Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Isabel Dalhousie - philosopher, mother and friend - is taking on the mammoth task of hosting her school reunion. In the hours before 25 former classmates descend on her home and the caterers arrive to set up a buffet, Isabel has time to reflect. She is mindful of the fact that reunions can bring up all sorts of uncomfortable feelings. Later that night, with the party in full swing, Isabel realises that the pull of the past remains as strong as ever.

Hidden by London’s wealth, energy and need for cheap labour, the city’s immigrant population is powerless, despised and often illegal. So when a young woman’s body is discovered on Hampstead Heath one cold morning, she could be anyone...Rich or poor, outsider or insider, five strangers are connected in undreamed-of ways as greed, courage, murder and kindness link their lives.

Shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize. Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat told with bristling tenderness and black humour the stories of that titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, and his clever, misunderstood wife, Betty. Last Friends, the final volume of this trilogy, picks up with Terence Veneering, Filth's great rival in work and - though it was never spoken of - in love.

ついに作者が登場し、主人公と哲学問答 前巻で描かれた、アキレスとアキレスの馬による「トロイ戦争の原因」に関する考察は本巻でも延々と続き、一向に出口が見えない。

Toby Jones and Holliday Grainger star in a new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Dodie Smith's enduringly popular coming-of-age novel In the 1930s, seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain lives in a crumbling ruin of a castle in the Suffolk countryside. Her father, an author wrestling with...

Bloomsbury presents Beastings by Benjamin Myers, read by Ralph Ineson. Winner of the Portico Prize for Literature and the Northern Writers’ Award ‘A brilliant, brutal novel’ ROBERT MACFARLANE A girl and a baby. A priest and a poacher. A savage pursuit through the landscape of a changing...

Ada was born with one foot on the other side. Having prayed her into existence, her parents Saul and Saachi struggle to deal with the volatile and contradictory spirits peopling their troubled girl. When Ada comes of age and heads to college, the entities within her grow in power and agency. An...

Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish. Rather the opposite in fact - simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance, made love to the local drunk and embarked on a course of destruction and revenge.

Rumour has it that notorious pirate Anne Bonny hid her treasure somewhere in Charleston in 1720. No-one knows where, but Tory Brennan - great-niece of famous forensic anthropologist Dr Tempe Brennan - is certain that the Virals can work out Bonny's cryptic clues. A deadly pathIt isn't long before the Virals are on the right track. But they aren't the only ones searching for the treasure. Someone is following them, and will stop at nothing to get their hands on it.

A bracing meditation on fame and celebrity, and the redemptive, healing power of art; a portrait of the ravages of disappointment and divorce; a poignant consideration of the rites of fatherhood and manhood; a novel soaked in rage and sex, longing and despair; and a passionate love letter to the world of theatre, A Bright Ray of Darkness showcases Ethan Hawke's gifts as a novelist as never before.

Lester Ferris needs a rest. He's spent his life being shot at, and Afghanistan was the last stop on his road to exhaustion. Mancreu is the ideal place for Lester to relax. A former British colony, soon to be destroyed because of its very special version of toxic pollution. But Lester Ferris makes a friend: a street kid with a comicbook fixation who will need a home - who might, Lester hopes, become an adopted son. But in a place like Mancreu, just what sort of hero will the boy need?

Emily Jones is a new mum: she's bought the swank buggy, planned her labour soundtrack, read the books. Then her little girl actually arrives and Emily realises: she has all the gear, no idea - and only 12 months of maternity leave to figure it out. Lonely but not alone, it's the women Emily befriends in this first year who really see her through to the other side. 

Henry Tillotson, a generous, genial man, rescues Margaret from a disastrous marriage in Egypt and brings her home to the West Country as his new wife. On the threshold she gives him a black eye and retires straight to bed where she remains, apart from the occasional malevolent outburst, for the rest of her life.

From Richard & Judy Book club author Catherine Isaac comes the emotional and uplifting story of love, loss, friendship and a letter that changes everything. In late 1983, a letter arrives from Italy, containing secrets so unthinkable that it is hidden away, apparently forever. More than three...

‘A gutsy, heartfelt novel’ Sunday Times ‘[Shriver’s] best novel yet’ Independent on Sunday ‘A surprising sledgehammer of a novel’ The Times ‘Shriver is brilliant on the novel shock that is hunger… glorious, fearless, almost fanatically hard-working prose’ Guardian ‘Lionel...

Fifteen-year-old Zoe has a secret - a dark and terrible secret that she can't confess to anyone she knows. But then one day she hears of a criminal, Stuart Harris, locked up on death row in Texas. Like Zoe, Stuart is no stranger to secrets. Or lies. Or murder. Full of heartache yet humour, Zoe...

Glorious short stories from international bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith, in a collection written especially for World Book Day. There are times when ladies must use all their wisdom and good sense to face life's problems and mysteries. Mma Ramotswe, owner of the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, keeps her wits about her as she looks into why the country's star goalkeeper isn't saving goals.

In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders.... August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka takes in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry. In a split second, the world turns white.

Mysterious, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, these are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. They compose a secret history, both intimate and panoramic, of modern times, and offer a kaleidoscopic impression of the world within a world that is Paris.

As a librarian, Imogen read a lot of books, but none of them covered real life on the Riviera. Her holiday with tennis ace Nicky and the whole glamorous coterie of journalist, playboy, photographer was a revelation. But the path of a jet-set virgin in that lovely wicked world was a hard one. Imogen began to wonder if virtue really was its own reward....