Contemporary fiction titles are those which focus on the present or near past. Stories rooted in the current cultural, social, and political landscape which feature characters we can all recognise.
Contemporary Fiction Books
Faber & Faber The Cry
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award When a baby goes missing on a lonely roadside in Australia, it sets off a police investigation that will become a media sensation and dinner-table talk across the world. Lies, rumours and guilt snowball, causing the parents, Joanna and Alistair, to slowly turn against each other. Finally Joanna starts thinking the unthinkable: could the truth be even more terrible than she suspected? And what will it take to make things right? Perfect for fans of Julia Crouch, Sophie Hannah and Laura Lippman, The Cry was widely acclaimed as one of the best psychological thrillers of the year. There''s a gripping moral dilemma at its heart and characters who will keep you guessing on every page.Trade Review'Astonishingly good. It is utterly harrowing, completely plausible, constantly nerve-shredding ... It plays on the deepest, darkest fears of all parents about their children, and embeds that everyday terror in a plot so up-to-the-minute that you'll swear it's been lifted from the pages of a newspaper ... The Cry is a remarkable novel - its devastating power all the stronger for its realistic rendering. Brilliant stuff.' Doug Johnstone, Independent on Sunday Exceptional ... this powerful noir tale is by turns devastating and uplifting. Chris Ewan, author of Safe House A book you find yourself greedily gulping down. Herald The harrowing plot keeps you gripped until the final, devastating revelation. Sunday Mirror In this very modern novel, which arrives at a startling conclusion, Fitzgerald manipulates our knowledge of earlier cases in which women have been wrongly accused. -- Joan Smith Sunday Times The Cry really is extraordinary. In a just universe, it will be [Helen FitzGerald's] Gone Girl moment. Read it at once. Steve Mosby 'Fitzgerald's punchy thriller fleshes out new circles of parental hell -- Emma Hagestadt Independent Brilliant ... 300 pages of taut, sharp, chilling and often laugh out loud funny genius. Lisa Jewell It is not until the final pages and after twist upon twist that we are finally given a punch in the stomach, an ending that still leaves a question. Did she or didn't she? Is she mad or not? You've got to read this inventive domestic drama to find out. Highly recommended, read it and then all her others, particularly The Donor. She is very special. lovereading.co.uk An incredible read. I couldn't put it down. A beautifully crafted, heartbreaking story. Lisa O'Donnell 'THE CRY is excellent; unsettling and filled with moral ambiguity. Go read her. Now.' Russel D McLean This book takes a nightmare scenario and wrings every last drop of suspense out of it. It's gut wrenching in places, heart breaking in others, a purely visceral experience like very few other crime novels I can think of ... The Cry has been packaged to appeal to fans of Sophie Hannah and Julia Crouch - those doyennes of domestic noir - and while FitzGerald's style is more streamlined, darker and earthier, I think those fans will do well to add her to their must-read lists. 2013 has already proved to be a strong year for psychological fiction but The Cry is without question the best yet. -- Eva Dolan Crime Fiction Lover 'Her finest book to date ... thriller writing of the very highest order. Big Issue Scotland 'Stunningly good.' Mark Edwards My favourite read of 2013 (so far - but I can't see it being beat). Luca Veste I loved it. It's beautifully written and absolutely heartrending. I loved every page and couldn't put the bloody thing down. James Carol What a book! Superb. Michael Malone
£8.54
Faber & Faber The Exit
Book SynopsisSome people love goodbyes...23-year-old Catherine is mainly interested in Facebook and flirting, but she reluctantly takes a job at a local care home after her mother puts her foot down - and soon discovers that her new workplace contains many secrets.One of the residents at the home, 82-year-old Rose, is convinced that something sinister is going on in Room 7 and that her own life is under threat. But Rose has dementia - so what does she actually know, and who would believe her anyway?As Catherine starts investigating Rose''s allegations, terrible revelations surface about everyone involved. Can Catherine find out what''s really going on before it''s too late?
