Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Just before dawn one late-summer morning, Captain Bruno Courrèges is roused from sleep by the wail of the town siren atop the Mairie, summoning the volunteer firemen of St Denis. Bruno, the only policeman in the small Périgord town, follows the fire engines towards the site of a large barn, now engulfed in flames, the surrounding fields ablaze. Everything points to arson. A Californian wine maker is planning to buy up half the valley to create a huge wine-producing operation.

From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organise her own death.

It's the glittering 80s and Lucinda Cowper, Elizabeth Beaumont, and Flora Fielding feel happy and secure in the power and pleasure of wealth. Nothing could have prepared them for a devastating financial scandal, which turns the boom to bust. The crash takes away their hope, their self-respect, and for some, it destroys even more. Facing bleak futures, affairs begin, lies are spun, relationships are pushed to breaking point, and within the year someone will be dead. But who? And why?

Grace and Tom Penderford are the luckiest people alive. They have a wonderful marriage, a comfortable life and a beautiful baby girl, Chloe. Then, in a heartbeat, happiness becomes despair, and their lives change forever. When three-year-old Chloe falls ill and dies, Tom and Grace's world is ripped apart. As their family of three becomes two, they must find a way to mend each other's broken hearts...and save their marriage, if they can.

Das Dorf Staufenberg liegt auf einer Felskuppe. Hoch oben die alte Burg. Wenn der böhmische Flüchtlingsjunge Peter vom Turm ins Tal blickt...

Having spent the last 20-something years with her nose in a textbook, brilliant and driven Norah Kapadia has just landed the medical residency of her dreams. But after a disastrous first day, she's ready to quit. Disgruntled patients, sleep deprivation, and her duty to be the "perfect Indian daughter" have her questioning her future as a doctor.

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is...don't make any afternoon plans.

Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.

Ashcombe was the most beautiful house Saskia had ever seen as a little girl, providing a perfect sanctuary to hide from the tragedy which shattered her childhood. Now an adult, Saskia is still living at Ashcombe and, as a book restorer ,devotes her days tending to broken, battered books. When she discovers a notebook carefully concealed in an old Bible, Saskia finds herself drawn into a heart-rending tale of wartime love....

The town of Rossmore is a special place, full of character and charm. Nestled beside the Whitethorn Woods, the town has grown since the days when it was small and friendly and everyone knew everyone else. But it still has the woods, with the well dedicated to St Ann, where generations have come to pray or make wishes or just to look back at the pretty little town. Which is why there is going to be such a fuss about the plans for the new road cutting through Whitethorn Woods.

Le retour de l'auteur japonais le plus lu en France. Parution le 2 janvier 2025 Evènement!!! Le grand retour du maître Murakami pour un roman éblouissant, dans la lignée de ses grandes œuvres – Kafka sur le rivage ou 1Q84 – et sept ans après son dernier roman – Le Meurtre du commandeur. Tu dis: La Cité est entourée de hauts murs et il est très difficile d'y pénétrer. Mais encore plus difficile d'en sortir. Comment pourrais-je y entrer, alors? Il suffit que tu le désires.

From the best-selling author of The Ice Cream Girls, The Woman He Loved Before, and My Best Friend's Girl, an emotional story about love, identity, and the meaning of family. ‘Where are you coming from with that accent of yours?’ he asks. ‘Nowhere,’ I reply. ‘I’m from nowhere.’ ‘Everyone’s from somewhere,’ he says. ‘Not me,’ I reply silently. Clemency Smittson was adopted as a baby, and the only connection she has to her birth mother is a cardboard box hand decorated with butterflies.

Five years ago, three-year-old Dillon disappeared. For his father Harry - who left him alone for ten crucial minutes - it was an unforgivable lapse. Yet Dillon's mother Robyn has never blamed her husband: Her own secret guilt is burden enough. Now they're trying to move on, returning home to Dublin to make a fresh start. But their lives are turned upside down the day Harry sees an eight-year-old boy in the crowd. A boy Harry is convinced is Dillon. But the boy vanishes before he can do anything about it.

An action-filled reimagining of the famous Greek myth, Jason and the Golden Fleece, brilliantly told by classicist Mark Knowles. He has come to take what is yours... Iolkos, Thessaly. 1230 BC. King Pelias has grown paranoid, tormented by his murderous past and a prophecy of the man who will one day destroy him. When a stranger arrives to compete in the Games of Poseidon, Pelias is horrified, for this young man should never have grown to manhood. He is Jason, Pelias' nephew, who survived his uncle's assassins as a child. Now Jason wants his revenge – and the kingdom.

A whirlwind romance. A perfect marriage. Hannah Reilly has seized her chance at happiness. Until the day her husband fails to come home... The more questions Hannah asks, the fewer answers she finds. But are the secrets that Mark has been keeping designed to protect him or protect her? And can you ever really know what happened before you met?

Angie has always wanted to travel. But at 27, she has still never left her small mining town in the Australian outback. When her grandmother passes away, Angie finally feels free to see the world - until she discovers a letter addressed to the father she never knew and is forced to question everything. As Angie sets off on her journey to find the truth - about her family, her past and who she really is - will enigmatic stranger Alessandro help guide the way?

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. 'I nearly missed you, Doctor August,' she says.

Mark Renton has it all: He's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s.Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his family starts to fracture, Mark's life swings out of control and he succumbs to the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas.

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Orange Prize-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, come 12 dazzling stories in which she turns her penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the West. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's prodigious storytelling powers.

Elizabeth Zott wird ihr Herz erobern, ganz sicher! Elizabeth Zott ist eine Frau mit dem unverkennbaren Auftreten eines Menschen, der nicht durchschnittlich ist und es nie sein wird. Doch es ist 1961, und die Frauen tragen Hemdblusenkleider und treten Gartenvereinen bei. Niemand traut ihnen zu, Chemikerin zu werden. Außer Calvin Evans, dem einsamen, brillanten Nobelpreiskandidaten, der sich ausgerechnet in Elizabeths Verstand verliebt. Aber auch 1961 geht das Leben eigene Wege. Und so findet sich eine alleinerziehende Elizabeth Zott in der TV-Show "Essen um sechs" wieder.

Tommy Carr was a kind man; Eve had been able to tell that after half an hour of knowing him. There had never been a day when he had not shown her some small kindness. The birth of a daughter, Jeannie Eliza, crowns the young couple’s happiness - just as her shockingly early death casts them low. But they do not need to talk about Jeannie because she remains with them, and their love does not change.