Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Enveloped in the dark inner kingdom of her schizophrenia, 16-year-old Deborah is haunted by private tormentors that isolate her from the outside world. With the reluctant and fearful consent of her parents, she enters a mental hospital where she will spend the next three years battling to regain her sanity with the help of a gifted psychiatrist. As Deborah struggles to regain her sanity, the listener is inexorably drawn into her private suffering.

Winona is a young Lakota orphan adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole. Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, she is educated and loved, forging a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But the fragile harmony of her unlikely family unit, in the aftermath of the Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand. 

In I Love Dick, published in 1997, Chris Kraus boldly tore away the veil that separates fiction from reality and privacy from self-expression. It's no wonder that I Love Dick instantly elicited violent controversies and attracted a host of passionate admirers. The story is gripping enough: in 1994 a married, failed independent filmmaker, turning forty, falls in love with a well-known theorist and endeavors to seduce him with the help of her husband.

A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers. 'A wonderful novel, full of energy and art, at once funny and heartbreaking...terrific' WASHINGTON POST Anniversary edition with a new afterword from the author. A worldwide bestseller since its publication, Irving's classic is...

Rachel has always loved being at the centre of her large family. She has fiercely devoted herself to her three sons all their lives, and continues to do so even now they are all grown up. They are, of course, devoted to her – she and Anthony, their father, hold the family together at their big, beautiful, ramshackle house near the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk. But when Luke, her youngest, gets married, Rachel finds that control is slipping away.

Jessica has just had the wedding of her dreams, and now she's setting up a new home with her lawyer husband, Matthew. Even better - they are expecting a child. But as they paint the nursery and shop for the baby, Jessica keeps waiting for the excitement to kick in. Why isn't she transformed by maternal feelings? Where is the all-consuming love she's supposed to feel for her child?

‘Riveting, profoundly moving’ Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven ‘Beautiful and devastating’ Red ‘Thought-provoking and profound’ Cosmopolitan Imagine a world where sleep could trap you, for days, for weeks, for months… She sleeps through sunrise. She sleeps through...

Cartes Postales from Greece is an extraordinary new book from Victoria Hislop, the Sunday Times Number One bestselling author of The Island, The Return, The Thread, and The Sunrise. It is fiction in full colour - magical and unique. 'Victoria Hislop writes so vividly about the Med, you can...

Tory Brennan - great niece of Dr Temperance Brennan - and the Virals return for their most terrifying adventure yet. Life appears peaceful on Loggerhead Island – rescued from financial disaster, the research institute is flourishing once more. But the tranquillity is quickly shattered when Tory Brennan and her technophile gang discover a mysterious box buried in the ground.

Philip Noble is an eleven-year-old in crisis. His pub landlord father has died in a road accident, and his mother is succumbing to the greasy charms of her dead husband's brother, Uncle Alan. The remaining certainties of Philip's life crumble away when his father's ghost appears in the pub and declares Uncle Alan murdered him. Arming himself with weapons from the school chemistry cupboard, Philip vows to carry out the ghost's relentless demands for revenge.

Rosemary doesn't talk much and about certain things she's silent. She had a sister, Fern, her whirlwind other half, who vanished from her life in circumstances she wishes she could forget. And it's been 10 years since she last saw her beloved older brother, Lowell. Now at college, Rosemary starts to see she can't go forward without going back to the time when aged five, she was sent away from home to her grandparents and returned to find Fern gone.

Filth ( Failed in London, Try Hong Kong) is a successful lawyer when he marries Elisabeth in Hong Kong soon after the war. Reserved, immaculate, and courteous, Filth finds it hard to demonstrate his emotions.

But Elisabeth is different - a free spirit. She was brought up in the Japanese internment camps, which killed both her parents but left her with a lust for survival and an affinity with the Far East. No wonder she is attracted to Filth's hated rival at the bar - the brash, forceful Veneering.

A mesmerising tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is one of Stephen King's most beloved and iconic stories and it helped make Castle Rock a place listeners would return to over and over again. Suspenseful, mysterious and heart-wrenching, this iconic King novella, populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, is about a fiercely compelling convict named Andy Dufresne who is seeking his ultimate revenge.

The Edgar-winning short story from the author of Gone Girl. A young woman is making a living, faking it as a cut-price psychic working at Spiritual Palms (with some illegal soft-core sex work on the side). She makes a decent wage - mostly by telling people what they want to hear. But then she meets Susan Burke. Susan moved to the city one year ago with her husband and 15-year-old stepson, Miles. They live in a Victorian house called Carterhook Manor, built in 1893.

We all need to know where we come from, where we belong. But for David and Nathalie, this need to know is even more urgent, since they are adopted. Brought up by the same parents but born to two different mothers, they have grown up as brother and sister, and share a fierce loyalty.Their decision, in their late thirties, to embark upon the journey to find their birth mothers is no straightforward matter.

The irrepressible Russell "Buffy" Buffery has upped sticks from London and moved to Knockton, Powys, to a B&B inherited from an old flame. With his future spread before him, and a string of failed marriages behind him, Buffy decides it's time for a new challenge. Meanwhile: Harold's wife has run off with a younger woman leaving him alone with his as-yet-unwritten novel narrated by Mary Pickford's cat; Amy's weedy boyfriend has turned out to be not so needy after all; and Andy's partner's corset-and-suspender-clad attempts at seduction are having anything but the desired effect.

From an unusual weight-losing recipe found in an old notebook - and used with alarming consequences - to the queen of copy-cats who drives her neighbour mad with anger, Over The Gate is a hugely entertaining collection of tales from Fairacre, past and present.

As teenagers, Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed 'The Ice Cream Girls' by the press and were dealt with by the courts. Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen...

A warm, witty and wise debut about the ups and downs of life as a TV presenterWhen Christie Lynch, journalist and single mother of two, appears as a guest on a daytime TV talk show, she could never have imagined that it would lead to a new career. Spotted by hugely successful talent agent, Julia Keen, Christie can't help but be impressed by Julia's charm and stellar client list.

For amiable City trader Jimmy Corby money was the new Rock n' Roll. His whole life was a party, adrenalin charged and cocaine fuelled. If he hadn't met Monica he would probably have ended up either dead or in rehab. But Jimmy was as lucky in love as he was at betting on dodgy derivatives, so...