£7.59
Faber & Faber The Yellow Diamond
Book SynopsisDetective Superintendent George Quinn - Mayfair resident and dandy with a razor-sharp brain - has set up a new police unit, dedicated to investigating the super-rich. When he is shot in mysterious circumstances, DI Blake Reynolds is charged with taking over. But Reynolds hadn''t bargained for Quinn''s personal assistant - the flinty Victoria Clifford - who knows more than she''s prepared to reveal...The trail left by Quinn leads to a jewellery theft, a murderous conspiracy among some of the most glamorous (and richest) Russians in London - and the beautiful Anna, who challenges Reynolds'' professional integrity. Reynolds and Clifford must learn to work together fast - or risk Quinn''s fate.Set in the heart of twenty-first-century Mayfair, a world of champagne, Lamborghinis and Savile Row suits, The Yellow Diamond is a brilliant new venture from one of our best loved crime authors - meticulously plotted, wonderfully humane and hugely enjoyable.
£7.59
Faber & Faber In Times of Fading Light
Book Synopsis''Already hailed as a Cold War classic.'' Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year''Utterly absorbing, funny and humane. A romp through a twisted century in the heart of Europe.'' Anna Funder, author of StasilandInternational bestseller and Winner of the German Book PrizeA sweeping story of one family over four generations in East Germany: the intertwining of love, life and politics under the GDR regime.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Madame Zero
Book Synopsis*WINNER OF THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2020*SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE 2018LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2018WINNER OF THE EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARD FOR FICTIONWINNER OF AN O.HENRY PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION''A genius.'' Jessie BurtonMadame Zero is a remarkable collection of dark, sensuous stories set in sometimes conflicting landscapes rural, industrial, psychological all of which are hauntingly resonant with dread. Whether set in an apocalyptic storm, a local swimming pool, or a surgical theatre, Sarah Hall's celebrated stories inhabit a hinterland between the natural and urban, the mundane and surreal, human and animal.
£8.54
Faber & Faber Time Present and Time Past
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award.When Fintan Buckley develops an interest in old autochrome photographs, strange things start to happen. To all appearances, Fintan holds down a successful job and enjoys life with his conventional middle-class family in Dublin, yet inwardly he starts to experience states of altered consciousness, with unsettling hallucinations and sudden insights. Meanwhile, Fintan''s sister Marina has been unearthing family stories from the past and the two of them, in different ways, find themselves renegotiating their history and the decisions that have brought them to this place, this present.Trade Review'With her latest offering, Madden adds a consummately crafted novel to an already formidable body of work ... the novel takes its title from the 'Burnt Norton' section of TS Eliot's Four Quartets ... by the end of the book the reader realises that Madden - cleverly, playfully, with sly wit and real skill - has translated this intellectual and poetic expression of time into a deeply moving portrait of domestic and family life. -- Adam O'Riordan Sunday Telegraph This is an exalting story that celebrates the survival of fragile folk, and revels in the mysteries of the commonplace. An outstanding book. -- Mary Shine Thompson Irish Independent Madden's precise, cool narrative is as condensed and rich as a stock cube, and there's always a confidence that she knows exactly what she wants to convey ... the book is beautifully written and gently invites us to consider the shifting patterns of time.' -- Andrea Mullaney The Scotsman Confiding and measured, and allows fantasy to challenge memory and yet remain the truth. -- Mary Leland Irish Examiner Slowly and gently Madden takes us by the hand and leads us elsewhere as Fintan reveals he's seeing things and past family stories collide with this new sensation. -- Lesley McDowell The Herald Enthralling ... Elegantly written, deeply reflective and beautifully shaped, this rich and luminous novel is more daring than it seems. It is an understated little masterpiece. -- Eilis Ni Dhuibhne Irish Times 'The novel begins as a low-key domestic drama before developing into a compelling meditation on memory, transience and loss ... I found it exquisitely done. -- David Evans Financial Times This is a subtle, deeply thoughtful novel, its tone so clear that the writing plays over character and action like water over stones ... This beguiling novel is also a clear-eyed, even forensic study of a family crammed with secrets to the point of sickness, reflecting a wider society that bolts down consumer goods in order to purge itself of the past. -- Helen Dunmore Guardian Since her 1986 debut,Hidden Symptoms, she has been investigating the relation between past and present with understated thoroughness ... Madden's clear, precise prose allows us to share Fintan's heightened, near-supernatural awareness, as does her trick of alternately drawing back to survey decades and