In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.

Alan and Sylvia fall in love and Alan gains a renewed sense of purpose. He begins to hope for an eventual release on licence. However both he and Sylvia have to face the fact that, for the foreseeable future, they cannot enjoy any physical intimacy. They decide to treat their affair as a long Victorian courtship.

An insignificant little middle-aged man strikes a heinous bargain with an underworld expert. The man has a problem: his wife. A professional killer would seem to be the answer.

In a fictitious English parliament, various tactics are employed in the pursuit of power, even to the extent of bismerching member's of a politician's family.

A tale of cat lovers, the social circle they inhabit and the power struggles between them.

A scientist who is obsessed with creating life finally does it, with tragic results.

' You should have thrown the hand-grenade.' ' I've still got it!' An unexpected stranger arrives at the old people's home in Norway where a famous writer is kept in confinement after the war. Should he be brought to trial for collaborating with the Nazis? Or will the young partisan carry through his original plan to kill him?