An elegant death

When we first meet Leonora Eyre, she speaks with "mock humility," which tells you, in two words, what a self-centred creature this middle-aged, unmarried woman is. The Sweet Dove Died spans about a year of her life.

After successfully bidding for a Victorian book of flowers, Leonora becomes light-headed and is helped out of the auction room by Humphrey Boyce and his nephew James, antique dealers. The two men become rivals for the affection of Leonora, who clearly prefers James, but the friendship develops only because the young man is willing to play along with the woman's need to be assured of her elegance and dignity.

Some things you've got to stop thinking about

Annie Fairhurst wants to start a new life. When A Kind of Intimacy opens, she is dancing naked around the home she is leaving, kicking the sofa she has always hated. You might think her reaction a bit strange, but in the circumstances, understandable. How did she put up with the hated sofa for so long? "What starts off as intolerable, [-] eventually becomes merely irritating and in time, in a matter of months or years, you become immune to it. You've got to, haven't you? Some things you've got to stop thinking about, or you'd never survive." Annie gradually reveals throughout the rest of the book what it is she has to stop thinking about.

The law does not always punish the guilty

"The truth is a tricky issue," asserts prosecuting barrister Kate Woodcroft QC, at the beginning of Anatomy of a Scandal. After losing a case, the "forty-two years old; divorced, single, childless" woman is reflecting on the nature of the justice system in the UK, in which "you can win even if the evidence is stacked against you provided that you argue better." At the end of the chapter, Kate is presented with her next case.

A pair of star-crossed lovers

A stick of Brighton rock is sickly sweet, often pink, and so hard it can break your teeth. It's a perfect metaphor for Pinkie Brown, the nasty protagonist of Graham Greene's book.

The story opens with Hale the journalist who's visiting the English seaside town of Brighton on a bank holiday weekend. In the guise of Kolley Kibber he surreptitiously places cards in public places, which entitle the finder to ten shillings (about 25 GBP today). His mind is not on his job 'tho, because he knows the local mob will murder him before the day is out.

Power and powerlessness

The God of Small Things opens with the return of Rahel to her childhood home in Ayemenem, in the south-west of India and to her twin brother Estha. Why did she leave? "It all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenem."

Arundhati Roy has said that the theme of much of what she writes is "the relationship between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they're engaged in." In The God of Small Things, there are characters who attempt to escape their 'powerlessness', and those who scheme to maintain, at all costs, their superior position.

'Tis not wealth makes men

Moonfleet is a cracking good children's adventure story with a moral. It begins with John Trenchard, aged 15, inspired by a story of buried treasure. He sets out to make his fortune by finding it.

John himself relates the tale, and most of the action takes place on the Dorset coast, in and around the fictional village of Moonfleet where he lives. The residents are poor but generally happy, as they make the most of what little they have.

Regretting is always pointless

"Regretting is always pointless, since there is no undoing". So says Claudia Hampton as she lies dying in a hospital bed. She has been writing "a history of the world. [-] The Life and Times of Claudia H."

Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger is Claudia's story, primarily narrated by Claudia herself, warts and all.