homing in on a single moment. -- Hannah Rosefield Observer Where does it all begin, indeed, life in all its complexity? Nothing distinguishes the Buckleys but Madden's decision to invent them, to reveal their lives in all their ordinariness, to the reader. It is this democratic gesture and its philosophical implications that lift Madden's book from just very good to great. -- Sara Keating Sunday Business Post Gentle, ruminative novel ... suffuses the mundanity of family life with something timeless. -- Adam Lively Sunday Times 'In exploring the past, Madden reminds us of the personal dramas that occurred long before worries of crashing economies. The reader is left with a sense of longevity rather than fatalism, a reminder that, details aside, the world goes on. Press Association Madden achieves that old adage applied to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men: that it takes two hours to read and twenty years to forget. -- Philip Cummins Irish Post Her compassion for her characters is so infectiously deep-seated and her prose so pellucid it's hard to resist this tale or ordainry people caught up in the vicissitudes of history. -- Daragh Reddin Metro
£9.49
Faber & Faber Mr Phillips
Book SynopsisOne warm July morning Mr Phillips climbs out of bed, leaving Mrs Phillips dozing. He prepares for his commute into the city - but this is no ordinary Wednesday. It is a day on which Mr Phillips will chat with a pornographer, stalk a tv mini-celebrity, have lunch with an aspiring record mogul, and get caught up in a bank robbery. It is, as Mr Phillips comes to realise, the first day of the rest of his life - whether he wants it to be or not. All this is both better and worse than being at work. So why is Mr Phillips, a cautious middle-aged accountant, not behind his desk calculating the financial consequences of redundancies or recommending the savings to be made from more responsible use of yellow sticky note pads?
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
Book SynopsisIt is 1985, and Greta Wells wishes she lived in any time but this one: she has lost her brother to AIDS, her lover Nathan to another woman, and can not seem to go on alone. To ease her sadness, her doctor suggest an unusual procedure, one that opens doors of insight into the relationships in her life, her conflicting affections, and the limitations put on a woman''s life. Throughout, Greta glimpses versions of war, history, herself, and the people she loves, and as the procedures come to an end, she realizes she must make a choice: one which will close every door but one, forever.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Town and Country
Book SynopsisEdited by award winning novelist and short story writer Kevin Barry, this volume will once again mix established names with previously unpublished authors, and will seek to offer fresh renditions to the Irish story - new angles, new approaches, new modes of attack.Published in 2011, New Irish Short Stories, edited by Joseph O''Connor, has sold over 10,000 copies to date and featured Kevin Barry''s ''Beer Trip to Llandudno'' - winner of the 2012 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize - as well as stories by William Trevor, Dermot Bolger and Roddy Doyle which went on to be Afternoon Readings on BBC Radio 4.Trade ReviewA strong and thought provoking collection. Sunday Business Post Sharp, lively and varied selection ... The range of themes, characters, locations and moods covered in these pages is impressive; there is an inventive uncertainty in its mix of established voices and highly promising new ones, such as those of Mary Costello, Andrew Meehan, Colin Barrett andLisa McInerney. And Barry's creative editing has ensured that, as promised, we can discern here the shape of Irish fiction to come. -- Giles Newington Irish Times Town & Country flaunts its diversity. The "great, mad and rude new energies" Barry touts in his introduction are certainly present. At its best, this collection sings as well as soars. An unruly chorus of unalike minds. -- Tom Adair The Scotsman Bursting at the seams with literary talent Hot Press
£11.69
Faber & Faber The Double Tongue With an introduction by Meg
Book SynopsisWilliam Golding''s final novel, left in draft at his death, tells the story of a priestess of Apollo. Arieka is one of the last to prophesy at Delphi, in the shadowy years when the Romans were securing their grip on the tribes and cities of Greece. The plain, unloved daughter of a local grandee, she is rescued from the contempt and neglect of her family by her Delphic role. Her ambiguous attitude to the god and her belief in him seem to move in parallel with the decline of the god himself - but things are more complicated than they appear.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Molly Foxs Birthday
Book SynopsisDublin. Midsummer. While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend, who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly''s, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, whom she has known since university. Why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How have their relationships evolved over the course of many years? Molly Fox''s Birthday calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are; and shows how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined.
