A girl with a crippling pea-phobia, a woman driven to murderous rage in an Anger Management Workshop, a wife torn between her dashing artist-lover and her uptight accountant-husband – these are some of the characters in Wendy Perriam's fifth short-story collection. Whatever the scenario, Perriam is alive to the raw emotion and underlying drama in even the most limited of lives, combining the daily dilemmas of personal relationships with a deeper exploration of psychological complexities. Many of the stories focus on some triumph or trauma of the human heart. Thirteen-year-old Kirsty is heartbroken on account of her father leaving home; Lynn eats her heart out over the mysterious Indonesians she has invited in off the street; stolid, suburban Ian undergoes a heart-transplant that not only saves his life, but changes his whole life and personality. And not forgetting Brian, the freckled, sandy-haired credit controller who, on his first-ever trip abroad, loses his heart to...

Purple is the colour of violence, passion, penance and panache; the symbolic shade of kings and emperors, of cardinals and popes. It is also the punch-drunk colour of Wendy Perriam's extraordinary new novel which combines outrageous sex with radiant religion, redeems sin with resurrection and capsizes comedy with shock. Thea Morton, the crazed yet childlike heroine, seeks her absent father in every man she meets. Having rejected the kindly, bookish Adrian with his stifling economies and pedantic word-power, she taunts and worships Leo – darkly violent and disturbingly erotic – who lands her in hospital with broken teeth and bloody mouth. Disillusioned with mortal men, she turns to priest and God, seeking to seduce the one and consume the other. In her quest for God and father, Thea travels to the Marian town of Lourdes, that hopeless, hoping shrine of the Catholic church, where, in seeking a miracle she is granted instead a mission so...

'I like to hear his name, especially when he says it. His voice is rich and dark, like those jams they sell in tiny pots at twice the price of normal jars, and they call “preserves”, to justify the cost. I chose him for his name, in fact -- half Mayfair hairdresser and half Vatican incumbent.' So speaks Nial, a woman with a man's name, and confused about her gender -- uncertain about most things, save her obsession with John-Paul. She shares this obsession with modest Mary and conscientious Bryan. All three lead secret lives. Mary, a conventional housewife with a dream-home in the suburbs, is inflicting burns on her genitals and stockpiling vibrators; Bryan, a mother-harried city clerk, updates his Disaster Scrapbook and takes his snake to bed, seeking refuge from Chaology and the horrors of the quantum revolution; Nial swaps sex for blood-drenched dreams of an ex-Naxi butcher in the High Street. All seek help and healing from the mysterious John-Paul, but is he sage...

Born of Woman moves between two worlds – the making of a bestseller by a London publisher and the mysterious attraction of a house in the Northumbrian wilds. These two are fused by the strangely compelling Hester whose diaries are published to immediate acclaim (bringing fame and disaster in equal proportions) and who haunts both house and novel with her posthumous power and presence. Hester is linked to all the other characters in the book: mother to Lyn, the failed artist full of fears who hates his girlish name; past nanny to Matthew who publishes her diaries and finally flees the country in ruin and disgrace; mother-in-law to Jennifer who longs for a child and achieves 'motherhood' through the frothy and irrepressible Susie, herself linked with Hester in that both bear bastard babies in their teens. Born of Woman is full of contrast and surprise, setting the frenetic sham of the media world against the brutal splendours of...

Oxford. May Morning. Pouring rain. Eighteen-year-old student Tessa Reeves has a close shave with death as Dr Michael Edwards comes hurtling round the corner in his scarlet MG. By way of apology, he treats her to a lavish breakfast in a country hotel, and over strawberries, steak and champagne, she first experiences his greed – a greed which later culminates in electrifying sex. Tessa, from the wrong side of the tracks, brought up with no frills – and no father – by the irrepressible but decidedly uncultured April, feels overawed by the pressured mystique of Oxford. But the charismatic Michael boosts her spirits and her status, and fires her own ambition. He has been named after an archangel – the conqueror of Satan, the Prince of Light. But it is darkness which descends as the affair turns sour, and Tessa searches in increasing desperation for her lost lover, and later for his surrogate and namesake, the suburban GP, Dr...

