Contemporary Fiction

"I am not asking you to agree with me. In fact, I'd be happier if you didn't. I am afraid of self-censorship in a place of supposed radicalism like a liberal arts school because I am afraid that one day we will all be too afraid o…

Jamaica, 1976.  Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley's house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught. In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James reimagines the story behind this near-…

The sensational debut novel about love, friendship and finding happiness in the most unexpected places. ‘Could I one day inspire happiness in others, the same way he seemed to do in me?’ Harley is a young queer Black man strugglin…

A child will be born who will change everything. Tech billionaire Lukas Parn has an ambitious plan. Behind the doors of the IVF clinic in his London institute, a daring switch is made. Young academic Talissa Adam believes she is s…

Summer's almost over and Alex is no longer welcome... Alex is a young woman teetering on the edge. Behind on her rent and with nothing to keep her in New York she agrees to spend August by the beach, in the lavish house of the ol…

With gorgeous prose, European glamour, and an expansive wanderlust, Christine Mangan's The Continental Affair is a fast-paced, Agatha Christie-esque caper packed full of romance and suspense. Meet Henri and Louise. Two strangers,…

Held captive for years in a small shed, a woman and her precocious young son finally gain their freedom, and the boy experiences the outside world for the first time.To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born…

The first story collection from Kate Atkinson in twenty years, Normal Rules Don't Apply is a dazzling array of eleven interconnected tales from the bestselling author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life. In this first full co…

'The name's O'Carroll-Kelly. Ross O'Carroll-Kelly.' As the great James Bond said, 'History isn't kind to men who play God.' How right the dude ended up being.My secret double-life was finally catching up with me. Sorcha wanted a d…

New home, new name and newly thirty: Phoebe Forde has stepped into emigrant life in Copenhagen with her anxious dog, Dolly. Almost three years into her gender transition, she has learned to move through the world carefully, savour…

THIS IS ONE HELL OF A STORY. IT’S JUST NOT HERS TO TELL. When failed writer June Hayward witnesses her rival Athena Liu die in a freak accident, she sees her opportunity… and takes it.So what if it means stealing Athena’s final m…

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. Tom and Ming meet on a night out at university and fall hard for each other.It’s not long before they are planning a future and building a life. Then Ming announces her intention to transit…

As teenagers, Helen, Annie and Laura were inseparable, bonding over family, boys and their dreams for the future. But when school ended, so did their friendship. Twenty-five years later, a snowstorm forces the three women to spend…

Helen Zhang is the bestselling author who can't write her own happy-ever-after. Grant Shepard is the screenwriter with the movie-star looks who can't afford his therapist.When the two of them are put together to adapt Helen's book…

Nahr has been confined to the Cube: nine square metres of glossy grey cinderblock, devoid of time, its patterns of light and dark nothing to do with day and night. Journalists visit her, but get nowhere; because Nahr is not going …

Two boys can't remember the last time they had a hug. Meet Finlay.He's studying for his nursing degree at Glasgow University, against all the odds. But coming straight from care means he has no support network. How can he write e…

Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes? Did you see the pictures of the body? Did you look for them? It's been nearly a decade sin…

Danny Hook is a directionless twenty-something year old fresh out of therapy. Dealing with his disappointed family and dead-end career, he's sure things couldn't get much worse, until a drink-driving accident leaves his best frien…

Carmel had been alone all her life. The baby knew this. They looked at each other, and all of time was there.The baby knew how vast her mother's loneliness had been. Nell is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets ou…

When Francis Conroy wakes up one morning in an unfamiliar bed, with a wife he's never met before, in a house he's never seen in a country he left as a child, he has no idea what sort of a confusd, extraordinary and ultimately upli…

The world has fallen. Without warning, a mysterious and omnipotent force has claimed the planet for their own.There are no negotiations, no demands, no reasons given for their actions. All they have is a message: humanity has thir…

The bestselling novel by cult writer Wang Xiaobo, a satire of the Cultural Revolution, in its first full English translation. Twenty-one year old Wang Er, stationed in a remote mountain commune, spends his days herding oxen, nappi…

A young woman reorients her relationship to the world in the wake of sudden deafness in this mesmerizing debut novel for readers of Rachel Cusk, Clarice Lispector, and Fleur Jaeggy. When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist…

Dancing is the one thing that can solve Stephen's problems. At Church with his family, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise. With his band, making music speaking not just to their hardships, but their joys.Grooving with his…

Dan Fogarty, an Irishman living in England, is looking after his sister Una, now seventy and suffering from dementia in a care home in Margate. From Dan's anarchic account, we gradually piece together the story of the Fogarty fami…

Jamie O'Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especia…

A brilliantly inventive and often funny story of family and identity, inheritance and birthright, ambiguous loss and finding your way, Frank Walsh's voice will stay with you long after you've finished reading. Frank Whelan is the …

On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend’s phone and makes a startling discovery: he’s an anonymous Internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in Internet f…

One house, three strangers... Tessa. Activist, 69 years young. Not ready to sell up her big seaside house, but she knows a little help around the place would do wonders.Conn. Looking for a quiet place to heal after a family trag…

The belly groan of a face unpeeled. A break-up poem recited knee-deep in bog water. An ancient burial mound rising and falling like a chest.The ghost of Stephen Gately reading the ingredients on a ham and cheese sandwich. Startlin…