Contemporary Fiction

In her cramped New York apartment, a mother wilts beneath the intense August heat, struggling to adapt to her role as the silent interpreter of her newborn baby’s needs. She is not the first woman to give birth, to hold and …

El Evans is stuck in a dead-end job, hopelessly in unrequited love with her best friend, Ray, and in need of a major life change.After a New Year's resolution to 'Be More Wild', El is soon in possession of one (small) tattoo, one …

From the outside, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted w…

An obligatory note of hope, in a world going to hell. 'What are you afraid of, he asks me and the answer of course is dentistry, humiliation, scarcity, then he says what are your most useful skills? People think I'm funny.' Lizz…

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking.The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kaj…

Moving, passionate, and unforgettable, this novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover follows two young adults from completely different backgrounds embarking on a tentative romance, unaware of what the future…

I'm a Londoner now. I'm a voice in the noise. I'm ready.It's the turn of the millennium and, landing in London with nothing but her CD collection and demo tape, Orla Quinn moves into a squalid Kilburn house with her best mate and …

On opposite sides of the world, half-siblings Cassie and Christo have built their lives around work, intent on ignoring their painful past. When a dramatic storm in Galway hits the headlines, they're drawn back there to revisit a …

In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood.They're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue tha…

John Cheever - the 'Chekhov of the suburbs' - forever altered the landscape of contemporary literature. In a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his short stories, often published in the New Yorker, gave voice to the repressed…

Written when Truman Capote was in his teens and twenties, these recently-discovered short stories give a rare insight into an American icon.Tales of disappointed lovers, ageing spinsters, hoboes and murderous housewives, of yearni…

The Colonel took the top off the coffee can and saw that there was only one spoonful left. Fridays are different. Every other day of the week, the Colonel and his ailing wife fight a constant battle against poverty and monotony, s…

Santiago Nasar is brutally murdered in a small town by two brothers. All the townspeople knew it was going to happen - including the victim.But nobody did anything to prevent the killing. Twenty seven years later, a man arrives in…

When a witch doctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesising a plague of rabies in the Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears that his young daughter, Sierva Marí­a, was one of f…

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, for Holly Golightly: glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideway…

At the centre of Music for Chameleons is Handcarved Coffins, a 'nonfiction novel' based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer. Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of…

All her life Clare has never fit in. So when she arrives at Edinburgh University, she seizes the chance to reinvent herself.Then she meets Tabitha who is everything she’s not: charismatic, dazzling and intimidatingly wealthy. Soon…

For the people who swim there each day, the local pool is a haven of unexpected kinship and private solace. For Alice, her daily laps have become the ritual that gives her life meaning, even though she may not remember the combina…

Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club on the outskirts of London. Then everything changes. Yamaye meets Moose, who she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her…

It's as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movement…

Vacca Vale, Indiana: recently voted number 1 on Newsweek's list of dying American cities. According to the developers, however, it's a city with a whole history of reinvention, one that 'buzzes with the American spirit.' Not every…

The islands of Prospera lie in a vast ocean: in splendid isolation from the rest of humanity, or whatever remains of it. . . Citizens of the main island enjoy privileged lives, attended to by the support staff who live on a crampe…

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead comes the thrilling and entertaining sequel to Harlem Shuffle. 1971, New York City. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is going bankru…

When you live on the edge of society, it only takes one step to fall between the cracks Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolat…

When 14-year-old Sophie encounters a mysterious mentor who introduces her to philosophy, mysteries deepen in her own life.Why does she keep getting postcards addressed to another girl? Who is the other girl? And who, for that matt…

You can see it in them; all that anger inside, it's toxic. Throw some drink into it and everything bubbles over.People say that they never see it coming, the swing of the fist that kicks it all off, but I can tell. In these interc…

Just friends. Just friends. JUST FRIENDS.If they repeat it enough, maybe it'll be true . . .Hazel Camille Bradford knows she's a lot to take - and frankly, most men aren't up to the challenge. If her army of pets and taste for the…

Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no o…

In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her m…

Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of family friends. When a local politician takes an interest i…