Modern & contemporary fiction

  • Shadows in the moonlight

    £20.00

    When Pixie Tate is summoned to the wild Cornish coast to unravel a curious mystery at the stately St Sidwell Manor, she knows that something quite extraordinary must be hiding in its shadows. Over 100 years ago, in the dark of night, a child vanished from his bed never to be seen again – and Pixie must now discover the truth of those final moonlit hours. As she loses herself in the past, secrets are revealed, love affairs exposed and, ultimately, Pixie will be forced to make a devastating choice that will change her life forever.

  • The making of another major motion picture masterpiece

    £9.99

    Here is a wildly ambitious story of the making of a colossal, star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film, and the humble comic book that inspired it all. Spanning 80 years of a changing America and culminating in the opening of the film, we meet a colourful cast of characters including a troubled soldier returning from war, a young boy with an artistic gift, an inspired and eccentric director, a pompous film star on the rise, a tireless production assistant and countless film crew members that together create Hollywood magic.

  • Lies and weddings

    £18.99

    Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshamsbury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel, is drowning in debt. The only solution, according to his mother, is for him to attend his sister’s wedding and seduce a woman with money. Will it be the French hotel heiress with a royal bloodline? The venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or will Rufus betray his family and confess his love for his best friend and ‘girl next door’ Eden? But when a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials and a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, the Gresham family plans – and their reputation – go up in flames, making Rufus’ choice all the more impossible.

  • The unforgettable Loretta, darling

    £16.99

    Hollywood has it’s secrets. But so does Loretta.Loretta bursts onto Sunset Boulevard brimming with moxie – she knows that if you want to get anywhere in life, you have to make it happen yourself. And boy is she determined to make her dreams come true! Only Loretta is getting the backlot tour of Tinseltown. It turns out that where the palm trees disappear and the trash vans are parked up, this town of fantasy and make-believe is less dashing fellas sipping chilled martinis – more sticky floors and misbehaving men. However Hollywood may have bitten off more than it can chew with Loretta because there’s not just lipstick lurking in her beauty case. This may be her dream, but she’s stepped out from Hollywood’s nightmares. And Loretta Darling bites back.

  • What you are looking for is in the library

    £9.99

    ‘What are you looking for?’ asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. She is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she has read every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they’re looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it. Every borrower in her library is at a different crossroads, from the restless retail assistant – can she ever get out of a dead-end job? – to the juggling new mother who dreams of becoming a magazine editor, and the meticulous accountant who yearns to own an antique store. The surprise book Komachi lends to each will have transformative consequences.

  • The running grave

    £10.99

    Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths. In order to try to rescue Will, Strike’s business partner Robin Ellacott decides to infiltrate the cult and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito amongst them. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her.

  • How to age disgracefully

    £14.99

    Daphne knows that age is just a number. She also knows that society no longer pays her any attention – something she’s happy to exploit to help her hide a somewhat chequered past. But finding herself alone on her 70th birthday, with only her plants to talk to and neighbours to stalk online, she decides she needs some friends. Joining a Senior Citizen’s Social Club she’s horrified at the expectation she’ll spend her time enduring gentle crafting activities. Thankfully, the other members – including a failed actor addicted to shoplifting and a prolific yarn-bomber – agree. After a tragic accident, the local council threaten to close the club – but they have underestimated the wrong group of pensioners – and with the help of a teenage dad and a geriatric, orphaned mongrel, the incongruous gang set out to prove it.

  • High time

    £9.99

    Ayesha Scott has a perfect life. Home is an art-filled Cornish castle with her stratospherically wealthy, titled husband and their beloved daughter. But behind every realised dream lurks an unexploded nightmare and in the course of one day Ayesha discovers that she will be penniless, homeless and powerless unless she can outwit the international mafia, infiltrate the world of high finance and make backstreet deals with the shadiest members of the art world. Hurt and betrayed, she’s determined to fight for herself and her daughter – but can she do it without enlisting the help of her beloved, deeply eccentric but estranged family?

  • A true account

    £9.99

    From New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe comes a daring first-hand account of Hannah Masury’s rousing adventure as one of the most feared and admired sea rovers of all time

  • The night-soil men

    £12.99

    A major work of historical and political fiction exploring the birth of the Independent Labour Party, its development in the early twentieth century and its fortunes in the interwar years. Including appearances from every leading socialist of the age, it centres upon the historical figures of Fred Jowett, Philip Snowden and Victor Grayson.

  • For such a time as this

    £16.99

    A group of young, Black British friends navigate their way through the ups and downs of modern London life, in this richly imagined collection of linked stories 

  • Scaffolding

    £16.99

    The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart. In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood. Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space.