Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies out from London 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 up-market Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda.

It's the middle of the 21st century, and the next Ice Age has suddenly sent global warming into reverse. Saul is one of the Ice People, the threatened peoples of the northern hemisphere, who, watching their world freeze over, try to move south towards the equator.

Alfred White, a London park-keeper, rules his home with a mixture of ferocity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. 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.

Presents stories of everyday life set against an intricately woven backdrop encompassing larger issues of poverty, race relations, and social prejudices. This title is about love that tell us something about life, and how people negotiate a path for themselves. The actors of the stories quietly and unobtrusively assume their place in the world.

President Bliss is handling a tricky situation with customary brio, but after months of ceaseless rain the city is sinking under the floods. The rich are safe on high ground, but the poor are getting damper in their packed tower blocks, and the fanatical 'Last Days' sect is recruiting thousands ...

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.

Alfred White, a London park keeper, rules his home with conviction and tenderness. When he collapses on duty, Shirley, a black social worker, is brought face to face with Alfred's son Dirk, who hates and fears all black people. Alfred is forced to decide whether justice matters more than kinship.

Paula is a victim of mysterious harassment. She lives near the railway line that carries nuclear waste through the heart of London and feels curiously, constantly unwell. Grace, her eighty-five-year-old aunt, once loved by a major painter, now deplores the modern evils that rampage across the world.

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 is too depressed to get out of bed. To his mother's surprise, he asks for Mary. This work confronts racism and class conflict with humour.

Love, death and good behaviour looked different to a girl in 1950s England. The author tells of growing up during the sexual revolution and living through dramatic changes in attitudes towards race, class and gender. She writes with candour and warmth as she explores questions of love, sex, writing, duty and death.

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?

Vanessa, a writer, flies to Uganda for a conference. She means to visit her ex-cleaner Mary, now the Housekeeper of the Sheraton Hotel. Mary has her own agenda: her son is missing. Vanessa sets off alone to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the gorillas. But she quarrels with her driver and a war closes in from the Congo. Can anyone save0 her?

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 - asks for Mary. When Mary returns, both women's lives change irrevocably as the tensions build.