"Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss"

Showing 33–48 of 118 resultsSorted by latest

  • A Real Piece of Work

    £16.99

    Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie. The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one problem: everyone in her family has an opinion about the book – and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her. It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants. But now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake. Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame.

  • Experts in a Dying Field

    £16.99

    The Heathens thought of themselves as ‘the 1000th best band of all time’. Then their tour van crashed, and one of their members died. Twenty years later, weird things are happening in Dublin, bringing the surviving members of the band together in ways none of them could have anticipated and lifting the lid on mysteries from their shared past.

  • Villa Coco

    £16.99

    Andrew Sean Greer showcases his wit and warmth in this magical tale set amidst the Tuscan hills. Broke and directionless, our young protagonist takes a job in the Italian countryside as the all-purpose assistant to Lisabetta, known to her friends as Coco – a strong-willed, wealthy widow of great local renown. Trained as an archivist, he thinks he’s been hired to catalogue the contents of the beautiful, crumbling mansion nestled in the green Tuscan hills – but what are his actual duties? Days are spent ridding the house of a marten – whatever that is – locating the antediluvian septic system, entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to unnervingly handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn, and not inadvertently sabotaging Coco’s great and final plan – to locate the lost love of her life and be reunited before it’s too late.

  • One Day

    £10.99

    The multi-million copy bestselling novel that brilliantly captures the experiences of a generation.
    From beloved author David Nicholls.

  • Palm Meridian

    £10.99

    It’s 2067 at Palm Meridian Retirement Resort, Florida, and the last day of Hannah’s life. Tomorrow, as the sun burns the dew off the lawns, she’ll close her eyes for the very last time. But she won’t be going quietly. Tonight, Hannah’s throwing an end-of-life party: the drinks are on ice, and the palm trees are strung with lights beneath technicolour skies. And though Hannah has less than 24 hours left, she’s holding out for one last, impossible thing. Amongst the guest list is Hannah’s long-lost love Sophie – the woman who Hannah can’t forget, even after 40 years. Hannah has to give her greatest love one last try. Soon, the party is in full swing. Hannah waits nervously, unaware that before her last ever dawn breaks, a devastating secret will come to light. If Sophie shows, how can Hannah say goodbye all over again? And is there enough time to fix the past?

  • A Sense of Occasion

    £16.99

    Mary’s death is bad news – for her daughter Patch, ex-partner Robin, and niece Jude. It will mean a funeral. But Patch can barely keep track of her mother’s journey from the hospital to the mortuary, let alone host a wake in her childhood home. Robin wants to support her, but instead of assuming the role of responsible father, he heads to his former haunt: the lay-by where he used to meet farmers for sex. Jude’s on her way from Naples, worrying less about Patch, her estranged cousin, and more about whether there’s a medicinal bag of cocaine in the boot. She hasn’t told the family she’s en route. This way, any lingering acrimony will be forgotten, and Jude’s past behaviour will be forgiven. Thrown together in Mary’s tiny house, each of them is trying to feel something: to grieve, atone, join in, be better.

  • An Unlikely Visitor

    £18.99

    ‘Moving, funny, compassionate and wise. An Unlikely Visitor made me laugh, cry and left me filled with hope’ ELIZABETH DAY

    'A perfect book for today’s world’ SARAH WINMAN

    ‘Heartbreaking, life-affirming and funny all at the same time’ JANE FALLON

  • I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

    £9.99

    Nestled among rugged mountains, in a remote part of Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, bandits, witches, deserters, ghosts, beasts and demons, sits the old farmhouse called Mas Clavell. Inside, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed while family and caretakers drift in and out. All the women who have ever lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party. As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of memories unspool, and the house reverberates with the women’s stories. Stories of mysterious visions, of those born without eyelashes and tongues or with deformed hearts. But it begins with the story of the matriarch Blanca who double-crosses the devil, heedless of what the consequences might be.

  • The Expansion Project

    £9.99

    Plans for the expansion of the Capmeadow Business Park are in full swing. Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee, loses his daughter at ‘bring your daughter to work day’. He raises the alarm, and his colleagues rush to help him find her. Eventually, after no sign of her is found, it transpires she was never there. And yet, as time goes on, Tom still can’t reconcile that she is really at home. Refusing to accept that she is safe, Tom continues to search for her in the maze of corridors and impossible multi-dimensional spaces that make up his place of work. Because Capmeadow is expanding in unexpected ways, a Liaison Officer becomes the central focus for complaints about how the expansion is impacting the lives of the employees – unexpected buildings, years-long business days, cursed farmers’ markets, and corridors of the mind are draining the life from Tom and everyone he works with.

  • Two Sisters

    £16.99

    A warm, laugh-out-loud funny, poignant novel about sisterhood and finding your place in the world from the author of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You.

  • Mother, Ghost, Mango Seed

    £16.99

    Set in Thailand from 1976 to the present, Mother, Ghost, Mango Seed is a haunting yet hopeful exploration of grief, motherhood, and cultural identity

  • Enough

    £22.00

    Etta’s got just one day. One day to tell her family her secret. One day to bring them back together. One day to put the finishing touches on her plan. One day to tell the world enough is enough. Because this one day will rewrite Etta’s story.

  • A Short Stay in Hell

    £9.99

    An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life.

  • Albion

    £9.99

    The Brooke family are gathering in their ancestral home to bury Philip: the blinding sun around which they have all orbited for as long as they can remember. Frannie has dreams of rewilding and returning the estate to nature: a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe. Milo envisages a treetop haven for the super-rich where, under the influence of psychedelic drugs, a new ruling class will be reborn. Each believes their father has given them his blessing, setting them on a collision course with each other. Isa has long suspected that her father thought only of himself, and hopes to seek out her childhood love, who still lives on the estate, to discover whether it is her feelings for him that are creating the fault lines in her marriage. And then there is Clara, who arrives from America, shrouded in secrets and bearing a truth that will fracture all the dreams on which they’ve built their lives.

  • The Given World

    £18.99

    ‘Wonderful … an Under Milk Wood for the twenty-first century’ AMY LIPTROT’Reminds us with every luminous sentence about the fragile grace of ordinary lives’ EVIE WYLD’Extraordinary … The best serious fiction I’ve read this year’ FRANCIS SPUFFORD’Attuned, loving and thoughtful … I loved its warmth and intricacy’ SARAH MOSS’Nobody does nature better than Melissa Harrison’ TRISTAN GOOLEYA FINANCIAL TIMES AND OBSERVER BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026 April brings spring surging with it, giving rise, among many in the village, to a comforting illusion that all is somehow still right with the world, and that nothing will ever change.In the ancient Welm Valley, something is shifting: the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease.A woman falls while out walking and hopes to be found before nightfall; a doctor realises, too late, that he has long underestimated his

  • One Yellow Eye

    £9.99

    A darkly funny, heartbreaking and propulsive ticking time bomb of a novel, One Yellow Eye follows a scientist as she tries to find a cure for the last victim of a zombie apocalypse – her husband . . .