60 1988 British novels

An Account of Capers is a novel by Scottish writer Bruce Marshall. His last book, it was published posthumously in 1988.

The Annotated Hobbit: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is an edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit with a commentary by Douglas A. Anderson. It was first published in 1988 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first American publication of The Hobbit, and by Unwin Hyman of London.

The Beginning of Spring is a 1988 novel by the British author Penelope Fitzgerald. Set in Moscow in 1913, it tells the story of a Moscow-born English-educated print shop owner whose English wife has suddenly abandoned him and their three children. The novel was shortlisted for the 1988 Booker Prize.

The Book of the Damned is a 1988 fantasy/horror novel by World Fantasy Award winner Tanith Lee. Set in Paradys, an alternative version of Paris, it takes place in three novellas set in different periods in the city's dark history.

Cabal is a 1988 horror novel by the British author Clive Barker. It was originally published in the United States as part of a collection comprising a novel and several short stories from Barker's sixth and final volume of the Books of Blood.

The Captain and the Enemy is the last novel published by the English author Graham Greene.

Children of the Thunder is a 1988 science fiction novel by John Brunner.

The Coming of the King: The First Book of Merlin is a 1988 historical fantasy novel by Nikolai Tolstoy drawing upon Arthurian legend and more broadly, Celtic and Germanic mythology. The novel is the first in an as-yet unfinished trilogy.

The Confession of Brother Haluin is a medieval mystery novel set in the winter of 1142–1143 by Ellis Peters. It is the fifteenth novel in the Cadfael Chronicles, and was first published in 1988.

Coots in the North is the name given by Arthur Ransome's biographer, Hugh Brogan, to an incomplete Swallows and Amazons novel found in Ransome's papers. Brogan edited and published the first few chapters as a fragment with a selection of Ransome's other short stories in 1988. The story starts in the Broads but continues in the Lake District after the Death and Glories hitch a ride aboard a boat being delivered to the Lake in the North.

Cradle is a 1988 science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee. The major premise of Cradle is contact between a few humans from the Miami area in 1994 and the super robots of a damaged space ship submerged off the Florida coast. Telecommunication advances such as videotelephones and highly efficient underwater scanning equipment used in the story bridge from the everyday, real-life aspects of the setting toward the near future, bespeaking technological progress.

Death of an Outsider is the third mystery novel in the Hamish Macbeth series by Marion Chesney under her pseudonym M. C. Beaton. It was first published in 1988.

Desolation Road is a 1988 science fiction novel written by Ian McDonald. It was McDonald's first published novel. The plot takes place on a far future Mars in a town that develops around an oasis in the terraformed Martian desert. McDonald published a sequel, Ares Express, in 2001.

Duncton Wood is the first novel by English author William Horwood. It is the first of a six-volume fantasy series of the same name.

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988) is the third novel by English author Dame Hilary Mantel, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and 2012. It tells the story of an Englishwoman, Frances Shore, who moves to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to live with her husband, an engineer.

Eva is a science fiction novel for young adults by Peter Dickinson, published by Gollancz in 1988. Set in a dystopian future, it features "the hybrid that results when the brain-patterns and memory of a dying girl are transferred into the brain of a chimpanzee." Dickinson researched chimp behavior for the book and he dedicated it to Jane Goodall.

A Far Cry from Kensington is a novel by British author Muriel Spark published in 1988.

The Fifth Child is a short novel by the British writer Doris Lessing, first published in the United Kingdom in 1988, and since translated into several languages. It describes the changes in the happy life of a married couple, Harriet and David Lovatt, as a consequence of the birth of Ben, their fifth child. A sequel, Ben, in the World (2000) recounts Ben's life after he has left his family.

For Love of Evil is a fantasy novel by Piers Anthony. It is the sixth of eight books in the Incarnations of Immortality series.

The Greenhouse is British author Susan Hillmore's first novel. It was first published in 1988 by Collins Harvill It was republished by Vintage Books in 2000 when it was praised as being one of the 'best books of 2000' according to critics at The Independent.

The Hermit of Eyton Forest is a medieval mystery novel by Ellis Peters, set in the autumn of 1142. It is the 14th novel in the Cadfael Chronicles and was first published in 1987.

The Hollywood Takes is a novel written by the English author Michael de Larrabeiti and published in the United States by Doubleday in 1988.

