Bloomsbury Reader imprint: 830 books

First published in 1953, A Place To Stand is set in Budapest in the spring of 1941, Hope - a spoilt but attractive society girl and daughter of a leading American business man - finds herself playing the lead in a dangerous and most unexpected affair of underground intrigue, through the machinations...

Author of best-selling novel Peking Picnic, Ann Bridge brings us her second novel set amongst the diplomatic circle of Peking. First published in 1934, The Ginger Griffin tells the story of a young English woman who comes to Peking to live with her diplomatic uncle, on a quest to get over an unhappy...

Fleeing from her failed marriage, Rose Pelham seeks sanctuary in Peking, China, with her cousins, Anastasia and Antony Lydiard. The romantic attentions of Captain Hargreaves are a welcome distraction from her woes, but in the society of Anglicised 1920's Peking, it is hard for such relationships not...

In this collection of stories, Bill Naughton portrays a selection of characters, including truck drivers, Irish itinerants and lamp lighters, in his inimitable pithy style. While each tale can be enjoyed on its own, together they provide a wonderful picture of post-war and a bygone era. With descriptions...

First published in 1978, Snakes and Ladders is volume two of Dirk Bogarde's best-selling memoirs Snakes and Ladders follows Bogarde from the challenges of his army training camp at Catterick, through the horrors of war, to his glittering – if often trying – film career. We see the thoughtful...

On Friday next, pub owner Jack Steadman would hang for the murder of Alfie Goode, drunkard and ne'er-do-well. The case was open-and-shut to everyone but Miss Harriet Unwin, who had less than a week to prove that Jack, a Crimean war hero, was innocent. Her snooping soon took her to the ballroom of...

Following a late-night call during a power cut, Dr. John Cadman came upon a dead man - stabbed only minutes earlier - in an otherwise deserted house. Before he left, the doctor was disturbingly aware that his own family was involved in some strange way. Later, he recalled where he had previously seen...

Gerald, a young man on the up-and-up with a good job and stylish friends, is doing rather well, even if he does say so himself. Newly married to the young and beautiful Alice, installed in their very own home in the heart of suburbia, there seems little more a man could hope for. Unfortunately, the...

First published in 1984, this is the tale of a child of the slums, a murderer's widow, and a convicted prostitute. The tale of Mary Waterhouse who rises from her sordid beginnings in London's underworld to become the wife of a liberal politician - with a shocking secret of his own.

After a series of tragedies, young Linda Lovelace finds herself more or less on her own. Fortunately she has her job at a draper's shop and there meets Nelly Sweet. When Nelly takes her to a dance she meets Nelly takes her to a dance she meets Nelly's friend Bill Sargent and the man known as the Black...

Set in the early 50s in the aftermath of the war, The Bat that Flits tells the story of James Hudson, a research assistant in bacteriological warfare.On arriving in Bodmin to start work at the Government centre based deep in the moors, Hudson finds a suspicious note placed on his pillow. Setting out...

A man is murdered outside a gambling club in London's West End after a journalist who had dallied to take a last drink has tried to stop a frightened girl from making a 'phone call. The journalist is kidnapped by a naked female croupier who is handling a gun instead of a roulette wheel. He comes to...

First published in 2000, this is a tale of Mrs. Feathers, who, taking a liking to her granddaughter, Patience, changes her will, leaving her fortune to the girl. Then Mrs. Feathers is found poisoned, and it seems that only one person has a financial motive. Fifty years later, the mystery remains unsolved.

Hidden Gods: The Doorway is a metaphysical thriller in which two journalists, in an attempt to discover who or what is really behind the chaos in the Middle East, spin back through time to discover the secret codes of Atlantis. Their search for the grail begins with a night in the King's Chamber of...