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
Little, Brown & Company Tomorrow Is for the Brave
Book SynopsisBased on true events, Tomorrow Is for the Brave is a gripping World War II page‑turner about a courageous woman who risks it all for what is right—perfect for fans of Natasha Lester and Kristen Harmel.1939, France: Lavish parties, fast cars, and a closet full of the latest fashion—to the average eye, socialite Violet St. Croix seemingly has it all. But what she truly wants is a life full of meaning and purpose. So when France falls to Germany, Violet defies her parents’ wishes and joins the war effort. With her impeccable skill for driving under pressure, she is soon sent to North Africa to shepherd French Foreign Legion officers carrying valuable intelligence through dangerous territory. But as the Allies encounter one mishap after another, Violet becomes convinced there is a spy in their ranks. And when her commanding officer is murdered, Violet realizes she might be the only one who can uncov
£13.49
Little, Brown & Company The Paris Apartment
Book SynopsisA remarkable novel of passion, intrigue, and bravery during the world’s darkest hours, and one woman’s fight to uncover the truth more than a half-century later. London, 2017: When Aurelia Leclaire inherits an opulent Paris apartment, she is shocked to discover a treasure trove of famous art and couture gowns. One obscure painting leads Lia to Gabriel Seymour, a highly respected art restorer with his own mysterious past. Together they attempt to uncover the truths concealed within the apartment’s walls. Paris, 1942: Glamorous Estelle Allard flourishes in a world separate from the hardships of war. Yet when the Nazis come for her friends, Estelle doesn’t hesitate to help. But she can’t know that her actions will have ramifications for generations to come. Though seventy-five years apart, Estelle and Lia must summon hidden courage as they navigate the dangers o
£8.54
Little, Brown & Company Snowed In for Christmas
Book SynopsisFans of Christina Lauren and Maggie Knox will adore this fun and festive romcom featuring a grumpy/sunshine duo who find themselves in stuck together over the holidays, where the weather outside is frightful—but inside, things are heating up in this sexy holiday story. Sorority mom Becca Fairfield is used to guys not taking her seriously. She’s too blond, too quirky, or Just. Too. Much. So she’s ditched dating to focus on her job and a house filled with drama and plenty of tea. Now with the holidays and a major blizzard on her doorstep, Becca has everything she needs to survive the next two weeks on her own. Hot cocoa, plenty of books . . . and the memory of a steamy kiss with a certain sexy, grumposaurus next-door neighbor to keep her warm. Only Becca’s seriously underestimated this Snowpocalypse. So when the power goes out and Harrison Cooper—football coach, master crank, and the guy who acted
£8.54
Arsenal Pulp Press Lost Boi
Book Synopsis
£15.19
Arsenal Pulp Press Sodom Road Exit
Book SynopsisThe second novel by Lambda Literary Award winner Amber Dawn: at once a compelling family melodrama and a lesbian supernatural thriller.
£15.29
Arsenal Pulp Press Butter Honey Pig Bread
Book Synopsis
£17.09
Arsenal Pulp Press Any Other City
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£999.99
Arsenal Pulp Press Bad Land
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£16.99
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc Wild Thorns
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£12.59
Seven Stories Press,U.S. The Guest
Book SynopsisA historical novel of a divided nation from Korea's greatest novelist.
£10.44
Autonomedia Another Morocco: Selected Stories
Book Synopsis
£12.59
The New York Review of Books, Inc Contempt
Book SynopsisContempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard''s no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.
£14.39
The New York Review of Books, Inc Count D'orgel's Ball
Book SynopsisCount d''Orgel is handsome, charming, and carefree, a model of cool aristocratic aplomb. His wife, the Countess, is beautiful and pure and loves her husband more than anything in the world. But from the moment the d''Orgels meet and befriend the clever young François de Séryeuse backstage at the circus, all three of these supremely civilized and witty people are caught up in an ever more intricate and seductive dance of deception and self-deception. At Count d''Orgel''s masquerade ball, the real disguises are those of the human heart.Completed just before Raymond Radiguet''s death at the age of twenty, Count d''Orgel''s Ball is a love story that is as disturbing as it is delicious.
£10.79
The New York Review of Books, Inc Novels In Three Lines
Book SynopsisA NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINALNovels in Three Lines collects more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906—true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life presented with a ruthless economy that provokes laughter even as it shocks. This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.
