In the Prince of Wales Hotel and the shabby terraces and tearooms of Westbourne, retired lives run their course - all, in their different ways, anticipating crisis.

Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral. His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations. Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims. Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, and on Dean Jocelin in particular.From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Spire is a dark and powerful portrait of one man's will, and the folly that he creates.

Five immaculate short stories dealing with the tentative-to-frantic strategies of isolated beings distanced from unresponsive societies.

"I didn't want to come here". So says the note that Edmund Hooper passes to Charles Kingshaw upon his arrival at Warings. But young Kingshaw and his mother have come to live with Hooper and his father in the isolated Victorian house. To Hooper, Kingshaw is an intruder, a boy to be persecuted.

After just a year of close, loving marriage, Ruth has been widowed. Her beloved husband, Ben, has been killed in a tragic accident, and Ruth is left suddenly and totally bereft. Unable to share her sorrow and grief with Ben's family, who are dealing with their pain in their own way, Ruth becomes increasingly isolated, burying herself in her cottage in the countryside as the seasons change around her. Only Ben's young brother, Jo, is able to reach out beyond his own grief to offer Ruth the compassion which might reclaim her from her own devastating unhappiness.