Lottie Lucas is the luckiest person she knows. She has looks, money, three houses and a teenage son she adores ...So why is her husband Harold walking out on her a few days before Christmas? Light Years is also about zoos and the zodiac; the seasons and the stars; and how humans see the natural world. It is a novel about the possibilities of happiness, a surprising and beautiful contemporary love story.

Christopher and Alexandra's passion for one another raises eyebrows and invites envy. This beautiful, blinkered couple do the unthinkable and run away from home, abandoning their two teenage children. This is a story of obsessive love and a testimony to the bonds that tie us to our past, regardless of distance or time travelled.

My cleaner. She does my dirty work. She knows more about me than anyone else in the world. But does she, in fact, like me? Does her presence fill me with shame? Ugandan Mary Tendo worked for many years in the white middle-class Henman household in London, cleaning for Vanessa and looking after her only child, Justin. More than ten years after Mary has left, Justin - now twenty-two, handsome and gifted - is too depressed to get out of bed. To his mother's surprise, he asks for Mary. When Mary responds to Vanessa's cry for help and returns from Uganda to look after Justin, the balance of power in the house shifts dramatically. Both women's lives change irrevocably as tensions build towards a startling climax on a snowbound motorway. Maggie Gee confronts racism and class conflict with humour and tenderness in this moving, funny, engrossing read.

The actors in these short stories quietly and unobtrusively assume their place in the world. An older woman rids herself of social shackles in the hypnotic title story as she moves towards the sea and freedom, a man packs in his day job to sell miniature suitcases, while a woman converts a freelance evangelist after their plane nearly crashes. Maggie Gee deftly encapsulates a world in which a moment of impatience with a spouse can cost a family their lives and a dying man's last thoughts are of gathering his wife's favourite flowers in a bouquet. Her characters are all too familiar in their struggle for fulfilment and their efforts to come to grips with bittersweet, but enduring love. These exquisite stories of everyday life are set against an intricately woven backdrop encompassing larger issues of poverty, race relations, and social prejudices. They are stories about love that tell us something about life, and how people negotiate a path for themselves.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2002 ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION Alfred White, a London park-keeper, rules his home with a mixture of ferocity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. But family ties are strong, and when Alfred collapses on duty one day, they rush to be with him. His daughter's partner, Elroy, a black social-worker, is brought face to face with Alfred's younger son Dirk, who hates and fears all black people. The scene is set for violence, and Alfred's wife May is forced to choose between justice and kinship. This ground-breaking novel tackles the taboo subject of racial hatred, as it looks for the roots of violence within one British family.

Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies out to Uganda for an African writers' conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, Ugandan Mary Tendo, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala's Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda: her son Jamil is missing, and she has secretly summoned Vanessa's beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her village to help build a new well. Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But then Vanessa quarrels with her driver and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary Tendo find her son?

How do you become a writer, and why? Maggie Gee's journey starts a long way from the literary world in a small family in post-war Britain,. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries and has a daughter - but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death and parenthood - our animal life.

What if Virginia Woolf came back to life in the twenty-first century?Bestselling author Angela Lamb is going through a mid-life crisis. She dumps her irrepressible daughter Gerda at boarding school and flies to New York to pursue her passion for Woolf, whose manuscripts are held in a private collection. When a bedraggled Virginia Woolf materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela, stunned, rushes after her on to the streets of Manhattan. Soon Angela is chaperoning her troublesome heroine as the latter tries to grasp the internet and scams bookshops with 'rare signed editions'. Then Virginia insists on flying with her to Istanbul, finds a Turkish admirer and steals the show at an International Conference on - Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is a witty and profound novel about the miraculous possibilities of a second chance at life.

