Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies from London to Uganda for an African writers' conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, Ugandan Mary Tendo, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala's up-market Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda: her son Jamil is missing, and she has secretly summoned Vanessa's beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her home village to build a new well. Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But she quarrels with her driver and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary Tendo find her son? 'One of her strongest novels to date...fast-moving, energetic, constantly surprising' Hilary Mantel 'Maggie Gee has never written better' Rose Tremain 'A tour de force – brilliantly structured, surprising, humane, and suspenseful' Elaine Showalter 'Brilliant...just brilliant...this book deserves to be published...

What if Virginia Woolf came back to life in the twenty-first century? Bestselling author Angela Lamb is going through a mid-life crisis. She dumps her irrepressible daughter Gerda at boarding school and flies to New York to pursue her passion for Woolf, whose manuscripts are held in a private collection. When a bedraggled Virginia Woolf herself materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela, stunned, rushes after her on to the streets of Manhattan. Soon she is chaperoning her troublesome heroine as Virginia tries to understand the internet and scams bookshops with 'rare signed editions'. Then Virginia insists on flying with Angela to Istanbul, where she is surprised by love and steals the show at an International Conference on – Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is a witty and profound novel about female rivalry, friendships, mothers and daughters, and the miraculous possibilities of a second chance at life. 'I love the work of Maggie Gee:...

It's the middle of the twenty-first century, and the next Ice Age has suddenly sent global warming into reverse. Saul is one of the Ice People, the threatened peoples of the northern hemisphere, who, watching their world freeze over, try to move south towards the equator... 'Excellent ... intelligent, driven, imaginative, obsessive yet still gracious, one of our best ... Exciting stuff.' Fay Weldon 'Ambitious and subtle... She writes elegantly, unsentimentally, expertly... The Ice People works persuasively as science fiction, and is truthful about our emotional lives.' Independent 'Infused with poetic intensity ... this is a gripping fictional realisation of what we fear: the death of civilisation. Maggie Gee achieves her apocalyptic vision without the clank of hardware and intergalactic wars. Her detail is precise and controlled and her beautifully orchestrated whisper of redemption is rooted in eternal myth.' Elizabeth Buchan The Times 'An intriguing novel of ideas, fully fleshed out ... Classy science fiction.' Mail on Sunday 'A remarkable novel... up there with Orwell and Huxley.' Jeremy Paxman 'A gem of a book.' Rose Tremain 'A rattling good page-turning yarn.' George Melly 'A fantastic book' Mariella FrostrupReview'A fantastic book.' Mariella Frostrup'Excellent... intelligent, driven, imaginative, obsessive yet still gracious, one of our best.Exciting stuff.' Fay Weldon'Up there with Orwell and Huxley.' Jeremy Paxman'A gem of a book.' Rose Tremain 'A rattling good page-turning yarn.' George Melly'Maggie Gee is one of our most ambitious and challenging novelists.' Sunday Times'A gem of a book.' Rose Tremain'She writes elegantly, unsentimentally, expertly.' The Independent'Mordandly witty, unsparing, politically savvy, a beautifully clear and bracing nasty vision.' TLS About the AuthorMaggie Gee was chosen as one of Granta's original 'Best Young British Novelists'. She has published many novels to great acclaim, including My Cleaner, The Flood, and The White Family which was short listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002 (UK). She is the first female chair of the Royal society of Literature and lives in London.

Alfred White, a London park keeper, rules his home with a mixture of ferocity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. But family ties are strong, and when Alfred collapses on duty one day, they rush to be with him. His daughter’s partner, Elroy, a black social worker, is brought face to face with Alfred’s younger son Dirk, who hates and fears all black people, and the scene is set for violence, forcing Alfred’s wife May to choose between justice and kinship. This groundbreaking novel takes on the taboo subject of racial hatred as it looks at love, hatred, sex, comedy and death in an ordinary British family. ‘The White Family points to new directions in British writing. Full of power and passion, as well as somte timely warnings, this is one of the year’s finest novels, and it deserves the widest possible readership.’ Literary Review ‘Intensely touching, full of ironies, situational and verbal, [and] brilliantly connected with...

President Bliss is handling a tricky situation with customary brio, but after months of ceaseless rain the city is sinking under the floods. The rich are safe on high ground, but the poor are getting damper in their packed tower blocks, and the fanatical 'Last Days' sect is recruiting thousands. When at last the sun breaks through the clouds Lottie heads off to the opera, husband Harold listens to jazz and their ditsy teenage daughter Lola fights capitalism by bunking off school. Shirley takes her twin boys to the zoo. The government - eager to detract attention from a foreign war it has waged - announces a spectacular City Gala. But not even TV astrologer Davey Lucas can predict the extraordinary climax that ensues. 'Gripping, original and highly entertaining - Maggie Gee at her superb best.' J G Ballard 'Dazzling ... alternately lyrical and austere ... unbearably touching.' The Observer 'Eloquent, angry and beautiful ... her best book yet.' Hilary Mantel 'The Flood is Gee's...

How do you become a writer, and why? Maggie Gee's journey starts a long way from the literary world in a small family in post-war Britain. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries and has a daughter – but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death and parenthood – our animal life. 'A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive – I really loved it' Zadie Smith 'Exceptionally interesting and brave ... a wonderful book' Claire Tomalin 'A fine, honest, complex portrait of an artist's mind' Michele Roberts, Independent 'Every word strikes like a hammer on...