Contemporary Fiction

From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes a novel about an ordinary man who thought life’s surprises were behind him – until a chance encounter changed everything. Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his …

Sean is back. Back in Belfast and back into old habits. Back on the mad all-nighters, the borrowed tenners and missing rent, the casual jobs that always fall through.Back in these scarred streets, where the promised prosperity of …

It’s 1990 in London and, after the death of a young girl on an estate, the finger of suspicion is pointing at one reclusive Irish family: the Greens. At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, other-worldly, and once destined for a fu…

 A TV script writer thinks she's done with romance, until an unlikely love interest upends all her assumptions: a humorous, sharp and tender novel from the bestselling author of Eligible, American Wife and Prep. Life is (not…

From million-copy-bestselling author John Boyne, an inescapably gritty story about one young man whose direction in life takes a vastly different turn than what he expected. It’s the tabloid sensation of the year: two well-known f…

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…

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 …

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…