Common Reader's Alice Thomas Ellis Series

Fairy Tale

by Alice Thomas Ellis

Published 5 September 1996

A comedy on a woman in Wales who gives birth to a baby without having been pregnant. Two older women solve the mystery, discovering that Eloise was chosen by fairies to procreate a fairy.

A troubled family gather at the ancestral home on the Welsh coast, awkwardly awaiting the death of the family patriarch. Polite conversation gives way to sly remarks and bickering in this tense reunion, and the household's respectable surface is scratched away to expose secret warfare, malicious games and viciously funny class-consciousness. In Alice Thomas Ellis's first novel, the caustic wit, brisk pace, and profound insight she is famous for are displayed to full effect.

The Birds Of The Air

by Alice Thomas Ellis

Published 31 July 1980

A family gather together for Christmas. Each member of the group has an inner longing of some sort - Mary pines for death, Barbara pines for love and the children pine for understanding. Soon, the house becomes a place of conflict with the chances of reconciliation seeming more and more remote.

Evening of Adam

by Alice Thomas Ellis

Published 3 April 1995

Pillars of Gold

by Alice Thomas Ellis

Published 13 April 1992

When a body is discovered in the Regents Canal, the local residents vaguely wonder if it might belong to their missing neighbour Barbs, but none of them quite get round to doing anything about it. While Scarlett is preoccupied with her uptight husband Brian and her adolescent daughter Camille, Connie is wondering whether her lover Memet is being unfaithful to her. As the two women gossip and wryly comment on everything from advertising and the press, psychiatrists and school systems to nutrition cranks, the lives of both families are turned on their heads as the do-gooder Barbs' whereabouts remain unknown.

The Inn at the Edge of the World

by Alice Thomas Ellis

Published 17 September 1990

Five strangers gather at Eric's inn on a remote Hebridean island after he advertises in the London weeklies for "Christmas at the edge of the world." Harry, a military widower, is fascinated by General Gordon and the last days of Khartoum. Jessica is a voice-over artist and actress. Jon is a vain actor who is dangerously obsessed with Jessica. Anita, a salesperson in the stationary department of a store and, Ronald, a psychoanalyst who is pining for the cooking and domestic skills of his recently departed wife.

Each has their own reasons for escaping the usual festivities, but the refuge of the island is complicated as Eric's wife Mabel flounces out at the last minute and the locals and visitors mingle and clash.

A beautifully timed comic novel with a hint of the supernatural.