It's the 2030s in Ramsgate and four people who don't look quite human are found sitting, naked, in the early spring sunlight on the quay of a quiet south coast resort. The locals are puzzled - the newcomers are larger and heavier than them and say they are fleeing the heat. Soon more arrive; their tall red-haired leader, The Professor, talks to the universe. The locals talk among themselves. Red people appear everywhere, making friends, going into the caves, liked by some but accused of bringing infection by others. Two rivalrous brothers, Liam and Joe, take different sides as one joins a notorious hard-right group. Their teacher Monica is the first to warn there'll be trouble - and she's right, there is, but there is also a great Midsummer Festival, laughter and love. Set in a world in crisis, this original, gripping fable about migration and global warming restores belief in the power of human kindness.

Alfred White, a London park-keeper, rules his home with a mixture of ferocity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. But family ties are strong, and when Alfred collapses on duty one day, they rush to be with him. His daughter's partner, Elroy, a black social worker, is brought face to face with Alfred's younger son Dirk, who hates and fears all black people. The scene is set for violence, and Alfred's wife May is forced to choose between justice and kinship. This ground-breaking novel tackles the taboo subject of racial hatred, as it looks for the roots of violence within one British family.

Who attacked Dad? When corrupt, brutal dentist Albert Ludd is found battered and bloody after failing to attend a memorial party for his youngest son, a solider, suspicion falls on his other children, especially 37-year-old buxom bruiser Monica, who was heard “uttering threats” against her absent father. How come her car is found outside his house? Why did she buy a large axe? Yet, Monica’s a deputy head.Blood is a Gothic black comedy seen through the eyes of six-foot Monica, who speaks her secret thoughts aloud and who has been banned by the principal of her school, from using social media: “Parents are sensitive to abuse. Governors query `moron’ and `twat’.” Blood asks serious questions about modern life: what can we do with the brutal men who bully women and the weak? Can we wait for a world of order and justice? If we hit back, can the circle of violence ever be broken?

Who attacked Dad? When a corrupt, brutal dentist, Albert Ludd, is found battered and bloody after failing to attend a memorial party for his youngest son, suspicion falls on the dentist’s other children. Especially on Dad’s middle daughter, 37-year-old buxom bruiser Monica Ludd, who was heard ‘uttering threats’ against her absent father. How come her car is found outside Dad’s house? Why did she buy a large axe? And yet, Monica’s a deputy head teacher… Blood is a Gothic black comedy seen through the eyes of six-foot Monica, who cannot help speaking her secret thoughts aloud and who has been banned by the principal of her school, from using social media. ‘“Parents are sensitive to abuse.” “Neil, I would never abuse our parents.” “Governors queried ‘moron’ and ‘twat’.” ’ Set in an angry, anarchic, Brexit-ing Britain where terrorism has become routine, Blood also asks serious questions about modern life: what can we do with the brutal men who bully women and the weak? Can we wait for a world of order and justice? If we hit back, can the circle of violence ever be broken?

"I have been dragged through time, summoned like a book requisitioned from a distant library,"" says Virginia Woolf, “resurrected” by modern-day author, Angela Lamb, working on Woolf manuscripts in the New York Public Library’s Berg collection. Angela dumps her irrepressible daughter at boarding-school to pursue her writing, so, when a bedraggled Virginia materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela rushes to her rescue, chaperoning her wayward heroine.Virginia drinks in the Algonquin, finds friends’ paintings in the Met, and scams bookstores by selling pristine first editions of her novels, inscribed. Visits to independent booksellers make up for her disappointment in finding iconic bookstores closed. Virginia flies with Angela to a conference in Istanbul, makes friends, finds new lovers, and steals the show at international meeting on – Virginia Woolf. The novel asks what Virginia would make of contemporary literature, the book trade, love, sex and digital addictions? Are we free-er than in Woolf’s day? By showing Woolf’s joy in seizing life, Gee challenges the cliché that great female artists are self-destructive, and engagingly shows Woolf’s ideas on equality, feminism and bisexuality are as vibrant and important as ever.A witty, profound novel about the miraculous possibilities of second chances."