Lorna, thirty-nine, is married to misanthropic Ralph, who in turn is wedded to his twenty-seven pipes and his artificial-grass business. In fact, it's a ménage à trios, the third party being Lorna's Monster, a gleefully sadistic personification of her panic attacks. The Monster has a field day when, after a botched foot operation, Lorna is sent to convalesce among the deaf and demented inmates of a nursing home from hell, where to staff have more problems than the patients. But, despite her surroundings, she begins to blossom, making new friends, discovering untapped talents and even a reawakened interest in sex, thanks to the attentions of an ardent young care-worker. She even gets offered a challenging new job. Meanwhile Ralph is being sued by a vindictive business client and fears he will lose his house and his livelihood. In another of her wickedly black comedies Wendy Perriam chronicles an unconventional marriage, showing the bond that can...

Jane's whole world is overturned at her eighteenth birthday party. She flees from home, disorientated, and finds refuge with Christopher, a stained-glass artist more than forty years her senior who is working on a Resurrection window. As the window takes shape, Jane tries to rebuild her own life, examining the beliefs of all those she meets -- chaotic cosy Isobel, whose motherly exterior conceals a girlhood tragedy; wealthy, tormented Adrian, who uses his private chapel as a leisure-centre and sees God as Chairman of the Board; Hadley, who believes in melting down stained class to make soup for London's tramps; Christopher himself, selfish and charismatic, the promiscuous philosopher whose art is his religion, and who regards sex as a 'taste of the immortal'. To escape her own confusion, Jane travels to Chartres, where, surrounded by the glory of thirteenth-centry glass, she has an extraordinary experience which leads on to her 'rebirth' back at home, and to another, longer...

Abandoned by God and her husband, twin totems of her life to date, Morna Gordon embarks on a voyage of discovery, travelling first to California where she undergoes a series of extraordinary experiences, ending up in Disneyland, 'the happiest place on earth' – though not for her. Shaken, she flees to a near-deserted island in the Hebrides where David, historian and researcher, is working on the Life of a seventh-century saint. Morna, translator by profession, has to learn, through David and his saint, a new interpretation of the world. Her contribution to his work helps forge a powerful bond between them, and slowly, movingly, and despite the still smarting slap-down of the Catholic Church, they discover body as well as soul. The novel also explores the lives of Morna's mother and daughter, charting Bea's private crisis of faith and Chris's stormy journey to maturity. Complex ties and tensions bind these three generations of women, all of whom...

Who hasn't winced as some phone-pest embarks on a maddeningly public conversation? But, in Perriam's title-story, the timidly conformist Stephen does rather more than wince. Overcoming a lifetime of restraint, he leaps to his feet on a crowded commuter-train and throttles the offender. Or does he? The hair's-breadth line between reality and flights of fancy is a feature of these stories - as in much of Perriam's work - the power of the imagination providing a highly effective antidote to grief, loss or frustration. Whether it's Carole, the office dogsbody, finding self-esteem and status through her congress with an Archangel, or Connie, an octogenarian spinster, reliving her aborted wedding day by passionately kissing the visiting plumber, Perriam's characters transform their lives in unexpected ways. Yet, amidst such shocks and surprises are quieter moments of grace: true heavenly grace descending on an atheist in Westminster Cathedral; grace granted to a grieving daughter at a...

In Wendy Perriam's sixth short-story collection, catalysts for life-change come in surprising forms. A small, white curly dog pursues a man from pub to office, turning his whole existence upside-down. A collection of porcelain figurines drives an elderly widower to escape his home and find solace with Marilyn Monroe. A bunch of orange tulips propels a staidly married librarian into the arms of an exuberant poet. A pair of returned Eurostar tickets whisks long-separated lovers towards heady new romance. Many of Perriam's characters harbour guilty secrets or long-suppressed desires. Spouses cheat on spouses; restive mothers kick against their ties; loveless singletons yearn for poetry and passion in their lives. Not all her ugly ducklings succeed in turning into swans, but most do at least take wing - and sometimes a touch of magic intervenes. In this inventive new collection, the mundane goes hand in hand with the miraculous - and even the Queen eats margarine.

