A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge – extract
Get a sneak preview of the new novel from the author of Fly By Night, out next month. A Face Like Glass is a fantasy set in the underground city of Caverna, a dark and distrustful world whose inhabitants have faces as blank as snow
The Secret Hen House Theatre by Helen Peters – extract
Since the death of her mother, Hannah's family life on their dilapidated farm has been a bit chaotic. One day, Hannah finds a ramshackle old hen house in a forgotten corner of the farm and decides to turn it into a secret theatre. But then the farm is ...
Poetry Parnassus – the full list of poets
204 poets from across the world are taking part in the Poetry Parnassus in London as part of the Cultural Olympiad. Here is the list of poets taking part
Love is in the air: the best way to sniff out your perfect partner
The way we smell is one of the most revealing indicators of who we really are, according to The Science of LoveWatch Robin Dunbar's TEDxObserver talk on friendshipIf you can get in close enough, checking out someone's smell is a valuable way of finding...
The Saturday poem: A Spruce New Colour
by Tom PaulinIt all depends on your point of viewbut from mine – and I know that mencan mistake colours and shades– from mine the new suspen-sion bridge at Toome is puce– puce or maybe lavender –as it brings the new long overdue bypassacross th...
Jasmine Skies by Sita Brahmachari – extract
Did you fall in love with Mira Levenson in Artichoke Hearts? Catch up with her again as she flies to India to stay with her aunt and cousin for the first time and is hurled into new experiences in Kolkata
The Saturday poem: The Buzz
By Clive JamesGrown old, you long still for what young love does.It gives the world a liquid light injection,A sun bath even in the night. The buzzBlurs brain-cells by infecting everythingWith lust. A girl bright as an egret's wingWill cleave unto an o...
The Gospel of Us: A story for Easter
Last year writer Owen Sheers teamed up with the National Theatre of Wales to create a Passion play on the beach at Port Talbot. He's now turned it into a novel. In this extract, set on Good Friday, a mysterious stranger turns up by the seaside...I real...
Life and death on my street in Sarajevo
For two years, Barbara Demick chronicled the trials of one Sarajevo street during the Serbian siege. In her latest book, Besieged: Life Under Fire on a Sarajevo Street, she catches up with the people she befriendedIn 1991, the year that the Soviet Uni...
Fever by Dee Shulman – extract
A fearless Roman gladiator. A reckless 21st-century girl. A mysterious virus unites them but could also threaten them - and time itself... Sample the first chapter of the first book in a new series by the author of My Totally Secret Diary
The Saturday poem: The Circling Stars from the Anglo-Saxon
By Paul FarleyFive dozen reached the brink and pulledtheir horses up (eleven spectrals,four luminous whites). They'd trained for weeksand were green to go, but this channel was tricky:the swell a bastard, waves lit with foam,the current strong. So the ...
A Million Suns by Beth Revis – extract
Beth Revis's sequel to Across the Universe is story of love, murder and madness - set in space! Sample the first chapter
