The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

In 1959 Florence Green, a kind-hearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. When the shop becomes a success while others are less prosperous, she faces polite but ruthless local opposition, and Hardborough becomes a battleground.

Florence has to contend with a leaky warehouse, self-important inhabitants, and a poltergeist. Her journey will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice as only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one.

From the then relatively unknown Booker Prize-winning author, Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop was her second novel and garnered her first Booker Prize shortlist.

• Paperback, 176 pages.
• Measures 19.8 x 13.1 x 1.2 cm