"She imagines it as a novelist might imagine it" is the first sentence, in fact, of this latest novel by the British writer and drama critic Francis King.

Only a novelist could ever have imagined such nonsense.

The novelist imagines it.

Nobody's family, in short, was as transcendentally evil as the modern autobiographical novelist (or poet) imagined his family to be.

A novelist imagines the murders of his fellow tenants.

Perhaps the title was a piece of flattery on the doctor's part, or the novelist may have imagined that his marrying a Countess conferred on him letters of nobility.

Creating and entering a zone of such flagrant improbability, the novelist imagines himself released from most constraints of verisimilitude.

It reflected how a popular novelist and filmmaker cynically imagined the Senate to be at the end of the Eisenhower years.

Eight novelists imagine the final days of Qaddafi.

A sense of dread quickly develops as the Italian novelist, playwright and poet Dacia Maraini (who seems ably translated by Martha King) imagines these situations.