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From the two-time Man Booker Prize winner, a prescient and haunting novel of life in Saudi Arabia.Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, but when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, the expatriates are hard-drinking money-grubbers, and her Muslim neighbours are secretive, watchful. The streets are not a woman's territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begin to dissolve. She hears whispers, sounds of distress from the 'empty' flat above her head. She has only rumours, no facts to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.

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The long-awaited sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy.A Guardian Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the Year • A New Statesman Book of the Year • A Spectator Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020‘Mantel has taken us to the dark heart of history…and what a show’ The Times‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.Sunday Times Bestseller (08/03/2020)

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Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2012Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013Shortlisted for the the Orange Prize 2009Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2009Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, both winners of The Man Booker Prize, in 2009 and 2012 respectively, are the first two instalments in Hilary Mantel’s Tudor trilogy. They have gathered readers and praise in equal and enormous measure. They have been credited with elevating historical fiction to new heights and animating a period of history many thought too well known to be made fresh.Through the eyes and ears of Thomas Cromwell, the books’ narrative prism, we are shown Tudor England, the court of King Henry VIII. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events.In Wolf Hall we witness Cromwell’s rise, beginning as clerk to Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. He is soon to become his successor. By 1535, when the action of Bring Up the Bodies begins, Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife. Anne’s days, though, are marked. Cromwell watches as the king falls in love with silent, plain Jane Seymour, sensing what Henry’s affection will mean for his queen, for England, and for himself.

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A new story from Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher and twice winner of the Man Booker Prize.This story is also available in the paperback and eBook edition of The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.‘Lastly,’ Mr Maddox said, ‘and to conclude our tour, we come to a very special part of the house.’ He paused, to impress on her that she was going to have a treat. ‘Perhaps, Miss Marcella, it may be that in your last situation, the house did not have a panic room?’‘The School of English’ invites us behind the stucco façade of a Notting Hill mansion where fear and cruelty grip a household.

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An unforgettable, unnerving short story about a writer’s life from one of today’s greatest writers – extracted from her upcoming collection, THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER.“One summer at the fag-end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I’d agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you think the time will never arrive …”‘How Shall I Know You’ is as unsettling and hauntingly written as we have come to expect from Hilary Mantel, one of Britain’s most accomplished, acclaimed and garlanded writers. It invites us into the usually hidden recesses of a writer’s life, into her hotel rooms, handbags, frustrations, desires, and darkest imaginings.This story is also available in the collection ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’.

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A new, revised edition for the London transfer of Mike Poulton’s expertly adapted two-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s hugely acclaimed novels, featuring a substantial set of character notes by Hilary Mantel.Mike Poulton’s ‘expertly adapted’ (Evening Standard) two-part ad adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies is a ‘gripping piece of narrative theatre … history made manifest’ (Guardian). The plays were premiered to great acclaim by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2013, before transferring to the Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End in May 2014.Wolf Hall begins in England in 1527. Henry has been King for almost twenty years and is desperate for a male heir; but Cardinal Wolsey is unable to deliver the divorce he craves. Yet for a man with the right talents this crisis could be an opportunity. Thomas Cromwell is a commoner who has risen in Wolsey’s household – and he will stop at nothing to secure the King’s desires and advance his own ambitions.In Bring Up the Bodies, the volatile Anne Boleyn is now Queen, her career seemingly entwined with that of Cromwell. But when the King begins to fall in love with self-effacing Jane Seymour, the ever-pragmatic Cromwell must negotiate within an increasingly perilous Court to satisfy Henry, defend the nation and, above all, to secure his own rise in the world.Hilary Mantel’s novels are the most formidable literary achievements of recent times, both recipients of the Man Booker Prize. This volume contains both plays and a substantial set of notes by Hilary Mantel on each of the principal characters, offering a unique insight into the adaptations and an invaluable resource to any theatre companies wishing to stage them.

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Our greatest living writer.Six of her best novels.Hilary Mantel is the first British writer to win two Man Booker Prizes. This set brings together six of her greatest novels – the first two books in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, the record-setting Man Booker prize-winners ‘Wolf Hall’ and ‘Bring Up the Bodies’.’ A Place of Greater Safety’ is an epic of Revolutionary France. The darkly comic ‘Beyond Black’ is a lively tale of a psychic and the impish spirits she summons. ‘The Giant, O’Brien’ tells the story of the legendary Charles Byrne and the surgeon who wanted his bones. And a family seeks refuge after an unfortunate African sojourn in ‘A Change of Climate’.For fans of the best literature eager to discover one of our greatest writers, this collection is essential reading.

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From the two-time Man Booker Prize winner author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light, a prescient and haunting novel of life in Saudi Arabia.Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, but when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, the expatriates are hard-drinking money-grubbers, and her Muslim neighbours are secretive, watchful. The streets are not a woman's territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begin to dissolve. She hears whispers, sounds of distress from the 'empty' flat above her head. She has only rumours, no facts to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.

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A companion piece to the captivating memoir GIVING UP THE GHOST by the Man Booker-winning author, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.This sharp, funny collection of stories drawn from life begins in the 1950s in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.' For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out.In 'King Billy is a Gentleman', the child must come to terms with the loss of a father and the puzzle of a fading Irish heritage. 'Curved Is the Line of Beauty' is a story of friendship, faith and a near-disaster in a scrap-yard. The title story sees our narrator ironing out her northern vowels with the help of an ex-actress with one lung and a Manchester accent. In 'Third Floor Rising', she watches, dazzled, as her mother carves out a stylish new identity.With a deceptively light touch, Mantel locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood.

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From the twice Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & The Light a collection of three novels: A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black and The Giant, O’Brien.A Place of Greater Safety is a spellbinding, epic historical novel which recounts the stirring but blood-thirsty events of the French Revolution, as seen through the eyes of the Revolution’s three protagonists – Georges-Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille DesmoulinsIn The Giant, O’Brien, Charles O’Brien, bard and giant, is led from Ireland to seek his fortune beyond the seas in England. The cynical are moved by his flights of romance; the craven stirred by his tales of epic deeds. But in London is famed surgeon, John Hunter, who buys dead men from the gallows and babies’ corpses by the inch – and he wants the Giant’s bones.In Beyond Black we meet Alison Hart – medium by trade. With her flat-eyed, flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, she tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital road, passing on messages from dead ancestors. But Alison's ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift and behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman.

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