Salley Vickers

"A quiet presence in the small French town of Chartres, Agnès Morel can be found cleaning the famed medieval cathedral each morning. No one knows where she came from or why. Not Abbé Paul, who discovered her sleeping on the porch twenty years ago, and not Alain Fleury, the irreverent young restorer who works alongside her each day. She has transformed each of their lives in her own subtle way, yet no one suspects the dark secret Agnès is hiding."...

When a man dies and leaves behind a wife and a mistress, we expect certain responses to follow. But as the narrator of Salley Vickers's second novel explains, "this is not an account of feminine jealousy, or even revenge, and not all human beings (not even women) conform to the attitudes generally expected." Indeed, in this ironic and witty novel nothing is quite as we expect to find it. Telling the story of Bridget Hansome and Frances Slater, Vickers...

The author of The Cleaner of Chartres "brings Sigmund Freud together with a vivid, loquacious Tiresias for an intriguing retelling of the Oedipus myth" (Publishers Weekly). In the latest retelling of the world's greatest stories in the Myth series from Canongate, the highly regarded novelist Salley Vickers brings to life the Western world's most widely known myth, Oedipus, through a shrewdly told exploration of the seminal story in conversation between...

For psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Dr. David McBride, death exerts an unusual draw. Despite his profession, he has never come to terms with the violent accident that took his brother's life, a trauma that has shaped his personality and subsequent choice of career. But when a failed suicide, Elizabeth Cruikshank, comes into his care, he finds the deepest reaches of his suppressed history being reactivated. Elizabeth is mysteriously reticent about her...

This collection of original stories by today's finest women writers--including Tracy Chevalier, Francine Prose, Elizabeth McCracken, Tessa Hadley, Audrey Niffenegger, and more--takes inspiration from the opening line in Charlotte Brontë's most beloved novel, Jane Eyre. A fixture in the literary canon, Charlotte Brontë is revered by readers all over the world. Her novels featuring unforgettable, strong heroines still resonate with millions today....