£9.49
Faber & Faber One by One in the Darkness
Book SynopsisOne by One in the Darkness follows a week in the lives of three sisters shortly before the start of the IRA ceasefire in 1994, undercut with the story of their childhood in Northern Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s. The history of both a family and a society, One by One in the Darkness confirms Deirdre Madden''s reputation as one of Irish fiction''s most outstanding talents.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Prodigal Summer
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONTWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONTHE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR''A rich and compulsive read'' GuardianFrom the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of Demon Copperhead, The Lacuna and The Poisonwood Bible.It is summer in the Appalachian mountains and love, desire and attraction are in the air. Nature, too, it seems, is not immune. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and interrupts her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer''s wife, finds herself marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Accident
Book SynopsisFrom Edgar Award-winning Chris Pavone, author of the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller The Expats, comes a riveting time-bomb of a thriller (fans of The Expats will be excited to see a few characters from Pavone''s first book pop up here as well). Taking place over the course of twenty-four hours, The Accident draws on the rich worlds of publishing, politics and international spies to tell a suspenseful tale of intrigue in the vein of John Grisham and Laura Lippman. In New York City, Isabel Reed, one of the most respected and powerful literary agents in the city, frantically turns the pages of a manuscript into the early dawn hours. This manuscript - printed out, hand-delivered, totally anonymous - is full of shocking revelations and disturbing truths linked to a car accident that occurred years ago, things which could compromise national security. Is this what she''s been waiting for her entire career: a book that will help her m
£7.59
Faber & Faber Arcadia
Book SynopsisThree interlocking worlds. Four people looking for answers.April, 1960: In the cellar of a professor''s house in Oxford, fifteen-year-old Rosie goes in search of a missing cat -- and instead finds herself in a different world.Anterwold is a sun-drenched land of storytellers and prophecies. But is this world real -- and what happens if Rosie decides to stay?Meanwhile, a rebellious scientist is trying to prove that time does not even exist -- with potentially devastating consequences.As the three worlds come together, one question arises: who controls the future -- or the past...?
£11.69
Faber & Faber Every Day is for the Thief
Book SynopsisA young man returns to Nigeria after fifteen years in New York. The country of his childhood has changed: it has found fast-food restaurants, email cafes, contempt for authority and the all-consuming draw of ''money for nothing''. From the consulate back in Manhattan to the dusty streets of Lagos, life runs like clockwork -- as long as you can pay the fee: a bribe for the visa clerk; a ''Christmas gift'' at immigration. Petrol pumps overcharge and internet cafes overflow with scammers. Every Day is for the Thief is a candid tale of political and spiritual corruption, and a moving account of what it means to go home.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Infidelities
Book SynopsisThis new collection of stories offers a candid peek at infidelity in all its guises. These are tales of lust, deceit, resentment and regret - and of the secrets and lies that can chip away at human relationships.In a series of interwoven dramas, we find mothers yearning for adventure, for the exhilaration of the open road or the anonymity of the forest; fathers absent in body or mind; husbands who look the other way; complacency turned to spite and apathy turned to betrayal. At the same time Gunn pursues the glorious rush of a snap decision, the liberty of answering that siren call of a better life elsewhere.Written with Gunn''s trademark attention to nuances of behaviour, motive and even landscape, Infidelity is a temptingly beautiful work that asks ''What if?'' and dares to find out.
£8.54
Faber & Faber The Discreet Hero
Book SynopsisFelicito Yanaque has raised himself from poverty to ownership of a trucking business. His two sons work for him. He receives a threatening letter demanding protection money. The police don''t take him seriously, Felicito refuses to pay up and gets sucked into a nightmare. He becomes a reluctant public hero. Then his mistress is kidnapped, and matters become seriously complicated. And he finds that his troubles have begun very close to home. His fate is interwoven with the story of Rigoberto, a wealthy Lima insurance executive. His boss and old friend, Ismael, suddenly announces that he is marrying his housekeeper, a chola from Piura, to the consternation of his twin sons, a pair of brutal wasters. Ismael escapes to Europe with his new bride, leaving Rigoberto to face the twins'' threats, and their claims that he connived with a scheming woman to rob an old man of his fortune. Rigoberto is hounded by the press and TV. Meanwhile, his only son is having visions of a mysteriou
£10.44
Faber & Faber All Over Ireland New Irish Short Stories
Book SynopsisAll Over Ireland, edited by Deirdre Madden (Molly Fox''s Birthday, Time Present and Time Past), continues the tradition of featuring the work of both new and established writers, including Colm Tóibín, Mary Morrissy and Eoin McNamee. These diverse and accomplished stories, by turns dazzling, thoughtful and startling, bring new ideas and energy to the form and richly enhance the tradition of Irish fiction.