£13.49
The New York Review of Books, Inc Growing Up Absurd
Book SynopsisPaul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd was a runaway best seller when it was first published in 1960, and it became one of the defining texts of the New Left. Goodman was a writer and thinker who broke every mold and did it brilliantly—he was a novelist, poet, and a social theorist, among a host of other things—and the book’s surprise success established him as one of America’s most unusual and trenchant critics, combining vast learning, an astute mind, utopian sympathies, and a wonderfully hands-on way with words.For Goodman, the unhappiness of young people was a concentrated form of the unhappiness of American society as a whole, run by corporations that provide employment (if and when they do) but not the kind of meaningful work that engages body and soul. Goodman saw the young as the first casualties of a humanly repressive social and economic system and, as such, the front line of potential resistance. Noam Chomsky has said, “Paul Goodman’s impact is all about us,” and certainly it can be felt in the powerful localism of today’s renascent left. A classic of anarchist thought, Growing Up Absurd not only offers a penetrating indictment of the human costs of corporate capitalism but points the way forward. It is a tale of yesterday’s youth that speaks directly to our common future.
£16.99
The New York Review of Books, Inc A Schoolboy's Diary
Book SynopsisA Schoolboy’s Diary brings together more than seventy of Robert Walser’s strange and wonderful stories, most never before available in English. Opening with a sequence from Walser’s first book, “Fritz Kocher’s Essays,” the complete classroom assignments of a fictional boy who has met a tragically early death, this selection ranges from sketches of uncomprehending editors, overly passionate readers, and dreamy artists to tales of devilish adultery, sexual encounters on a train, and Walser’s service in World War I. Throughout, Walser’s careening, confounding, delicious voice holds the reader transfixed.
£13.29
Shambhala Publications Inc Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition
Book SynopsisShe is the embodiment of selfless love, the supreme symbol of radical compassion, and, for more than a millennium throughout Asia, she has been revered as “The One Who Hearkens to the Cries of the World.” Kuan Yin is both a Buddhist symbol and a beloved deity of Chinese folk religion. John Blofeld’s classic study traces the history of this most famous of all the bodhisattvas from her origins in India (as the male figure Avalokiteshvara) to Tibet, China, and beyond, along the way highlighting her close connection to other figures such as Tara and Amitabha. The account is full of charming stories of Blofeld’s encounters with Kuan Yin’s devotees during his journeys in China. The book also contains meditation and visualization techniques associated with the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and translations of poems and yogic texts devoted to her.
£16.14
Other Press LLC Inheritance From Mother
Book SynopsisAn Osaragi Jiro Award-winning novel that demystifies the notion of the selfless Japanese mother and the adult daughter honor-bound to care for her.
£15.29
Other Press LLC Marlene
Book SynopsisIn this electrifying psychological drama, two veterans readjusting to civilian life find their friendship tested when ugly truths come to light.
£14.39
Counterpoint The Art Of The Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Book Synopsis
£14.39
Counterpoint Vanishing Point: A Novel
Book Synopsis
£14.39
Soft Skull Press Future Feeling: A Novel
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£12.59
Soft Skull Press The Novelist: A Novel
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£14.39
Soft Skull Press The Survivalists
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£19.54
Soft Skull Press Tell Me I'm An Artist: A Novel
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£15.29
Soft Skull Press The Survivalists: A Novel
Book Synopsis
£15.29
Penguin Putnam Inc Mambo In Chinatown: A Novel
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£11.69
Penguin Putnam Inc My Year Abroad
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£14.39
The Library of America John Updike: Novels 1968-1975 (loa #326): Couples
Book SynopsisLibrary of America's definitive Updike collection continues with three masterful novels on the joys and discontents of the sexual revolution.
£34.39
The Library of America Donald Barthelme: Collected Stories
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£32.24
The Library of America Norman Mailer 1945-1946 (loa #364): The Naked and
Book Synopsis
£30.39
The Library of America William Faulkner: Stories (loa #375): Knight's
Book Synopsis
£34.39
Penguin Random House Group Wendell Berry Port William Novels Stories The
Book Synopsis
£30.39
Penguin Random House Group Walker Percy The Moviegoer Other Novels 19611971
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£32.24
Kensington Publishing The Cartel Deluxe Edition Part 2
Book SynopsisNow fans can relive the story of the Diamond family in this second deluxe edition, containing books four and five.
