Udayan Prasad

Sicilian-born Maddalena has moved to a Devonshire village in England to escape volatile sexual tempers. She marries, but the lust she inspires in the villagers makes them drop dead. Maddalena has a devastating effect on nearly every man she meets – sometimes with unfortunate fatal results for those concerned. Everywhere she goes, Maddalena leaves a trail of bodies behind her.

A road trip through Louisiana transforms three strangers who were originally brought together by their respective feelings of loneliness.

In 1916 author Marcel Proust is leading a reclusive life in Paris. He hires a quartet of musicians and befriends one of them, a wounded serviceman.

A modern day treasure hunt for a mystical relic that turns into a love story for all time.

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960's to work, to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him. A skilled laborer, he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool. He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men, under the supervision of Hussein Shah. He befriends a young student, Sakib, who dreams of being a writer. Their existence is punctuated by secret movies, a visiting prostitute, fear of detection and deportation, and the gangster-like smuggler who comes by for his take every week. The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl, Shah's girlfriend, and the sense of femininity and family she brings.

Wilfred is, we discover over time, a reformed paedophile living under a false identity and working as a much-praised maintenance man in a public park. However, as a superior begins to pressure him for bureaucratic historical information to include in his personnel file, the pressure causes Wilfred to resume his old ways with horrifying results. Incarcerated, he contemplates his condition, remarking 'It's the one part of my life that feels right - and that's the bit that's wrong.'

Sicilian-born Maddalena has moved to a Devonshire village in England to escape volatile sexual tempers. She marries, but the lust she inspires in the villagers makes them drop dead. Maddalena has a devastating effect on nearly every man she meets – sometimes with unfortunate fatal results for those concerned. Everywhere she goes, Maddalena leaves a trail of bodies behind her.

A road trip through Louisiana transforms three strangers who were originally brought together by their respective feelings of loneliness.

In 1916 author Marcel Proust is leading a reclusive life in Paris. He hires a quartet of musicians and befriends one of them, a wounded serviceman.

A modern day treasure hunt for a mystical relic that turns into a love story for all time.

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960's to work, to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him. A skilled laborer, he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool. He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men, under the supervision of Hussein Shah. He befriends a young student, Sakib, who dreams of being a writer. Their existence is punctuated by secret movies, a visiting prostitute, fear of detection and deportation, and the gangster-like smuggler who comes by for his take every week. The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl, Shah's girlfriend, and the sense of femininity and family she brings.

Wilfred is, we discover over time, a reformed paedophile living under a false identity and working as a much-praised maintenance man in a public park. However, as a superior begins to pressure him for bureaucratic historical information to include in his personnel file, the pressure causes Wilfred to resume his old ways with horrifying results. Incarcerated, he contemplates his condition, remarking 'It's the one part of my life that feels right - and that's the bit that's wrong.'

Pakistani taxi-driver Parvez and prostitute Bettina find themselves trapped in the middle when Islamic fundamentalists decide to clean up their local town.

Freelance journalist David Dunhill stumbles onto the biggest story of his career - but his personal eccentricities seem likely to thwart him.

A young boy believes he can save his dying father if he can become an angel.

When plucky Corporal Pru Merriman reports to her superiors Monk and Bob for driving duty, she finds herself catapulted into the murky world of the French Resistance.

Television interviewer George Grant, renowned for his ability to get at the truth, is at the peak of his career. But when he receives a message at his office that his wife needs to see him urgently - a matter of life and death - his life is irreversibly altered. And so the frantic search begins for George Grant 's truth - and his wife.

A series of monologues.

Beryl Bainbridge on Samuel Johnson and her novel According To Queenie - Johnson through the eyes of Queenie Thrale, the eldest daughter of Henry and Hester Thrale.