£10.44
Faber & Faber Peter Carey Amnesia
Book SynopsisA Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and Guardian Book of the YearWhen Gaby Baillieux, a young woman from suburban Melbourne, releases the Angel Worm into the computers of Australia''s prison system, hundreds of asylum seekers walk free. Worse: the system is run by an American corporation, so some 5,000 US prisons are also infected. Doors spring open. Both countries'' secrets threaten to pour out, Was this intrusion a mistake, or has Gaby declared cyberwar on the US?Felix Moore - known to himself as ''Australia''s last serving left-wing journalist'' - has no doubt. Her act was part of the covert conflict between Australia and America that dates back decades. While Gaby goes to ground, Felix begins his pursuit of her in order to write her story; to save her, and himself, and maybe his country.
£9.49
Faber & Faber The PalmWine Drinkard
Book SynopsisThis classic novel tells the phantasmagorical story of an alcoholic man and his search for his dead palm-wine tapster. As he travels through the land of the dead, he encounters a host of supernatural and often terrifying beings - among them the complete gentleman who returns his body parts to their owners and the insatiable hungry-creature. Mixing Yoruba folktales with what T. S. Eliot described as a ''creepy crawly imagination'', The Palm-Wine Drinkard is regarded as the seminal work of African literature.''Brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching.'' Dylan Thomas, Observer''Tutuola''s art conceals - or rather clothes - his purpose, as all good art must do.'' Chinua Achebe
£9.49
Faber & Faber Illywhacker
Book SynopsisAn illywhacker is a confidence trickster, and Herbert Badgery, the 139-year-old narrator of this dazzling comic novel, may be the king of them all. Vagabond and charlatan, aviator and car salesman, seducer and patriarch, Badgery travels across the Australian continent and a century in a picaresque novel full of outlandish encounters and dangerous characters. Overflowing with magic, jokes and inventions, Illywhacker is a contemporary classic.
£10.44
Faber & Faber The WineDark Sea
Book SynopsisReading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I'm not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully.' Neil GaimanFor fans of the BBC''s Inside Number 9 and The League of GentlemenAickman''s ''strange stories'' (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream.First published in 1988, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight stories that build towards disturbing yet enigmatic endings, including the classic story ''Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.'' ''Of all the authors of uncanny tales, Aickman is the best ever . . . His tales literally haunt me; his plots and his turns of phrase run through my head at the most unlikely moments.'' Russell Kirk
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Unsettled Dust by Aickman Robert 2014
Book SynopsisReading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I'm not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully.' Neil GaimanFor fans of the BBC''s Inside Number 9 and The League of GentlemenAickman''s ''strange stories'' (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream. The Unsettled Dust was first published as a collection in 1990. Aickman received the British Fantasy Award for ''The Stains''.''We are all potential victims of the powers Aickman so skilfully conjures and commands.'' Robert Bloch
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Girl in the Red Coat
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2015 Costa First Novel AwardShortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger AwardMesmerising, compulsive, deliciously dark' LUCY FOLEYCarmel is missing but doesn''t know she''s lost.When sensitive, distracted eight-year-old Carmel becomes separated from her mother at a local children''s festival, a man claiming to be her estranged grandfather finds her and takes her.Unable to accept the possibility that her daughter might be gone for good, Beth makes it her mission to find her. But in what she''s told is her new family, Carmel has embarked on an extraordinary journey, one that will make her question who she is - and who she might become.Keeps the reader turning pages at a frantic clip . . . What''s most powerful here is not whodunnit, or even why, but how this mother and daughter bear their separation.' CELESTE NG**Carmel and Beth's story continues in The Lost G
£9.49
Faber & Faber Season of the Rainbirds
Book SynopsisThe highly acclaimed and Betty Trask Award winning debut from the author of Maps for Lost LoversA sack of letters lost in a train crash nineteen years previously has mysteriously reappeared, and the inhabitants of a small town in Pakistan are waiting anxiously to see what long buried secrets will come to light. Could the letters have any bearing on Judge Anwar''s murder?In one of the most exquisite fictional debuts of recent years, Nadeem Aslam creates an exotic and timeless world, but one whose traditional rituals of everyday life are played out against an ominous backdrop of faraway civil wars, assassinations, changing regimes, and religious tensions. ''Vivid and poignant.'' Evening Standard ''Poised and troubling.'' The Times''A real treat.'' Daily Telegraph''One of the most impressive first novels of recent years.'' Salman Rushdie
£8.54
Faber & Faber Haweswater
Book SynopsisThe prizewinning debut from Britain''s most exciting contemporary novelist.In a remote dale in a northern English county, a centuries-old rural community has survived into the mid-1930s almost unchanged. But then Jack Liggett drives in from the city, the spokesman for a Manchester waterworks company with designs on the landscape for a vast new reservoir. The dale must be evacuated, flooded, devastated; its water pumped to the Midlands and its community left in ruins.Liggett further compounds the village''s problems when he begins a troubled affair with Janet Lightburn, a local woman of force and character who is driven to desperate measures in an attempt to save the valley.Told in luminous prose, with an intuitive sense for period and place, Haweswater remembers a rural England that has been lost for many decades.
