The Flea PalaceShortlisted for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace is a moving and highly original novel about a group of individuals who live in the same building and who together become embroiled in a mystery. By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice. Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated

Dieting alone doesn't work

and this book reminds us just how super a mum can be

New York Bourbon Cheesecake

Of growing old and getting married

The book also includes:

Or are you overly anxious in others

Why don't heavier things fall faster

Dead will be shambling out of bookstores in October 2009

Sheela Banerjee traces the personal histories of friends and family through their names

They did so with a combination of guts and genius

and could not at once think of anything to say

Darwin was obsessed with the idea of sexual as well as natural selection