Modern & contemporary fiction

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  • Intermezzo

    £9.99

    Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his 30s – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a 22-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

  • Karla’s Choice

    £9.99

    It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only on a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumour in Whitehall – unconfirmed and a little scandalous – that George Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But in his absence the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley will soon find himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come, and strike at the heart of his greatest enemy.

  • The emperor of gladness

    £20.00

    One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

  • All Fours

    £9.99

    A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, ‘All Fours’ transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.

  • Anna O

    £9.99

    *Don’t miss A Murder in Paris, the brand new twisty thriller from Matthew Blake, available to buy now*

    THE SMASH HIT NO.1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ~ A GUARDIAN and SUNDAY TIMES THRILLER OF THE MONTH ~ TV IN DEVELOPMENT WITH NETFLIX

  • Dream state

    £18.99

    When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate, Cece can’t imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. Garrett doesn’t believe in love, much less marriage. But as she spends time with him and his gruff mask slips, her long-held expectations for her life with Charlie begin to crumble, leading to an impulsive decision that will alter the three friends’ lives forever – the events of that July reverberating through marriage, parenthood and across generations.

  • Butter

    £9.99

    THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING SENSATION

    WINNER OF WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024

    WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2025

    SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER AWARD 2025

    A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK

  • Sandwich

    £9.99

    For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to the beach. The humble, quirky house they rent has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, shared mishaps and memories. It is a place where her family comes together and Rocky wants to cling to every moment. But with her body in open revolt and surprises invading her peaceful haven, the seesaw of Rocky’s life is tipping towards change.

  • Gabriel’s moon

    £9.99

    Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of his youth: every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as a travel writer, capturing the changing, intriguing landscapes of a world in the grip of the Cold War, and very occasionally couriering packages and obscure messages for his brother, whom he quietly suspects of being a spy. A tap on the shoulder, though, pulls Gabriel further into the shadows of his life, and into the orbit of Faith Green, a beguiling and persuasive MI6 handler. She soon makes Gabriel a seemingly irresistible offer: he must simply make a trip to Cadiz, Spain, and buy a painting, and in turn will receive a life-changing sum. But in that sun-drenched, suspicious sea town he will find more than just a paycheck and spy craft: in the rolling waves of Mediterranean, life-changing choices and consequences beckon.

  • On the calculation of volume. Book I

    £12.99

    Tara Selter has slipped out of time. Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday. She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand – the grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song; her husband’s surprise at seeing her return home unannounced. But for everyone around her, this day is lived for the first and only time. They do not remember the other 18ths of November, and they do not believe her when she tries to explain. As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she can’t shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day, there’s a way to escape.

  • Table for two

    £10.99

    Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, ‘Table for Two’ is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting fiction.

  • There are rivers in the sky

    £9.99

    This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water. In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. Arthur’s only chance of escaping poverty is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, with one book soon sending him across the seas: ‘Nineveh and Its Remains’. In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised with water brought from the holy sit of Lalish in Iraq. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon Narin and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.