Books by Michele Roberts

A lyrical tale of family secrets and self-discovery. Denis knows his mother kept things from him. His godmother, Clemence, knows the truth. In rich, sensuous prose, Roberts interweaves Denis's search for answers with Clemence's memories of the time she spent working for Matisse.

By the winner of the 1993 W.H. Smith Literary Award and shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize with her sixth novel "Daughters of the House", this is a collection of the author's short stories.

Always bold, always provocative, Michele Roberts turns now to the forbidden pleasures and pains of the love between father and daughter and unfolds before us the life and death of Saint Josephine. Holy woman or whore? Upholder of pious or pagan delights? Lowly nun or powerful miracle worker? Or both? And woven throughout her story are the heady and sometimes fearful tales of other female saints - one-armed mad girls, beauties locked in towers, seductive daughters - all women who didn't know their place. Rich with fabulous imagery, IMPOSSIBLE SAINTS is as potent and disturbing as its dangerous themes.'Her fictions are high-risk, unconventional, often apparently unstable; yet are steered with such authority that the otherwise cautious reader is taken almost without realising it into dangerous and exhilarating territory ... She is a writer dedicated to challenging the boundaries by which the idle and unthinking might try to circumscribe her' Rachel Cusk, Sunday Express'Hugely entertaining and genuinely thought-provoking' Julia Flynn, Sunday Telegraph

Adam is a writer, struggling to come to terms with the death of his painter father, Robert, and his difficult marriage to Catherine. Before he married Catherine, he had been the lover of her sister, Vinny. The classic menage trois seems about to repeat itself, when Adam discovers his wife's father was less innocent than he had thought.Set mainly in contemporary London, partly in France, the action also harks back to the 1970's. The narrative evokes the style of the nineteenth century novelists and their themes: desire, guilt, pleasure. Pastoral landscapes alternate with those of the inner city and the past's interaction with the present is acted out by ghosts. The dead father haunts his son; in real life Vinny haunts her sister; and the whole novel is haunted by one of its great earliest exponents, Charlotte Bronte, and her passionate search for creative fulfilment.

Chosen as a Fiction Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph by Maggie O'FarrellIn this witty and subversive collection of stories, Mich le Roberts explores women's desires, memories and loves as only she can. A jilted woman skirts the edges of time and place as she walks the streets of London at night; another returns to the scene of her honeymoon without her husband; a wife takes apt revenge on her vegetarian husband . . .

Rebellion, revolution, experimental living, feminist communes, street theatre, radical magazines, love affairs - gay and straight - sex, drugs and rock and roll.Mich le Roberts, one of Britain's most talented and highly acclaimed novelists, now considers her own life, in this vibrant, powerful portrait of a time and place: alternative London of the 1970s and beyond. A fledgling writer taking a leap into radical politics, Roberts finds alternative homes, new families and lifelong friendships in the streets and houses of Holloway, Peckham, Regent's Park and Notting Hill Gate. From Spare Rib to publishing her first book, Paper Houses is Roberts' story of finding a space in which to live, love and write - and learning to share it.'Beguiling, enthusiastic, charming and vivid, this is an autobiography to be savoured' Amanda Craig, DAILY TELEGRAPH

In the parched soil of Provence, a fifth gospel has been discovered, Mary Magdalene's account of Jesus' teaching and her relationship with him.

In her place as maid to Madame Patin in the cafe next to the sea, orphan Genevieve becomes the breathless audience for her mistress's alarming folk stories, beginning with the one about the mermaid - the beauty who is also a monster - who must be killed. Genevieve happily falls into the patterns and ways of Madame Patin and contentedly cooks, cleans, gardens and serves the customers alongside her. Until, that is, Genevieve ripens to siren beauty. To avoid the mermaid's fate she must take flight. And she does, to a poet who has the hearts of all his women: his mother, his mistress, his niece, his niece's governess - and before long, his new maid's.

In the early 1800s, Louise, a French peasant woman, fearing she is about to die, calls for her priest. She has a secret to confess. Though the priest is impatient, she wants to tell her tale from the beginning. The story opens in Stoke Newington, London, in the 1780s, with Jemima Boote, arriving at Miss Mary Wollstonecraft's school. Jemima follows her beloved teacher to Paris wanting to be part of the erupting revolution and then - six months pregnant - retreats to the tiny village of Louise's youth. Her arrival coincides with that of another young mother-to-be, Annette, who has been sent by her parents to the country to hide her disgraceful pregnancy and to get over her infatuation with William, a young English poet. In an abandoned convent they take up their waiting: waiting for their babies, waiting for their men. While drawing hints and facts from the lives and secret affairs of two of the most famous and passionate figures of the late 18th century - Mary Wollstonecraft and William Wordworth - the intriguing mystery surrounding these two women, is Mich le Roberts own fascinating creation.

Freddy thinks he has committed matricide, and his fantasies - or perhaps realities - become stories which twist back through time to varying landscapes. He searches for a home, only to find it in an unexpected place. When able and allowed to return to the present, he can choose which tale to tell.