Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Have you ever had your heart broken? How did you get over it? Did you delete his number and start again? Are you now friends with your ex? Perhaps you’re godmother to his children? In which case, you’re a weirdo and this book is not for you. But if you reacted with denial, begging or a spot of casual witchcraft, then you’ve come to the right place.

Now a major film starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro.Pat Peoples knows that life doesn’t always go according to plan, but he’s determined to get his back on track. After a stint in a psychiatric hospital, Pat is staying with his parents and trying to live according to his new philosophy: get fit, be nice and always look for the silver lining. Most importantly, Pat is determined to be reconciled with his wife Nikki. Pat’s parents just want to protect him

Michel Marini - douze ans en 1959, élève à Henri IV - a une passion, la littérature. Il ne s'en intéresse pas moins au rock'n'roll. Et au baby-foot. Au café où il joue tous les jours se réunit un club d'échecs fréquenté par Tibor, Léonid, Sasha, et les autres, tous réfugiés de l'Est qui ont dû s'exiler pour survivre.

'To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti and not even this one we live in – who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?' Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. It isn’t all bad, though. There’s mischief and adventure, games of Find bin Laden, stealing guavas, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices.

A Treacherous Paradise sees Henning Mankell turn his talents for writing gripping thrillers to a world where power and powerlessness meet and passion is a dangerous commodity. Hanna Lundmark escapes the brutal poverty of rural Sweden for a job as a cook onboard a steamship headed for Australia. Jumping ship at the African port of Lourenço Marques, Hanna decides to begin her life afresh. Stumbling across what she believes to be a down-at-heel hotel, Hanna becomes embroiled in a sequence of events that lead to her inheriting the most successful brothel in town.

Com seu humor ágil e cortante, Madalosso construiu um retrato afado das ambições, sonhos e relacionamentos nos dias de hoje. A protagonista de Tudo pode ser roubado trabalha como garçonete em um conhecido restaurante na região da Avenida Paulista. É nas horas vagas que ela acumula boa parte das suas economias,aproveitando encontros fortuitos nas casas de homens e mulheres aleatórios para roubar roupas de grife e objetos de valor. Até que um desconhecido a aborda no restaurante lhe oferecendo uma bolada para roubar um livro.

「君はこれから世界でいちばんタフな15歳の少年になる」――15歳の誕生日がやってきたとき、僕は家を出て遠くの知らない街に行き、小さな図書館の片隅で暮らすようになった。

In a small Lancashire cotton town in the 1930s, Daisy Bell dreams her life away. At twenty-six, still a spinster and heiress to her mother's potato pie shop, she's resigned to a lonely old age. But toiling over the bake-house fire she dreams of a better world- a world of glamour and romance as seen on the silver screen. Then she meets Sam, a dashing Clarke Gable look-alike and chauffeur to a wealthy London businessman- and suddenly her life is changed forever...

Oliver and his wife arrive by Eurostar to attend the birthday party of grandchild Hugo. Hugo's grandmother Harriet is also on her way. Oliver and Harriet fail to recognise one another at first - but the physical attraction is instantaneous. Harriet's son, Roderick,, a successful banker, is married to Jennifer, who works in publishing. Attempting to reconcile careers, marriage and children leads to high stress levels as the two generations walk a dangerous tightrope between fidelity and parenthood.

Ellis Hock runs a menswear store in Massachusetts but still dreams of the four years he spent in Malawi. When his wife leaves him, he realises that there is only one place for him to go: back to Malawi, where he can be happy again.

Take an ordinary, well-off family like the Prices. Watch what happens when, one Sunday, 17-year-old Hannah disappears without a trace. See how the family rallies when a ransom note demands half a million pounds for Hannah's safe return. But it's when Hannah comes home that the story really begins. Now observe what happens to a family when they lose their house, their status, all their wealth. Note how they disintegrate under the pressures of guilt and poverty and are forced to confront their true selves.

The terrifying new Hammer novella by Minette Walters, best-selling author of The Sculptress and The Scold's Bridle. Muna’s fortunes changed for the better on the day that Mr and Mrs Songoli’s younger son failed to come home from school. Before then her bedroom was a dark, windowless cellar, her activities confined to cooking and cleaning. She’d grown used to being maltreated by the Songoli family, to being a slave.

Clio is staying with her aunt, Hester, at Bridge House on the edge of Exmoor. A beautiful house, it is the scene of many happy childhood memories. But Clio has no idea that it was the setting for a terrible incident after the Second World War.

In the world of interconnected novels by Louise Erdrich, Four Souls is most closely linked to Tracks. All these works continue and elaborate on the intricate story of life on a reservation peopled by saints and false saints, heroes and sinners, clever fools and tenacious women. Louise Erdrich reminds us of the deep spirituality and the ordinary humanity of this world, and these works are as beautiful and lyrical as anything she has written.

The 15th of July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, one day....

Christmas is coming, and life is busy for vet Maz Harwood. She has a beautiful baby boy, George, and she will soon be marrying fellow vet Alex Fox-Gifford. But between arranging the wedding, performing life-saving animal surgery, and taking care of George, Maz doesn’t have much time left for Alex, and even if she did, he’s working even harder than her. And as Alex won’t do anything to make life easier, Maz has decided that she will have to take matters into her own hands.

"Address Book" is the new work of fiction by the Costa-shortlisted author of "Skin Lane". Neil Bartlett’s cycle of stories takes us to seven very different times and situations: from a new millennium civil partnership celebration to erotic obsession in a Victorian tenement, from a council-flat bedroom at the height of the AIDS crisis to a doctor’s living-room in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, they lead us through decades of change to discover hope in the strangest of places.

Kate Telman is a senior executive officer in The Business, a powerful and massively discreet transglobal organisation whose origins predate the Christian Church. Financially transparent, internally democratic it wants to buy its own state in order to acquire a seat at the United Nations. Kate's job is to keep abreast of current technological developments and her global reach encompasses Silicon Valley to the remote Himalayas.

"Elos von Bergen war nicht einfach irgendein Spurensucher. Er war es, der das Rätsel des Obelisken von Tarnok gelöst hat. Er brachte der Gräfin von Oberlinden ihren Greifen zurück. Er fing den Traummörder von Altschwanenberg. Er war der berühmteste Spurensucher der Verlorenen Provinzen. Wobei er sich selbst nie als Spurensucher bezeichnet hätte. Elos von Bergen war Spurenfinder." Elos von Bergen hat das Spurenfinden eigentlich an den Nagel gehängt, seit ein Fall mit einem nachtragenden Nachtmagier ihn und seine Kinder Ada und Naru fast das Leben gekostet hätte.

When the Great War ends, Joshua Connor, a grieving farmer and sometime water diviner from the Mallee in Victoria, sets out to fulfil his wife's dying wish – to travel to Gallipoli to recover the bodies of his three sons and bury them in consecrated ground. Crescent collides with cross, and hope with reason as he discovers that his eldest son, Art, may still be alive. When Connor makes a desperate dash into the perilous heart of Anatolia one question haunts him: if Art is alive, why hasn't he come home?