FICTION · GENERAL
Marianne Willman
Also known as: Marianne Willman, Marianne Clark
Jonathan Stuart Bailey (born 25 April 1988) is an English actor known for his dramatic, comedic, and musical roles on stage and screen. His accolades include a Laurence Olivier Award and a Critics' Choice Television Award as well as a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award and four Actor Awards. He was included by Time magazine in their Time 100 Next list of the world's most influential artists and was named as People's Sexiest Man Alive in 2025. Bailey began his career as a child actor in Royal Shakespeare Company productions and by eight was performing as Gavroche in a West End production of Les Misérables. He starred in contemporary plays such as The York Realist in 2018 and Cock in 2022; in classical plays like Othello in 2013 and Richard II in 2025; as well as in musicals, namely the London revival of The Last Five Years in 2016 and the West End gender-swapped revival of Company for which he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical in 2019.
Night fell quickly in the Forest of Tethir, and the caravan guards cast wary glances into the tall, dense foliage that walled either side of the trade route.
— from Silver shadows
Most acclaimed
Thomasina
By the author of the classic The Snow Goose, a heartbreaking story about a young girl and her most unusual cat, who has magical powers that save her owner's life. Seven-year-old Mary adores her ginger cat, Thomasina, and is crushed when Thomasina falls sick, and Mary’s father, a grim, inflexible man who is the town vet, decrees that the only thing to be done is to put Thomasina down. Mary refuses to speak to her father, and then she herself contracts a life-threatening disease. In the meantime, however, Thomasina has been rescued—by the mysterious Lori, the Red Witch of the glen. Thomasina is now Talitha, the descendant of an Egyptian goddess, and she is coming back to seek revenge! Thomasina, like Jenny of The Abandoned, Paul Gallico’s other great feline heroine (Jenny is Thomasina’s great-aunt), tells her own story in her own way, witty, charming, divine, and sometimes as sharp as an unsheathed claw. Thomasina is a cat for the ages. Thomasina is a sheer delight.
Silver shadows
Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, one of a group of humans who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the worlds of humans and vampires. They protect vampire secrets—and human lives. In The Fiery Heart, Sydney risked everything to follow her gut, walking a dangerous line to keep her feelings hidden from the Alchemists. Now in the aftermath of an event that ripped their world apart, Sydney and Adrian struggle to pick up the pieces and find their way back to each other. But first, they have to survive. For Sydney, trapped and surrounded by adversaries, life becomes a daily struggle to hold on to her identity and the memories of those she loves. Meanwhile, Adrian clings to hope in the face of those who tell him Sydney is a lost cause, but the battle proves daunting as old demons and new temptations begin to seize hold of him...