Contemporary Fiction

Sometimes you need to get lost to find your wayMarnie is stuck.Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that often feels like it's passing her by.Michael is coming undone.Reeling from h…

The new collection from the legendary Atwood is led by the story of a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love -- and what comes after My heart is broken, Nell thi…

Trapped between caring for her alcoholic father and her job as a secretary at the boys' prison, Eileen Dunlop dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, her nights and weekends are filled with shoplifting and cleaning up…

Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive as the days pass. Jo's sensitivity and all her se…

Meet the Stockton women of Brooklyn Heights: Darley, who was born with money; Sasha, who married into it; and Georgiana, who wants to give it all away. Among glittering parties, weekend homes and hungover brunches, the three will …

This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a teenage boy. He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him…

She stood on the edge of the grass. She hovered between worlds, deciphering the ground, tracing in mid-air the hall, the dining-room, the stairs. She was despairingly close to home now, to the rooms and the voices that contained t…

Habitat follows seven neighbours over the course of a surreal and life-changing week as their mid-century apartment building in Oslo begins to inexplicably break down around them. Connected by familial ties, long acquaintance, sim…

'Half fairy tale and half historical account of a revolution that never was, Owen King's The Curator is full of sly humor, sensuality, and strangeness.' - Holly Black. From Sunday Times bestselling author Owen King comes a Dickens…

Juno loves Legs. She always has, ever since she fought the bullies for him in their first encounter at school.Growing up on the estate is tough for them both, but as they emerge into the possibilities and underground parties of 19…

Welcome to Forest Manor Hotel, where the staff and guests are one happy family. Except for Izzy and Lucas - bitter rivals banned from working the same shift, for everyone's sake. After struggling for years, the hotel may soon have…

The year is 1903, and tenacious and spirited Aoi Ichi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan, becoming the protégée of Shinonome, the oiran, or the highest-ranking courtesan. Through Shinonome's teachings, fiftee…

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…