Lottie Lucas is the luckiest person she knows. She has looks, money, three houses and a teenage son she adores ...So why is her husband Harold walking out on her a few days before Christmas? Light Years is also about zoos and the zodiac; the seasons and the stars; and how humans see the natural world. It is a novel about the possibilities of happiness, a surprising and beautiful contemporary love story.

Christopher and Alexandra's passion for one another raises eyebrows and invites envy. This beautiful, blinkered couple do the unthinkable and run away from home, abandoning their two teenage children. This is a story of obsessive love and a testimony to the bonds that tie us to our past, regardless of distance or time travelled.

My cleaner. She does my dirty work. She knows more about me than anyone else in the world. But does she, in fact, like me? Does her presence fill me with shame? Ugandan Mary Tendo worked for many years in the white middle-class Henman household in London, cleaning for Vanessa and looking after her only child, Justin. More than ten years after Mary has left, Justin - now twenty-two, handsome and gifted - is too depressed to get out of bed. To his mother's surprise, he asks for Mary. When Mary responds to Vanessa's cry for help and returns from Uganda to look after Justin, the balance of power in the house shifts dramatically. Both women's lives change irrevocably as tensions build towards a startling climax on a snowbound motorway. Maggie Gee confronts racism and class conflict with humour and tenderness in this moving, funny, engrossing read.

The actors in these short stories quietly and unobtrusively assume their place in the world. An older woman rids herself of social shackles in the hypnotic title story as she moves towards the sea and freedom, a man packs in his day job to sell miniature suitcases, while a woman converts a freelance evangelist after their plane nearly crashes. Maggie Gee deftly encapsulates a world in which a moment of impatience with a spouse can cost a family their lives and a dying man's last thoughts are of gathering his wife's favourite flowers in a bouquet. Her characters are all too familiar in their struggle for fulfilment and their efforts to come to grips with bittersweet, but enduring love. These exquisite stories of everyday life are set against an intricately woven backdrop encompassing larger issues of poverty, race relations, and social prejudices. They are stories about love that tell us something about life, and how people negotiate a path for themselves.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2002 ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION Alfred White, a London park-keeper, rules his home with a mixture of ferocity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. But family ties are strong, and when Alfred collapses on duty one day, they rush to be with him. His daughter's partner, Elroy, a black social-worker, is brought face to face with Alfred's younger son Dirk, who hates and fears all black people. The scene is set for violence, and Alfred's wife May is forced to choose between justice and kinship. This ground-breaking novel tackles the taboo subject of racial hatred, as it looks for the roots of violence within one British family.

Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies out to Uganda for an African writers' conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, Ugandan Mary Tendo, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala's Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda: her son Jamil is missing, and she has secretly summoned Vanessa's beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her village to help build a new well. Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But then Vanessa quarrels with her driver and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary Tendo find her son?

How do you become a writer, and why? Maggie Gee's journey starts a long way from the literary world in a small family in post-war Britain,. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries and has a daughter - but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death and parenthood - our animal life.

What if Virginia Woolf came back to life in the twenty-first century?Bestselling author Angela Lamb is going through a mid-life crisis. She dumps her irrepressible daughter Gerda at boarding school and flies to New York to pursue her passion for Woolf, whose manuscripts are held in a private collection. When a bedraggled Virginia Woolf materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela, stunned, rushes after her on to the streets of Manhattan. Soon Angela is chaperoning her troublesome heroine as the latter tries to grasp the internet and scams bookshops with 'rare signed editions'. Then Virginia insists on flying with her to Istanbul, finds a Turkish admirer and steals the show at an International Conference on - Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is a witty and profound novel about the miraculous possibilities of a second chance at life.

