Modern & contemporary fiction

Showing 289–304 of 668 resultsSorted by latest

  • False Idols

    £10.99

    Sadie’s been adrift, looking for an escape from her new house and old memories, when a chance encounter leads her to one of the most exclusive wellness classes in LA. At first she’s sceptical, but the classes – and the attention of its magnetic leader, Lilith – are transformative, other-worldly, completely addictive. No one in Sadie’s life understands that Deep Flow isn’t a cult, but a community. One that offers the chance to feel powerful in her own body again, maybe even a way to finally let go of her past. But when the sisterhood, and Sadie’s place within it, comes under threat, the hidden cost of being part of Lilith’s inner circle becomes clear. What would Sadie risk to prove her loyalty?

  • Hunger

    £9.99

    A woman sees her man murdered on the street – and time stands still. Until she cradles his corpse to her chest and carries it home, where she disinfects every inch of skin before seating herself to begin. What happens next reverberates from this realm into the next, where the man is witnessing his own funeral. Together, the lovers lament a lifetime of working their fingers to the bone in a country sucking everyone dry – but a choice has already been made. The woman is beating them at their own barbaric game, eating and entombing the body in her own where her soulmate will live again.

  • Honey

    Honey

    £16.99

    The first time, Yrsa doesn’t intend to kill. But the Cambridge professor sitting opposite has manipulated her friend, stolen her research. When she flicks the bee into his Sanpellegrino, she thinks he’ll get a nasty sting. Then he’s dead. And Yrsa, who – let’s face it – has been bored for a while, is alive. It’s a sweet feeling, finally having some control.

  • The Name Game

    £18.99

    The Isle of Ormer: population 500, soon to be 501. Charlie Jones has landed on the island to embark on her brand new life. As the manager at Ormer’s only farm shop, this job will be her perfect next chapter. Good riddance to the mainland, this is it – fresh air, and a clean slate. Except there is one small issue, Charlie Jones has also just arrived on the Isle of Ormer, to embark on his brand new life. His job at the farm shop feels like fate, and could not have come at a better moment. On Ormer, Charlie has promised himself he’ll escape old friends, bad habits and heartbreak. This second chance is the best thing that could have happened to Charlie and Charlie. That is, until they are introduced.

  • Everything That Is Beautiful

    £16.99

    For Niamh Ryan, the Foleys are family. Her childhood flew by on their farm, playing with her best friend Peter and his sister Kate – all the while being doted on by their mother Helen and coached by their father Liam, a legendary former hurling player. Now, following a distressing series of events, the family ties are strained. Niamh receives drunken phone calls and messages from Peter who can’t understand what derailed their burgeoning relationship three years ago. Meanwhile, Helen Foley is trying her best to escape her life by checking into guesthouses under the names of women she went to school with. In her life in Belfast, Kate is attempting to hold down a job and a relationship while carrying the weight of the family’s secrets, and feeling like she is the one to blame. As a family wedding looms, and the women find themselves face to face, the knotty love that still binds Niamh, Helen and Kate might just bring them back together aga

  • My Year as a Fraud

    £16.99

    There’s no health guru in Sweden better than Cassi. Couple’s therapy? Puppy yoga? Full moon rituals? She’s got everyone in the remote village of Bäcken covered. The locals don’t really know who Cassi is or how she managed to turn a derelict cottage into a successful self help retreat, but one thing is clear: they’re all willing to pay good money for her services. There’s only one problem: Cassi is a fraud. A great one at that, who has concealed her true self – a jobless, depressed alcoholic – and gotten rich in the process. But can a life based on a lie really last? And will her new friends accept her for who she really is when her secrets eventually come to the surface?

  • Upward Bound

    £16.99

    Woody Brown’s vibrant and profoundly moving debut novel takes us to sun-bleached California, to a day-care centre for Los Angeles’s disabled community. Among the clients and staff are Carlos, a charismatic aide who lost his mother as a boy, and Jorge, who is gentle, nonspeaking and prone to escape despite Carlos’s best efforts. Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy, pines for Ann, the lifeguard for the summer who feels out of her depth. Then there’s Dave, the centre’s director. He wanted to be an actor, but finds himself on a very different path. At the heart of the story is Walter, a recent college student returning to the company of his peers after a family tragedy. Around him, a story unfolds of friendships forged, connections missed and the dreams – some new, others almost forgotten – that shape us.

  • You Are the FüHrer’s Unrequited Love

    £14.99

    1969: Albert Speer, Hitler’s favourite architect and Minister for Armaments, publishes his memoirs. Rewriting his own past, from his involvement in Nazi rallies to the fall of the Third Reich, he becomes ‘the good Nazi’, the poster child of German guilt. Claiming to have known nothing about the Final Solution despite his proximity to the Führer, he declares himself ‘collectively responsible, but not individually guilty’. How do you write about a man who made fiction more seductive than truth? Retracing Speer’s life, from his early years as a Nazi to the height of his power, to his post-war rebranding as a best-selling author, and artfully questioning the truthfulness of his stories, Jean-Noël Orengo offers a dizzying portrait of the man who was once described as the Führer’s unrequited love.

  • Open, Heaven

    £9.99

    On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Beholden to the expectations of home and family, his burgeoning desire – an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex – threatens to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, yet underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own. As the seasons pass, and the pair form an ever-changing bond, James falls into a terrifying first love that will transform his life forever.

  • Permanence

    £18.99

    This is the story of an affair. Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing stolen afternoons in hotel rooms, their time together painfully sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there. They find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar city: a place where adulterers can live openly as couples, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice. Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on the table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible. As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other. How do you know when you’ve found true love?

  • Son of Nobody

    £20.00

    Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem ‘The Psoad’, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as ‘son of nobody’. As sole translator and interpreter of ‘The Psoad’, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears.

  • Stag Dance

    £9.99

    From the adventures of a lonely logger who, deep in the forest, joins his workmates to dance dressed as a woman, to the story of an obsessive boarding-school romance, to the dizzying spectacle of a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend, Peters’ keen eye for the rough edges of trans community and desire reveals fresh possibilities.

  • The Palm House

    £16.99

    From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of First Love and My Phantoms comes a novel of enduring friendships and small mercies from one of the most acclaimed writers of her generation.

  • Fair Play

    Fair Play

    ★ STAFF PICK!
    Selected by Mia
    £9.99

    Staff Pick!

    Mia Says…

    Unlike any kind of “murder mystery” I’ve ever read…a clever sideways look at the genre. Alternating chapters take you effortlessly through two different worlds, and the result is original, funny, and heartbreaking. Witty treats for fans of a good old-fashioned Poirot, interspersed with a compassionate story about the mystery of grief. Was such a surprising read, I love this. (Note: while smart and funny, the tale is also sad! One to remember in case buying this for a holiday mystery book).

    _____________________

    A detective calls on a shell-shocked group of friends in this thrillingly inventive novel of love and grief with a murder-mystery twist.

  • Heart the Lover

    £9.99

    Our narrator understands good love stories – their secrets their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules. She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined – with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, ‘Heart the Lover’ is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love.

  • Kin

    £18.99

    A yearning for their missing mothers pulls Vernice and Annie apart. It will take a devastating tragedy to bring them back together.