The Holy Innocents (1988) is a novel by Gilbert Adair about French siblings and an American stranger who enters their world. Its themes were inspired by Jean Cocteau's novel Les Enfants Terribles and by the film of the same name directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.

The House of Stairs is a 1988 novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, published under the name Barbara Vine. Writing in the Washington Post, Michael Dirda referred to the novel as a "stunning suspense [thriller]".

Lavondyss also titled Lavondyss: Journey to an Unknown Region is a fantasy novel by British writer Robert Holdstock, the second book in his Mythago Wood series. Lavondyss was originally published in 1988. The name of the novel hints at the real and mythological locales of Avon, Lyonesse, Avalon and Dis; within the novel Lavondyss is the name of the remote, ice-age heart of Ryhope wood.

The Letter of Marque is the twelfth historical novel in the Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1988. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

The Lives of Christopher Chant is a children's fantasy novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones published by Methuen Children's Books in 1988. It was the fourth published of the seven Chrestomanci books. When the first four books were reissued in the UK to accompany the fifth as a matching set (2000), this one was subtitled The Childhood of Chrestomanci and cover illustrations by Paul Slater branded them all The Worlds of Chrestomanci.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a 1988 humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams. It is the second book by Adams featuring private detective Dirk Gently, the first being Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The title is a phrase that appeared in Adams' novel Life, the Universe and Everything to describe the wretched boredom of immortal being Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged, and is a play on the theological treatise Dark Night of the Soul, by Saint John of the Cross.

Matilda is a book by British writer Roald Dahl. It was published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape in London, with 232 pages and illustrations by Quentin Blake. It was adapted as an audio reading by actress Kate Winslet; a 1996 feature film directed by Danny DeVito; a two-part BBC Radio 4 programme starring Lauren Mote as Matilda, Emerald O'Hanrahan as Miss Honey, Nichola McAuliffe as Miss Trunchbull and narrated by Lenny Henry; and a 2010 musical.

Mossflower is a fantasy novel by Brian Jacques, published in 1988. It is the second book published and third chronologically in the Redwall series.

Mother London (1988) is a novel by Michael Moorcock. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Although the city of London itself is perhaps the central character, it follows three outpatients from a mental hospital—a music hall artist, a reclusive writer and a woman just awoken from a long coma —who experience the history of the city from the Blitz to the late eighties through chaotic experience and sensory delusions. The novel is a non-chronological compilation of episodes, snippets and sidelines, rather than a single cohesive narrative. A piece in The Guardian called it 'a great, humane document'.

Necroscope II: Wamphyri! is the second book in the Necroscope series by British writer Brian Lumley. It was released in 1988.

Nice Work is a 1988 novel by British author David Lodge. It is the final volume of Lodge's "Campus Trilogy", after Changing Places (1975) and Small World: An Academic Romance (1984). Nice Work won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award in 1988 and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

A Pack of Liars is a children fiction novel by Anne Fine. It was first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1988. It won the Dillons/Puffin Birmingham Book Award in 1991.

A Pack of Lies: twelve stories in one is a children's novel with metafictional elements, written by Geraldine McCaughrean and published by Oxford in 1988. It features a family antique shop whose new salesman tells historical tales to sell antiques. The stories vary widely in type.

The Player of Games is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1988. It was the second published Culture novel. A film version was planned by Pathé in the 1990s, but was abandoned.

A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael is a collection of three short stories by Ellis Peters, featuring her medieval detective, Brother Cadfael, first published in 1988.

Ratking is a 1988 novel by Michael Dibdin, and is the first book in the popular Aurelio Zen series, introducing readers to the Italian police commissario's morally shady world. On publication it won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for fiction.

Rebuilding Coventry is a 1988 novel written by Sue Townsend about a woman from Middle England who is accused of murdering her neighbour and goes on the run to London, and captures the zeitgeist of England in the 1980s.

Red Sky in the Morning is a young adult novel by Elizabeth Laird, first published in 1988. The novel was published as Loving Ben in its initial American release.

Rivals is a novel by the English author Jilly Cooper. It is the second of the Rutshire Chronicles, a series of books set in the fictional English county of Rutshire.

Running Wild is a novella by British writer J. G. Ballard, first published in 1988. The novel takes the form of a detective novel, recounting the investigation of a mysterious massacre in suburbia through the diary of a forensic psychiatrist.