It's the 2030s in Ramsgate and four people who don't look quite human are found sitting, naked, in the early spring sunlight on the quay of a quiet south coast resort. The locals are puzzled - the newcomers are larger and heavier than them and say they are fleeing the heat. Soon more arrive; their tall red-haired leader, The Professor, talks to the universe. The locals talk among themselves. Red people appear everywhere, making friends, going into the caves, liked by some but accused of bringing infection by others. Two rivalrous brothers, Liam and Joe, take different sides as one joins a notorious hard-right group. Their teacher Monica is the first to warn there'll be trouble - and she's right, there is, but there is also a great Midsummer Festival, laughter and love. Set in a world in crisis, this original, gripping fable about migration and global warming restores belief in the power of human kindness.

Alfred White, a London park-keeper, rules his home with a mixture of ferocity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. But family ties are strong, and when Alfred collapses on duty one day, they rush to be with him. His daughter's partner, Elroy, a black social worker, is brought face to face with Alfred's younger son Dirk, who hates and fears all black people. The scene is set for violence, and Alfred's wife May is forced to choose between justice and kinship. This ground-breaking novel tackles the taboo subject of racial hatred, as it looks for the roots of violence within one British family.

Who attacked Dad? When corrupt, brutal dentist Albert Ludd is found battered and bloody after failing to attend a memorial party for his youngest son, a solider, suspicion falls on his other children, especially 37-year-old buxom bruiser Monica, who was heard “uttering threats” against her absent father. How come her car is found outside his house? Why did she buy a large axe? Yet, Monica’s a deputy head.Blood is a Gothic black comedy seen through the eyes of six-foot Monica, who speaks her secret thoughts aloud and who has been banned by the principal of her school, from using social media: “Parents are sensitive to abuse. Governors query `moron’ and `twat’.” Blood asks serious questions about modern life: what can we do with the brutal men who bully women and the weak? Can we wait for a world of order and justice? If we hit back, can the circle of violence ever be broken?

Who attacked Dad? When a corrupt, brutal dentist, Albert Ludd, is found battered and bloody after failing to attend a memorial party for his youngest son, suspicion falls on the dentist’s other children. Especially on Dad’s middle daughter, 37-year-old buxom bruiser Monica Ludd, who was heard ‘uttering threats’ against her absent father. How come her car is found outside Dad’s house? Why did she buy a large axe? And yet, Monica’s a deputy head teacher… Blood is a Gothic black comedy seen through the eyes of six-foot Monica, who cannot help speaking her secret thoughts aloud and who has been banned by the principal of her school, from using social media. ‘“Parents are sensitive to abuse.” “Neil, I would never abuse our parents.” “Governors queried ‘moron’ and ‘twat’.” ’ Set in an angry, anarchic, Brexit-ing Britain where terrorism has become routine, Blood also asks serious questions about modern life: what can we do with the brutal men who bully women and the weak? Can we wait for a world of order and justice? If we hit back, can the circle of violence ever be broken?

"I have been dragged through time, summoned like a book requisitioned from a distant library,"" says Virginia Woolf, “resurrected” by modern-day author, Angela Lamb, working on Woolf manuscripts in the New York Public Library’s Berg collection. Angela dumps her irrepressible daughter at boarding-school to pursue her writing, so, when a bedraggled Virginia materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela rushes to her rescue, chaperoning her wayward heroine.Virginia drinks in the Algonquin, finds friends’ paintings in the Met, and scams bookstores by selling pristine first editions of her novels, inscribed. Visits to independent booksellers make up for her disappointment in finding iconic bookstores closed. Virginia flies with Angela to a conference in Istanbul, makes friends, finds new lovers, and steals the show at international meeting on – Virginia Woolf. The novel asks what Virginia would make of contemporary literature, the book trade, love, sex and digital addictions? Are we free-er than in Woolf’s day? By showing Woolf’s joy in seizing life, Gee challenges the cliché that great female artists are self-destructive, and engagingly shows Woolf’s ideas on equality, feminism and bisexuality are as vibrant and important as ever.A witty, profound novel about the miraculous possibilities of second chances."