£14.39
Kensington Publishing Diary Of A Street Diva
Book SynopsisChronicles the life of a good girl who gets caught up in a bad situation.
£999.99
Kensington Publishing The Cartel
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£7.99
Kensington Publishing Gangsta
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£8.78
Canterbury Classics The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Book SynopsisNo home library is complete without the classics! The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a keepsake to be read and treasured.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of twelve short stories by Scottish author Arthur Conan Doyle, is considered a milestone in the genre of detective fiction. With Sherlock Holmes’s clever disguises and ability to solve even the most elusive mysteries, as well as Holmes’s loyal friend and biographer, Dr. Watson, who narrates most of the stories, Doyle’s suspenseful stories and well-developed characters keep readers on the edges of their seats. Now available as part of the Word Cloud Classics series, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a must-have addition to the libraries of all classic literature lovers. About the Word Cloud Classics series:Classic works of literature with a clean, modern aesthetic! Perfect for both old and new literature fans, the Word Cloud Classics s
£10.79
Europa Editions Ferocity
Book SynopsisA combination of Gone Girl and Franzen's Freedom filtered through the fierce Mediterranean vision of Elena FerranteSouthern Italy, the 1980s. On a hot summer's night under a full moon, far from the outlying neighbourhoods of a southern Italian city, Clara stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. When she dies no-one is able to say exactly how or why, but her brother cannot free himself from her memory or from the questions surrounding her death. The more he learns about her life and death, the more he uncovers the moral decay at the core of his family's ascent to social prominence.At once an intimate family saga, a history of an entire region, and a portrait of the moral and political corruption of a whole society, Ferocity is a cinematic suspense novel that addresses vital social questions.
£12.59
Europa Editions Return to the Dark Valley
Book SynopsisA kaleidoscopic, cosmopolitan novel infused with inky noir.Santiago Gamboa is one of Colombia's most exciting writers. In the manner of Roberto Bolan~o, Gamboa infuses his kaleidoscopic, cosmopolitan stories with a dose of inky dark noir that makes his novels intensely readable, his characters unforgettable, and his style influential.Return to the Dark Valley tells the stories of four immigrants united by their need to return to their place of origin and exact vengeance. Manuela Beltran, a woman haunted by a troubled childhood she tries to escape through books and poetry; Tertuliano, an Argentine preacher who claims to be the Pope's son, ready to resort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society; Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary past now confronted with his guilt; Rimbaud, the precocious, brilliant poet whose life was incessant exploration; Juana and the consul, central characters in Gamboa's Night Prayers, who are united in a relationship based equally on hurt and need. These characters animate Gamboa's richly imagined portrait of a turbulent world where liberation is found in perpetual movement and determined exploration.
£12.59
Europa Editions Trick
Book SynopsisFROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER LONGLISTED AND WINNER OF THE STREGA PRIZE THE HOUSE ON VIA GEMITOStarnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface.Jhumpa LahiriCompelling One of Italy's most accomplished novelists.The Guardian"Trick is a chillingly weird chamber piece - a very tricksy treat.The TimesTrick is a stylish drama about ambition, family, and old age that goes beyond the ordinary and predictable. Imagine a duel between two men. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator who, in the twilight of his years, feels that his reputation and his artistic prowess are fading. The other, Mario, is Daniele's four-year-old grandson. Daniele has been living in a cold northern city for years, in virtual solitude, focusing obsessively on his work, when his daughter asks if he would come to Naples for a few days and babysit Mario while she and her husband attend a conference. Shut inside his childhood home?an apartment in the centre of Naples that is filled with the ghosts of Mallarico's past?grandfather and grandson match wits as Daniele heads toward a reckoning with his own ambitions and life choices.Outside the apartment, pulses Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city whose influence can never be shaken.
£10.79
Seven Stories Press,U.S. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
Book Synopsis
£9.49
Seven Stories Press,U.S. All City
Book SynopsisIn a near-future New York City in which both global warming and a tremendous economic divide are making the city unlivable for many, a huge superstorm hits leaving behind only those those who had nowhere else to go and no way to get out.
£12.34
Seven Stories Press,U.S. A Country For Dying
Book SynopsisAn exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris.