The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. The title refers to the satanic verses, a group of Quranic verses that refer to three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the "satanic verses" was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.

Scorpius, first published in 1988, is the seventh novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton and in the United States by Putnam.

Second Fiddle (1988) is a best-selling novel by British author Mary Wesley.

Sharpe's Rifles is chronologically the sixth, but the ninth published, historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, first published in 1988.

Sourcery is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the fifth book in his Discworld series, published in 1988. On the Discworld, sourcerers – wizards who are sources of magic, and thus immensely more powerful than normal wizards – were the main cause of the great mage wars that left areas of the disc uninhabitable. As eight is a powerful magical number on Discworld, men born as the eighth son of an eighth son are commonly wizards. Since sourcerers are born the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son, they are wizards squared. To prevent the creation of sourcerers, therefore, wizards are not allowed to marry or have children. The first few pages of the novel deal with a sourcerer's father who cheats death by making a prophecy that Death must honour; the alternative is to risk destroying the Discworld. The rest of the novel deals with the sourcerer's plan to have wizards rule the Discworld, and the efforts of a small group – including Rincewind the Wizard, Nijel the Destroyer and Conina the Hairdresser, daughter of Cohen the Barbarian – to thwart those plans.

Spy Hook is a 1988 spy novel by Len Deighton. It is the first novel in the second of three trilogies about Bernard Samson, a middle-aged and somewhat jaded intelligence officer working for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Spy Hook is part of the Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy, being succeeded by Spy Line and Spy Sinker. This trilogy is preceded by the Game, Set and Match trilogy and followed by the final Faith, Hope and Charity trilogy. Deighton's novel Winter (1987) is a prequel to the nine novels, covering the years 1900-1945 and providing the backstory to some of the characters.

Summer's Lease is a novel by Sir John Mortimer, author of the Rumpole novels, which is set predominantly in Italy. It was first published in 1988 and made into a British television mini-series, first shown in 1989. The title "Summer's Lease" is a play on a line from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: And summer's lease hath all too short a date. The novel involves the leasing of a Tuscan villa for the summer holidays. It is divided into six parts: "Preparations", "Arrival", "First Week", "Second Week", "Third Week", and "The Return".

The Swimming-Pool Library is a 1988 novel by Alan Hollinghurst.

The Temple is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Stephen Spender, sometimes labelled a bildungsroman because of its explorations of youth and first love. It was written after Spender spent his summer vacation in Germany in 1929 and recounts his experiences there. It was not completed until the early 1930s. Because of its frank depictions of homosexuality, it was not published in the UK until 1988.

Thornyhold is a fantasy novel by Mary Stewart published in 1988.

Traveller is a historical novel written by Richard Adams in 1988. It recounts the American Civil War through the viewpoint of Traveller, the favorite horse of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Uncle Target is a third person narrative novel by English author Gavin Lyall, first published in 1988, and the fourth and last in his series of novels with the character “Harry Maxim” as the protagonist. The title is explained as a piece of army slang - Uncle Target meaning the person everyone is shooting at.

Utz is a novel written by the British author Bruce Chatwin, first published in 1988. The novel follows the fortunes of Kaspar Utz who lives in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Utz is a collector of Meissen porcelain and finds a way to travel outside the eastern bloc to acquire new pieces. Whilst in the West, Utz often considers defecting but he would be unable to take his collection with him and so, a prisoner of his collection, he is unable to leave.

The Veiled One is a novel by British crime-writer Ruth Rendell. It is the 14th entry in the Inspector Wexford series.

Watchman is a 1988 novel written by Ian Rankin, and is one of the author's earliest works. Originally published in 1988, it was reissued with a new introduction by Rankin in 2004.

What Hetty Did is the seventh novel by J.L. Carr, published in 1988 when he was 76 years old. The novel describes the experiences of an 18-year-old girl. Hetty Birtwisle has been brought up by adoptive parents in the Fens; after a beating by her father, discovering that she was adopted, she flees to Birmingham where she has learnt she was born and alters her surname to Beauchamp.

Who’s Afraid of Beowulf? is the second humorous-fantasy novel by popular British author Tom Holt, first published in the UK in 1988 by Macmillan Publishers. Unlike Holt's other early books, this is not based on any particular opera or well-known mythic cycle.

Wyrd Sisters is Terry Pratchett's sixth Discworld novel, published in 1988, and re-introduces Granny Weatherwax of Equal Rites.