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Electric Michelangelo
Book Synopsis''Glorious.'' Observer ''Wildly imaginative.'' Independent''Intoxicating.'' Financial TimesOn the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, Cy Parks spends his childhood years first in a guest house for consumptives run by his mother and then as apprentice to alcoholic tattoo-artist Eliot Riley. Thirsty for new experiences, he departs for America and finds himself in the riotous world of the Coney Island boardwalk, where he sets up his own business as ''The Electric Michelangelo''. In this carnival environment of roller-coasters and freak-shows, Cy becomes enamoured with Grace, a mysterious immigrant and circus performer who commissions him to cover her entire body in tattooed eyes.Hugely atmospheric, exotic and familiar, The Electric Michelangelo is a love story and an exquisitely rendered portrait of seaside resorts on opposite sides of the Atlantic by one of the most uniquely talented novelists of her generation.
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Carhullan Army
Book SynopsisThe Lake District's answer to The Handmaid's Tale.'' GuardianEngland is in a state of environmental and economic crisis. Under the repressive regime of The Authority, citizens have been herded into urban centres, and all women of child-bearing age fitted with contraceptive devices. A woman known as Sister' leaves her oppressive marriage to join an isolated group of women in a remote northern farm at Carhullan, where she intends to become a rebel fighter. But can she follow their notion of freedom and what it means to fight for it?At the vanguard of the new wave of futuristic dystopian literature . . . an accomplished, provocative novel.' Literary ReviewHall's fierce and shocking writing captures the cruel beauty of Cumbria.' TelegraphA dystopian vision of a disturbingly near future in which the floods have risen and the oil has run out . . . entirely modern and brutally fresh.' Independent
£999.99
Faber & Faber A Very Private Life
Book SynopsisUncumber lives in a dystopian world where all humanity is divided in two - the Insiders and the Outsiders. The Insiders are privileged, with their every need catered to by somatic drugs, three-dimensional holovision and prolonged life. Uncumber lives in this luxurious world and is told that she must never go out into the dust and disease of the real world. Uncumber, however, is haunted by a restless and inquisitive spirit. When she falls in love with an Outsider, she decides to go exploring. . . Michael Frayn is the award-winning author of Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award, and Skios, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. ''A fairy tale of the future. . . Frayn handles his observations and inventions brilliantly'' Guardian
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Little Red Chairs
Book SynopsisThe legendary Edna O''Brien''s tale of a mysterious stranger spellbinding an Irish village ''reminds you why you read books in the first place'' (Observer).''The great Edna O''Brien has written her masterpiece.'' Philip Roth''Extraordinary . . . Courageous.'' J.M. Coetzee''Fierce and beautiful.'' Anne Enright''Exemplary.'' Colm Tóibín ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES'' TOP 100 NOVELS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURYWhen a man who calls himself a faith healer arrives in a small, west-coast Irish village, the community is soon under the spell of this charismatic stranger from the Balkans. One woman in particular, Fidelma McBride, becomes enthralled in a fatal attraction that leads to unimaginable consequences. ''Magnificent'' (Sunday Times)''Beautiful'' (Financial Times)''Enthralling'' (Times)''Extraordinary'' (Independent)''Astonishing'' (New Yorker)
£9.49
Faber & Faber FESTIVAL OF INSIGNIFICANCE
Book SynopsisThe last novel by the international superstar and author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.''Kundera is the saddest, funniest, and most lovable of authors.'' TimesAn artist, clearly one of the best to be found anywhere.'' Salman Rushdie''Kundera designs fictions of the highest order.'' Ian McEwanCasting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time avoiding realism - that''s The Festival of Insignificance.In Kundera''s earlier novel, Slowness, Vera, the author''s wife, says to her husband: ''you''ve often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it . . . I warn you: watch out. Your enemies are lying in wait.'' Far from watching out, Kundera finally and fully realises his old aesthetic dream in a novel that we could view as a summati
£9.49
Faber & Faber Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty
Book SynopsisThis is the story of Ajaiyi, a man born into poverty who is determined to improve his situation. In the hope of finding the money he needs, he travels through unfamiliar lands filled with strange creatures. He meets the Spirit of Fire with its huge feathered head and flaming body, and receives assistance from a wizard and a unicorn. Yet, in the end, the answer to his woes is not far from home.Amos Tutuola was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1920. His first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, was acquired by T. S. Eliot and published by Faber in 1952.
