What happens to your life when everything you though you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? During the long hot summer of 1976, Ruth Gilmartin discovers that her very English mother Sally is really Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian émigré and one-time spy.

In 1939 Eva is a beautiful 28-year-old living in Paris. As war breaks out, she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious, patrician Englishman. Under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one. Even those she loves most.

Since then Eva has carefully rebuilt her life – but once a spy, always a spy. And now she must complete one final assignment. This time, though, Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help.

Restless is a tour de force. Exploring the devastating consequences of duplicity and betrayal, William Boyd's gripping new novel captures the drama of the Second World War and paints a remarkable portrait of a female spy. Full of suspense, emotion and history, this is storytelling at its very finest.

Winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award

A turn-of-the-century love story, set in Manila, between an American woman and Filipino-Spanish mestizo by the popular storyteller William Boyd. It's a memorable tale, richly detailed.

"Rich in character and incident, fulfills the ambition of the historical novel at its best."

— 

Booker Prize Finalist

"Boyd has more than fulfilled the bright promise of [his] first novel. . He is capable not only of some very funny satire but also of seriousness and compassion." — Michiko Kakutani,

1914. In a hotel room in German East Africa, American farmer Walter Smith dreams of Theodore Roosevelt. As he sleeps, a railway passenger swats at flies, regretting her decision to return to the Dark Continent-and to her husband. On a faraway English riverbank, a jealous Felix Cobb watches his brother swim, and curses his sister-in-law-to-be. And in the background of the world's daily chatter: rumors of an Anglo-German conflict, the likes of which no one has ever seen.

In , William Boyd brilliantly evokes the private dramas of a generation upswept by the winds of war. After his German neighbor burns his crops-with an apology and a smile-Walter Smith takes up arms on behalf of Great Britain. And when Felix's brother marches off to defend British East Africa, he pursues, against his better judgment, a forbidden love affair. As the sons of the world match wits and weapons on a continent thousands of miles from home, desperation makes bedfellows of enemies and traitors of friends and family. By turns comic and quietly wise, deftly renders lives capsized by violence, chance, and the irrepressible human capacity for love.

"Funny, assured, and cleanly, expansively told, a seriocomic romp. Boyd gives us studies of people caught in the side pockets of calamity and dramatizes their plights with humor, detail and grit." —

"Boyd has crafted a quiet, seamless prose in which story and characters flow effortlessly out of a fertile imagination. . The reader emerges deeply moved." — Newsday

Wiliam Boyd, winner of the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards, introduces unlikely heroes desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives.

From California poolsides to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, here is a world populated by weary souls who turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life's inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a young stewardess with stories of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence in "The Coup." In the title story, an arrogant, sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimaets the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. With droll humor and rare compassion, Boyd's enthralling stories remind us of his stature as one of contemporary fiction's finest storytellers.