A desert odyssey, a traumatised horse, and a love long postponed

Profile #12:  The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles.  Profile by Sarah Jane Marshall.

Three American lives unravel on an ill-fated visit to the the Sahara following the end of the Second World War. Originally an attempt to reinvigorate a flagging marriage, the apparently aimless journey destroys whatever was left of it and annihilates the travellers' previous existence forever.

Profile #13:  The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans.  Profile by Ceri Richards.

A young girl and her horse are horrendously scarred, both physically and psychologically, by a terrible encounter with a truck. Grace's workaholic mother drags them right across America in search of the rare healing powers of a man famed for his way with horses. But it is not only the daughter and the animal who are touched by the Horse Whisperer's magic.

Profile #14:  Persuasion by Jane Austen.  Profile by Inkslinger.

Having unwillingly foregone her only love eight years before, Anne Elliot has few prospects of marriage until Captain Frederick Wentworth – who has far exceeded his earlier humble expectations – comes back into her life.  But Ann is not the only one with her eye on the dashing naval officer, in Jane Austen's last completed novel.