he shows how it can sometimes be the superficial problems in a relationship that keep it going. Both bleak and funny in its tone, The Argument offers a Strindberg-like take on human dynamics and received its world premiere at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs in March 2016.

One of the most beguiling storytellers on either side of the Atlantic delivers a luminous new collection whose 14 stories are a series of variations on the theme of love–and its shady cousin lust. A film director’s journal becomes an unintended chronicle of his deepening and ruinous obsession with a leading lady (“Notebook No. 9”). While flying business class, a well-behaved English architect feels the chill onset of an otherworldly visitation that will shatter his family and career (“A Haunting”). An unhappy young boy, neglected by both his father and adulterous mother, finds an unexpected friend in an elderly painter (“Varengeville”). Wise, unsettling, humane, and endlessly surprising, Fascination lives up to its title on every page, while confirming William Boyd’s stature as a writer of incandescent talent.

''One of Britain''s most celebrated contemporary novelists'' Sunday Times In this probing series of exclusive interviews, Alistair Owen talks to William Boyd about his works and the life which has inspired them. The conversations which emerge are a deep-dive into film, art, theatre, literature and the life of a writer. This is one of Britain''s most beloved authors on what it is to write in a variety of forms. ''William Boyd has probably written more classic books than any of his contemporaries'' Daily Telegraph ''Arguably one of Britain''s finest living writers'' Sunday Express

This new collection of stories is William Boyd''s second, appearing some fourteen years after his first, On the Yankee Station. Once again the stories range widely across the time and space of the twentieth century. ''The Destiny of Nathalie "X" ''is a modern fable about Hollywood; ''Cork'' tells of a bizarre love affair between an Englishwoman and a Portuguese poet in 19305 Lisbon; Transfigured Night'' is set in Vienna during the First World War and is concerned with the problematic relationship between a wealthy patron (who bears a curious resemblance to Ludwig Wittgenstein) and his indifferent benefactor. Fantasy and farce, rueful longing and the bitter acknowledgement of life''s relentless ironies all feature in these nine stories by one of our most celebrated and imaginative writers.

I’ll Run With You is designed to encourage the reader, that regardless the struggles that they may be going through, that strength can be found. It does this through the real life stories of individuals who while on earth, have struggled physically and although they may limp up to the gates of heaven, they will run on the other side.

This new collection of eleven stories by the author of The Blue Afternoon takes readers back in time from a contemporary Hollywood film shoot to World War I in Vienna, introducing an unforgettable cast of characters. Artful, witty, moving, The Destiny of Nathalie X is a confirmation of Boyd''s standing as a master storyteller. 208 pp. Author tour. 15,000 print.

An omnibus collection of dazzling short stories by the acclaimed author of Restless, William Boyd.

Born into Edwardian England, Amory''s first memory is of her father standing on his head. She has memories of him returning on leave during the First World War. But his absences, both actual and emotional, are what she chiefly remembers. It is her photographer uncle Greville who supplies the emotional bond she needs, who, when he gives her a camera and some rudimentary lessons in photography, unleashes a passion that will irrevocably shape her future.A spell at boarding school ends abruptly and Amory begins an apprenticeship with Greville in London, photographing socialites for the magazine Beau Monde. But Amory is hungry for more and her search for life, love, and artistic expression will take her to thedemi monde of Berlin of the late ''20s, to New York of the ''30s, to the blackshirt riots in London, and to France in the Second World War where she becomes one of the first women war photographers. Her desire for experience will lead Amory to further wars, to lovers, husbands, and children as she continues to pursue her dreams and battle her demons. In this enthralling story of a life fully lived, illustrated with “found” period photographs, William Boyd has created a sweeping panorama of some of the most defining moments of modern history, told through the camera lens of one unforgettable woman, Amory Clay. It is his greatest achievement to date.