English Novelists

The writer is best known for his semi-autobiographical novels about an Englishman from a posh but monstrous family. St. Aubyn's new book marks a departure.

In Dancing Fish And Ammonites, the British writer reflects on growing older. She tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about adjusting to her husband's death and losing the desire for new things.

A new film explores the affair between Dickens and a young actress for whom he left his wife, but who for years never showed up in biographies of Dickens. It's the second film directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also plays Dickens.

Jane's Fame, Claire Harman's book about the author of Emma and Sense and Sensibility, reveals the gap between her legacy -- modest, indifferent to fame and devoted to her characters -- and her ambition.

Bainbridge is well known in England, but little known here. She's been shortlisted four times for the prestigious Booker Prize, and twice won the Whitbread Prize for fiction. She's just completed her 16th novel. "Master Georgie" (Carroll & Graff Publishers, Inc.) takes place during the mid 19th century. Bainbridge has been praised for her economic and poetic use of words, and her lack of sentimentality or melodrama.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Memoirs" by English writer Kingsley Amis (published by Summit Books).

Scottish writer William Boyd. His latest novel, The New Confessions, follows the political and cinematic adventures of a monomaniacal filmmaker. Boyd's earlier novels include Stars and Bars and An Ice Cream War.