Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

'A big, bustling novel about love, friendship, money, ambition and the 21st century, packed with humour and intelligent observations ... I finished it tear-stained' Sunday Times 'Will have you hooked ... an ode to the enduring power of male friendship' The Times Best Summer Books For the first...

Raimund Gregorious - Mundus, as his students affectionately call him - is a predictable character. A bookish Latin professor, well-respected but perhaps a little boring. One stormy morning, he encounters a beautiful, distraught Portuguese woman in a red leather coat... Later that day Raimund will realise: that moment changed everything. All of a sudden, nothing in his life feels right. His restlessness is further fuelled when he finds a book by a little-known Portuguese writer, Amadeo de Prado.

There is a mystery surrounding the invitation by Craddock Fitch to the Big House. It is billed as a celebration of his business, but as everyone in the village has been invited, it is obviously more exciting than that. When everyone is assembled, they find that it is a lavish wedding reception for two very surprising people.

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.

Set in the extreme landscape of Alaska, The Quality of Silence follows the story of Yasmin and her deaf daughter, Ruby. Yasmin arrives in Alaska to be told her husband, Matt, is dead, the victim of a catastrophic accident. Yasmin, unable to accept this as truth, sets out into the frozen winter landscape, taking Ruby with her, in search of answers. But as a storm closes in, Yasmin realises that a very human danger may be keeping pace with them.

The rich are different. But fate is blind. A private jet plunges into the sea. The only survivors are down-on-his-luck artist Scott Burroughs and JJ Bateman, the four-year-old son of a super-rich TV executive. For saving the boy, Scott is suddenly a hero. And then, as the official investigation is rapidly overtaken by a media frenzy, it seems he may also be a villain. Why was he on the plane in the first place, and why did it crash?

The final book in Roddy Doyle's highly acclaimed Barrytown Trilogy focuses on Jimmy Rabbitte Sr, who is facing the vicissitudes of unemployment when his friend Bimbo invites him to become his partner in a new venture: a fish and chip van.

Zwanzig Jahre sind vergangen: Als sich Stefan und Theresa zufällig in Hamburg über den Weg laufen, endet ihr erstes Wiedersehen in einem Desaster. Zu Studienzeiten waren sie wie eine Familie füreinander, heute sind kaum noch Gemeinsamkeiten übrig. Stefan hat Karriere bei Deutschlands größter Wochenzeitung BOTE gemacht, Theresa den Bauernhof ihres Vaters in Brandenburg übernommen. Aus den unterschiedlichen Lebensentwürfen sind gegensätzliche Haltungen geworden. Stefan versucht bei seiner Zeitung, durch engagierte journalistische Projekte den Klimawandel zu bekämpfen.

If you read The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and enjoyed The Beekeeper of Aleppo, you will love The Stationery Shop of Tehran 1953, Tehran. In a small shop in a country on the brink of unrest, two people meet for the very first time. Roya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the...

Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. A Guardian Fiction Book of the year. Sometimes discovery brings destruction. "When We Cease to Understand the World" shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness.

Born into the lowest class of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen. But Flora is not like other bees. Despite her ugliness she has talents that are not typical of her kin. While mutant bees are usually instantly destroyed, Flora is removed from sanitation duty and is allowed to feed the newborns, before becoming a forager, collecting pollen on the wing. She also finds her way into the Queen's inner sanctum, where she discovers secrets both sublime and ominous.

In POP GOES THE WEASEL, James Patterson has created a formidable villain every reader will see in the shadows when the lights are out, a tender love story, a plot powered by relentless suspense and psychological thrills kicked up to an all-time high. 'It's all just a game, darling. I play with...

A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self-discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness and a love of reading. Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for...

It's 1995, Joah Harrigan is the brash, enigmatic frontman of the biggest band in the world, and Ysolde is the iconic face of a generation. She's who people write their songs about-the kind of girl who could ruin a man. He doesn't fall, and she doesn't chase. But from the moment they meet, it's headfirst, reckless, and inevitable. Too much, too fast, too consuming.

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...

On a normal day, in a normal house, on a normal street, wife and mother Fran has had enough. She packs a case, leaves a note for her bullying husband, Pete, and one for her beloved 21-year-old son, Harry, and heads to the airport - and freedom. In another house, on another street, Helena is desperately baiting her husband, Jack, into a fight. These days it feels like the only way to get Jack to take notice of her. Passionate, volatile, increasingly fragile, Helena is fast running out of hope.

Bestselling author Torey Hayden's novel is a fascinating study of a fractured family, a troubled child, and a psychiatrist's attempts to rescue them. Conor, aged nine, arrives in the play therapy room of child psychiatrist James Innes with the diagnosis "autistic". His mother Laura, an aloof, enigmatic novelist, can't handle him. His rancher father, embroiled in divorcing Laura, does not feel there is anything wrong with Conor. His six-year-old sister Morgana insists he really does see ghosts.

Pru's husband has walked out, leaving her alone to contemplate her future. She's missing not so much him, but the life they once had - picnicking on the beach with small children, laughing together, nestling up like spoons in the cutlery drawer as they sleep. Now there's just a dip on one side of the bed and no one to fill it. In a daze, Pru goes off to a friend's funeral. Usual old hymns, words of praise and a eulogy but...it doesn't sound like the friend Pru knew. And it isn't. She's gone to the wrong service.

Dorothy meets a handsome young man with an eye for her inheritance while she is in her sophomore year. They are to be married and her life will be blissful; but Dorothy is pregnant and her fiancé's plans are ruined, for Dorothy would be disinherited if her father discovered the truth. So the...

"I'll see you in twenty-five years." Laura Palmer. "Also, ich musste wieder auf ein paar Tage nach Zürich. Es war ganz schrecklich. Aus Nervosität darüber hatte ich mich das gesamte verlängerte Wochenende über so unwohl gefühlt, dass ich unter starker Verstopfung litt. Dazu muss ich sagen, dass ich vor einem Vierteljahrhundert eine Geschichte geschrieben hatte, die ich aus irgendeinem Grund, der mir nun nicht mehr einfällt, 'Faserland' genannt hatte. Es endet in Zürich, sozusagen auf dem Zürichsee, relativ traumatisch."