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories
Book SynopsisYoruba legend and culture were the source of much of Amos Tutuola''s writing and the stories collected here are no exception. They feature characters from folklore, archetypal figures from Yoruba society, supernatural or magical happenings, acute human observation and often a moral point. Their very titles - from ''The Duckling Brothers and their Disobedient Sister'' to ''Don''t Pay Bad for Bad'' - are evocative of a unique blend of tradition and imagination, which belongs to the same universal culture as Aesop and the Brothers Grimm.
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Brave African Huntress
Book SynopsisThis is the story of Adebisi, a brave African huntress who sets out for the Jungle of the Pigmies to rescue her four brothers. Along the way, she conquers a giant, serves as the barber to a king and endures the horrors of the pigmies'' prison. Yet she will not give up. By employing her strength and intelligence, she finds a way to release her brothers and returns home to a hero''s welcome.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Open Up
Book SynopsisA GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST 2023Brilliant, funny, unsettling. . . Thomas Morris is a master of the contemporary short story' SALLY ROONEYWith precision, wry humour and a generous heart, Morris visits life''s agonies and ecstasies.' NATHAN FILERA fierce and tender suite of stories' LUCY CALDWELLThomas Morris is incredibly gifted within the form. It's so heartening to read his work.' SARAH HALL Funny, sad, complex, unexpected, and worthy of multiple readings.' JON MCGREGORPleasurably off-kilter, gently acerbic and sadly wise' COLIN BARRETTThe new collection from a literary star five achingly tender, innovative and dazzling stories of (dis)connection.From a child attending his first football match, buoyed by secret magic, and a wincingly humane portrait of adolescence, to the perplexity of grief and loss through the eyes of a seahorse, Thomas Morris seeks to find grace, hope an
£14.99
Faber & Faber I SAW A MAN
Book SynopsisAfter the sudden loss of his wife, Michael Turner moves to London to start again. Living on a quiet street in Hampstead, he develops a close bond with the Nelson family next door: Josh, Samantha and their two young daughters.The friendship at first seems to offer the prospect of healing, but then a devastating event changes all their lives, and Michael finds himself bearing the burden of grief and a terrible secret.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Feather Woman of the Jungle
Book SynopsisIn Feather Woman of the Jungle, the people of a Yoruba village gather on ten memorable nights to hear the stories and wisdom of their chief. They learn of his adventures, among them his encounter with the Jungle Witch and her ostrich, his visit to the town of the water people and his imprisonment by the Goddess of Diamonds. Each night the people return, eager to discover if there is a happy ending.Amos Tutuola was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1920. His first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, was acquired by T. S. Eliot and published by Faber in 1952.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Where the Wild Mums Are
Book SynopsisCelebrating 10 years of publishing this hilarious and charming tribute to the children''s classic, for mums everywhere.The day Mum didn''t get dressed and went on strike, Dad called her ''a Wild Thing'' and Mum said ''Cook your own dinner'' and stomped off upstairs to have a bath . . .In this funny, touching homage to Maurice Sendak''s Where the Wild Things Are, a worn-out mum finds herself floating across time and space to the place where the Wild Mums are. Dazzled by her party tricks, they crown her Queen of the Wild Mums and try to entice her to join their conga . . . But Mum has just remembered who she loves best of all . . .Lovingly illustrated by the award-winning Sholto Walker, this little book is the perfect gift for baby showers, new mums and any mum who''s ever wanted to go on strike.