Daniel has reached the dangerous age of forty and has just embarked on his first affair – a source of mingled guilt and ecstasy. His wife, Penny, seems unaware, but, worryingly, his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter has stopped speaking. He first met Penny and Pippa in Paris – two flame-haired innocents abroad, as seemingly happy-go-lucky as he was conventional and shy. Now, nine years on, Pippa is mute, Penny frustrated, and Daniel himself torn between his mistress and his family. The pressures slowly build, until at last he agrees to visit a Welsh healer who has set up camp on the site of a derelict lead-mine in one of the remotest parts of Wales. As a child of only seven, Daniel had been sent away to boarding school in Wales and, after the horror of his 'prison-years', has vowed never to return there. The grim memories blast back, however, once he sets foot in the camp and, though the healer may be a charlatan and his fellow campers range...

'It seems crazy that in all that time I never stopped to think what I was actually cut out to do or be. But I'm sure I'm not unusual. There must be hundreds of people stuck in jobs they hate, or married to the wrong partner, or trying to be someone they're not. It's such an awful waste.' Catherine Jones – conscientious working wife and mother – is catapulted into a dramatic life-change. As the shock waves subside, she realises that she's never had the chance to be her true self, never even considered who that self might be. Over the years she has become her own gaoler, someone merely waiting to live. Peeling off her 'second skin' of duty, guilt and fear, she starts living with a vengeance. She joins a bohemian flat share in Camden Town with people little older than her own children. She takes a job in Camden market – a startling contrast to suburbia. She meets a poet, Will, and embarks on her first ever affair. But her...

Hundreds of hopefuls enter competitions, few expect to win – not even Carole Joseph, who has entered the same contest 63 times, under a variety of names, and is astounded by her prize of a holiday for two in glitzy Las Vegas. The winning name she 'borrowed' is that of Norah Toomey, a middle-aged psychiatric patient – not exactly the ideal travelling companion for a lively 18-year-old out for kicks. The two depart together, and a surprising bond of affection and dependence develops between the unlikely pair: impulsive Carole with her seesaw moods and explosive sexuality egging on the shy, unworldly Norah, whose only break to date from a lifetime in institutions has been the annual hospital day-trip to Littlehampton. But Las Vegas isn't Littlehampton, as these two innocents discover to their cost, as they are plunged into a lurid world of strippers and gamblers, brothels and crime. Sin City, on the surface, is a fairy-tale come...

After more than twenty years confined behind high walls, Sister Mary Hilary runs away, on impulse, from the strict contemplative convent she entered at the age of seventeen; hits the crowds of London on chaotic Christmas Eve. She has been living in strict silence in the rural depths of Norfolk with just a dozen fellow nuns, has never handled money, never dressed in anything but long medieval robes, yet now she is confronted with superstores and towering blocks, confused by noise and neon, jostled by the rude mob battling home. She has no home – nor any plans of prospects; has lived for God alone; has lived for God alone; her chief work prayer, her duty to deny and punish self. But can she survive without a self, in a self-regarding world she barely recognises, a greedy, permissive and amoral world, where media hype runs riot, a celibate priest seduces her, and even a Charismatic Conference seems a hotbed of hysteria? Wendy Perriam takes a sharp...

Frances is on a fertility drug and sizing up the milkman. Charles is struggling between shocked disapproval and guilty desire for his own illegitimate daughter – a fifteen-year-old secret who arrives and takes over the nest. Their sterile and rule-ridden marriage (where even sex requires timetable and rule-book) begins to fall apart. In desperation, Frances seeks an escape-route, in a wild attempt to change the cold climate of her life. In this tragic-comic study of relationships in conflict, Perriam reflects on freedom in all its different aspects, ranging motherhood against emancipation, teenage rebellion against middle-aged repression, and sexual abandonment against puritan restraint. She also makes us laugh. Cuckoo is extremely funny, though in Perriam's work we are often laughing at ourselves and the sad lunacy of the way we run our lives. By the end of this explosive novel, the cuckoos – and the cuckolds – are clearly...