Search Results

Two women, Chloe Dale, an artist comfortably ensconced in bucolic suburbia, and Salome Drago, a wily, seductive refugee from a country that no longer exists, confront each other in a Manhattan restaurant, and the battle lines are drawn. Toby Dale, son of the artist and ardent suitor of the refugee, ... More

From the bestselling author of Mary Reilly and the internationally acclaimed Property, a brilliant collection featuring Valerie Martin's finest short stories to date. For four decades Valerie Martin has been publishing novels and stories that demonstrate her incredible range as a writer, moving ... More

<P>Valerie Martin's Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery's venomous effects on the owner and the owned. <P>The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion ... More

Toby and Salome are a young, modern couple living in New York, but their backgrounds are world apart. He is a middle-class all-American boy from a family of academics; she is a Croatian refugee raised in New Orleans. When Salome unexpectedly becomes pregnant, they decide to spend their lives togethe... More

nspired by the great frescoes of St Francis of Assisi, the highly-praised author of ITALIAN FEVER has written a new and wholly original biography. Composed in a series of vividly realised 'panels', SALVATION begins with the dying Francesco - and the rivalry for his body among the towns of medieval ... More

In the six stories that make up The Unfinished Novel, Valerie Martin turns an unflinching eye upon artists - driven and blocked, desired and detested, infamous and sublime, as they struggle beneath the tyranny of Art to reconcile their audience with their muse. A painter who owes his small success ... More

A captivating, atmospheric return to historical fiction that is every bit as convincing and engrossing as Martin's landmark Mary Reilly. In 1872 the American merchant vessel Mary Celeste was discovered adrift off the coast of Spain. Her cargo was intact and there was no sign of struggle, but the ... More

"Acutely observed...charmingly old-fashioned."--Los Angeles TimesIn Italian Fever, Valerie Martin redefines the Gothic novel in a compelling tale of one woman's headlong tumble into a mystery, art, and eros.Part romance, part gothic suspense story and wholly entertaining, Italian Fever is the story ... More

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2003Manon Gaudet is unhappily married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle of her native New Orleans, but most of all, she longs to be free of the suffocating domestic situation. The tension re... More

From the ORANGE PRIZE-winning author, an enthralling novel about an enduring mystery, an infamous mystic and Arthur Conan Doyle.... More

Prize-winning author's new collection of stories of art and torn emotions.In the six stories that make up The Unfinished Novel, Valerie Martin turns an unflinching eye upon artists - driven and blocked, desired and detested, infamous and sublime, as they struggle beneath the tyranny of Art to reconc... More

From the Orange Prize-winning author of PROPERTY, with a tale of sex, betrayal and the wilder side of human nature.Every woman holds the power to enchant or to destroy. In New Orleans, three women from completely different backgrounds face a turning point in their lives. Ellen, a vet at a New Orlean... More

From the Orange Prize-winning author of Property, the story of a woman on the run from sexual obsession'An impressive writer...I admire her straightforward style and the intelligence and strength of her heroine' Ann TylerHelene is a woman constantly on the run. A social worker, she spends her days t... More

A chilling tale of murder and passion deep in the bayou from the Orange Prize-winning author of Property.Claude is a middle-aged man unwillingly attached to Mona, a woman obsessed with marriage and respectability. Then one night he meets the exotic Alexandra - regal, tall and spare, skittish and pow... More

From the Orange Prize-winning author of Property and Italian FeverSet in New Orleans, this is a novel about a love triangle. Married mother, Emma Miller, is bored with her husband, her job and her life so she begins a passionate, often violent, affair with Pascal Toussaint, a sadist with whom she be... More

'An absolute joy to read...a novel that is part love story, part ghost story, and a wholly enjoyable and intelligent summer read' Amanda Craig, New StatesmanThirtysomething New Yorker Lucy Stark leads a quiet, solitary life working for a bestselling - but remarkably untalented - writer. When he dies... More

A timeless story of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscan countryside from bestselling novelist Valerie Martin.When Jan, an American academic, rents an apartment in a Tuscan villa for the summer, she plans to spend her break writing a biography of Mussoli... More

Orange-Prize winner Valerie Martin returns with a powerful novel about love, sex and the perils of playing a role too well.In the seamy theatre world of 1970s New York, where rents are cheap and love is free, aspiring actor Edward Day joins his friends for a summer weekend on the New Jersey Shore. B... More

Toby and Salome are a young, modern couple living in New York, but their backgrounds are world apart. He is a middle-class all-American boy from a family of academics; she is a Croatian refugee raised in New Orleans.When Salome unexpectedly becomes pregnant, they decide to spend their lives together... More

nspired by the great frescoes of St Francis of Assisi, the highly-praised author of ITALIAN FEVER has written a new and wholly original biography. Composed in a series of vividly realised 'panels', SALVATION begins with the dying Francesco - and the rivalry for his body among the towns of medieval ... More

Acclaimed author Valerie Martin returns with a dark comedy about love, sex, an actor's ambition, and the perils of playing a role too well. In this fictional memoir, Valerie Martin brilliantly re-creates the seamy theater world of 1970s New York, when rents were cheap, love was free, and nudity on s... More

From the book jacket: "It wasn't the first time I'd been shut up in the closet, if closet isn't too grand a word for the little cupboard under the stairs." So begins the diary of Mary, a Victorian maid-of-all-work in the employ of one Dr. Jekyll. Mary Reilly has escaped the dark back streets of he... More

Three surprising women, their lives riven by divorce both literal and metaphorical: Ellen Clayton, reeling from her husband's decision to leave her after twenty years, finds meaning in caring for her teenage daughters and in her work as the veterinarian at the New Orleans Zoo. Her young assistant Ca... More

A swashbuckling story of two very different cat brothers and their adventures at sea. Anton and Cecil are as different as port and starboard. Cecil, stocky and black with white patches, thirsts for seafaring adventure. Slim, gray Anton prefers listening to the sailors’ shanties at the town saloon. O... More

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.Mrs Lippincote's house, with its mahogany furniture and yellowing photographs, stands as a reminder of all the certainties that have vanished with the advent of war. Temporarily, this is home for Julia, who has joined her husband Roddy at the behest of the RAF. Altho... More