£10.44
Faber & Faber Alexandria
Book Synopsis'Like Robert Macfarlane re-written by Cormac McCarthy.' Telegraph'Beckett doing Beowulf.' London Review of Books One thousand years from now, the sole inhabitants of a small island - a group no larger than an extended family - are living in a post-civilised world. They are perhaps the Earth's only human survivors.But lurking outside their isolated community is a figure in red, an emissary from another way of life: a virtual place of refuge and security, of escape from the dangers of a newly wild world. The visitor calls it Alexandria. A work of radical and matchless imagination, Paul Kingsnorth's new novel is a mythical, polyphonic drama driven by elemental themes: of community versus the self, the mind versus the body, machine over man; whether to put your faith in the present or the future.Set on the far side of the climate apocalypse, Alexandria completes the Buckmaster Trilogy, which began with Kingsnorth
£8.54
Faber & Faber Collected Novels Volume Four
Book SynopsisThis volume of Paul Auster's collected novels includes Travels in the Scriptorium, Man in the Dark, Invisible and Sunset Park.
£32.00
Faber & Faber A Bird in Winter
Book SynopsisOVER HALF A MILLION COPIES OF APPLE TREE YARD SOLDPsychologically acute. Terrific.' Daily MailA page-turning read. Kept me reading well past bedtime!' VAL McDERMID Pacey and propulsive.' GuardianA rare combination of elegance and unbelievable tension . . . Utterly brilliant.' Joanna CannonGripping.' Marie ClaireThe latest from the Number One Sunday Times Bestselling author Louise DoughtyBird is a woman on the run. One minute, she's in a meeting in her office in Birmingham the next, she's walking out on her job, her home, her life. It's a day she thought might come, one she's prepared for. But nothing could prepare her for what will happen next. As Bird tries to work out who exactly is on her trail, she must also decide who if anyone she can trust. Is her greatest fear that she will be hunted down, or that she will never be found?Readers are gripped by A
£16.99
Faber & Faber Sex Death Stories
Book SynopsisHow we come in, and how we go out, sex and death: these are the governing drives, our two greatest themes.In this provocative and haunting collection of short stories, acclaimed writers probe the nature of, and connection between two of the most powerful, exhilarating and terrifying forces that define and shape the human experience: sex and death.
£10.44
Faber & Faber Dont Tell Me Youre Afraid
Book SynopsisBased on a remarkable true story, Don't Tell Me You're Afraid is a moving, inspiring novel of a life lived in hope. But with the war encroaching on the lives of her family, Samia decides to join her sister and make the treacherous journey to Europe, putting her life and her dreams in the hands of traffickers.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Moscow Stations
Book SynopsisVenya is more interested in how much he and his colleagues can drink during the working day than in his job. Once he is fired, he spends the last of his money on booze and sets off on a train journey to visit beautiful, picturesque, utopian Petushki, where his beloved and child are waiting for him. But Venya's drinking gets out of control...
£9.49
Faber & Faber Anatomy of a Soldier
Book SynopsisWinner of the Waverton Good Read Award 2017Shortlisted for the Authors'' Club Best First Novel Award 2017Shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2017Imagine if your whole life changed in the blink of an eye . . . Captain Tom Barnes is leading British troops into a war zone when he is gravely injured by an exploding IED. This devastating moment and the transformative months that follow are narrated here by forty-five objects, telling one unforgettable story.
£7.59
Faber & Faber The New Life
Book SynopsisWinner of the Nobel Prize for LiteratureEveryone should read Pamuk' The New StatesmanYou could become obsessed with this novel' GuardianOsman is a young engineering student when he finds a mysterious and dangerous book that promises him a new and exciting life. He abandons his studies, turns his back on home and family, falls in love and embarks on restless bus rides through a nocturnal landscape of travellers' cafes and apocalyptic bus wrecks, all in pursuit of this elusive vision.But will he, or the reader, ever understand the nature of this strange obsession?
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Black Album
Book SynopsisShahid is a clean-cut student, trying to make an impression on his college lecturer, Deedee Osgood, who gives his spirits a lift when she takes him to a naked rave party. Shahid''s academic prospects are threatened by the intervention of his gangster brother Chili, who, with his Armani suits and Gucci loafers, moves into Shahid''s bedsit as a hideout, bringing unnecessary danger and excitement with him. Set in London in 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin wall and the fatwah, The Black Album is a thriller with a characteristically lively background: raves, ecstasy, religious ferment and sexual passion in a dangerous time.
£9.49
