Modern & contemporary fiction

  • We Do Not Part

    £9.99

    One morning in December, Kyungha is called to her friend Inseon’s hospital bedside. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation following a wood-chopping accident, Inseon is bedridden and begs Kyungha to take the first plane to her home on Jeju Island to feed her pet bird, who will quickly die unless it receives food. Unfortunately, as Kyungha arrives a snowstorm hits. Lost in a world of snow, she begins to wonder if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. But she doesn’t yet suspect the darkness which awaits her at her friend’s house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive, documenting the terrible massacre seventy years before that saw 30,000 Jeju civilians murdered.

  • Vinegar Girl

    £10.99

    Kate Battista is feeling stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work – her pre-school charges adore her, but the adults don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner. Dr Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. When Dr Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him.

  • Shylock Is My Name

    £10.99

    ‘Who is this guy, Dad? What is he doing here?’ With an absent wife and a daughter going off the rails, wealthy art collector and philanthropist Simon Strulovitch is in need of someone to talk to. So when he meets Shylock at a cemetery in Cheshire’s Golden Triangle, he invites him back to his house. It’s the beginning of a remarkable friendship. Elsewhere in the Golden Triangle, the rich, manipulative Plurabelle is the face of her own TV series, existing in a bubble of plastic surgery and lavish parties. She shares prejudices and a barbed sense of humour with her loyal friend D’Anton, whose attempts to play Cupid involve Strulovitch’s daughter – and put a pound of flesh on the line.

  • The Infamous Gilberts

    £16.99

    The crumbling Gothic mansion of Thornwalk, long-term home of the Gilbert family, is being handed over to a chain of luxury ‘historic’ hotels. Millions will be spent in its restoration. But for every ‘improvement’, what will be lost? What value can there possibly be in a threadbare carpet, a tarnished spoon and a thousand empty jam jars? Before the hotel people arrive, with their clipboards and their skips and their bottles of bleach, Maximus, loyal guardian of the Gilberts’ legacy, invites us on a final tour of the once-stately home, where each room holds a secret. From the bolt on the blue room door to the tiny dents in the bars at the nursery window. These are the keys that will unlock the lives of the five fatherless Gilbert children.

  • A Far-Flung Life

    £20.00

    Western Australia, 1958. A truck rumbles along a lonely outback road. A moment’s inattention, and in a few muddled seconds the lives of the MacBride family are shattered. Instead of leaving them to heal, fate comes back for them in a twist of consequences that will cause one of them to lose their life, and another to sacrifice theirs for the sake of an innocent child.

  • Dunbar

    £10.99

    Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he handed over care of the family firm to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan. But relations quickly soured, leaving him doubting the wisdom of past decisions. Now imprisoned in a care home in the Lake District with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. But who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate?

  • Brawler

    £18.99

    Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region – from New England to Florida to California – these nine stories reflect and expand upon a single shared theme: the ceaseless battle between the dark and light in all of us. Among those caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by human fallibility, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.

  • Hag-Seed

    £10.99

    Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he’s staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge. After 12 years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It’s magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?

  • New Boy

    £10.99

    She noticed him before anyone else. Arriving at his fourth school in six years, diplomat’s son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day – so he’s lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can’t stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players – teachers and pupils alike – will never be the same again.

  • A Short Road to Longbrook

    £18.99

    It’s the mid-1960s and Lillian Wells is a clever teenager with a daring pixie cut, tangerine mini-dress and new boyfriend, Jim, who works at the brewery. Even better, he lives across the road, so she’s never far from her bee-hived, high-heeled single mother Winnie, who is prone to attacks of the nerves. But Lillian harbours secret dreams of going to art school in London. When she gets in, how will she tell her mother – and Jim – that she’s leaving Abingdon – and them? Forty years later, Lillian’s own daughter Rachel is heading off to university, but Lillian is not sure either of them are ready. She sees herself and Winnie in Rachel, who is ambitious and intelligent, but also prone to nervous habits. As Lillian tries to bite her tongue about Rachel’s symptoms, she is reminded of what everyone in Abingdon used to say: It’s a short road to Longbrook – the local institution for the mentally ill.

  • The Porpoise

    £10.99

    A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash. She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the rumours about a beautiful young woman, hidden from the world. When a suitor visits, he understands far more than he should. Forced to run for his life, he escapes aboard The Porpoise, an assassin on his tail. So begins a wild adventure of a novel, damp with salt spray, blood and tears. A novel that leaps from the modern era to ancient times; a novel that soars, and sails, and burns long and bright; a novel that almost drowns in grief yet swims ashore; in which pirates rampage, a princess wins a wrestler’s hand, and ghost women with lampreys’ teeth drag a man to hell – and in which the members of a shattered family, adrift in a violent world, journey towards a place called home.

  • The Gap of Time

    £10.99

    Jeanette Winterson’s version of Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ vibrates with echoes of the original but tells a contemporary story of betrayal, paranoia, redemption and hope. Time itself is a player in this game of high stakes that will either end in tragedy or forgiveness, showing us that, however far we have been separated, whatever is lost shall be found.