£12.34
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Ocean State
Book SynopsisWhen I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.For the Oliviera family - mum Carol, daughters Angel and Marie - autumn 2009 in the once-prosperous beach town of Ashaway, Rhode Island is the worst of times. Money is tight, Carol can't stay away from unsuitable men, Angel's world is shattered when she learns her long-time boyfriend Myles has been cheating on her with classmate Birdy, and Marie is left to fend for herself. As Angel and Birdy, both consumed by the intensity of their feelings for Myles, careen towards a collision both tragic and inevitable, the loyalties of Carol and Marie will be tested in ways they could never have foreseen.Stewart O'Nan's expert hand has crafted a crushing and propulsive novel about sisters, mothers and daughters, and the desperate ecstasies of love and the terrible things we do for it. Both swoony and haunting, Ocean State is a masterful work by one of the great storytellers of everyday American life.Trade ReviewA mesmerising human drama, beautifully observed and compellingly written. The central murder story reminded me of the sublime crime writing of Ruth Rendell, and the insight into the characters' lives is reminiscent of the best of Anne Tyler. In other words, there's so much about this novel that's remarkable, and I urge you to read it -- B. P. Walter, author of THE DINNER GUESTKeeps the reader glued...it's in the excavation of this extraordinary "whydunnit", rather than whodunnit, that O'Nan reveals the mess of inequality and lack of opportunity in contemporary America. * Sunday Independent *O'Nan is an enticing writer, a master of the illuminatingly mundane moments... O'Nan is subverting the thriller, borrowing its momentum to propel this bracing, chilling novel * New York Times *Beautifully rendered and heartbreaking...a Shakespearean tragedy told in spare, poetic, insightful prose * Publishers Weekly *Stewart O'Nan's haunting and fleet Ocean State tunnels deeply into the heady, hard lives of the vivid young women at its centre. Half-broken and full of longing, these women move us deeply. As the story hurtles toward an act of violence that feels both impossible and inexorable, we find ourselves wanting to stop and protect all of them. -- Megan AbbottStewart O'Nan is out to break your heart in the most beautiful way. He is writing with his full power unleashed. This book is a classic. -- Luis Alberto UrreaOne of Stewart O'Nan's many gifts is a keen and unflinching eye lit with an abiding compassion for his characters, all of which is on display in his mesmerizing new novel, Ocean State. Set in the forgotten streets of post-industrial, blue collar Rhode Island, this timely and gritty tale takes us deeply into the lives of girls and women who must navigate the kind of loss that can either break or strengthen the ties that bind us all. Ocean State is a gem glittering in the darkness. -- Andre Dubus IIIWhat O'Nan has done perhaps better than anybody else the past ten years is deliver the complexity, heartbreak and human drama of everyday people living everyday lives. -- Jonathan Evison
£8.54
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Monkey Boy
Book SynopsisFINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022'Full of rebellious comedy and vitality... Goldman's autobiographical immersion answers the urgent cry of memory... [He] is a natural storyteller - funny, intimate, sarcastic, all-noticing.' James Wood, New YorkerFrancisco Goldman's first novel since his acclaimed, nationally bestselling Say Her Name (winner of the Prix Femina étranger), Monkey Boy is a sweeping story about the impact of divided identity - whether Jewish/Catholic, white/brown, native/expat - and one misfit's quest to heal his damaged past and find love.Our narrator, Francisco Goldberg, an American writer, has been living in Mexico when, because of a threat provoked by his journalism, he flees to New York City, hoping to start afresh. His last relationship ended devastatingly five years before, and he may now finally be on the cusp of a new love with a young Mexican woman he meets in Brooklyn. But Francisco is soon beckoned back to his childhood home outside Boston by a high school girlfriend who witnessed his youthful humiliations, and to visit his Guatemalan mother, Yolanda, whose intermittent lucidity unearths forgotten pockets of the past. On this five-day trip, the spectre of Frank's recently deceased father, Bert, an immigrant from Ukraine - pathologically abusive, yet also at times infuriatingly endearing - as well as the dramatic Guatemalan woman who helped raise him, and the high school bullies who called him 'monkey boy,' all loom.Told in an intimate, irresistibly funny and passionate voice, this extraordinary portrait of family and growing up 'halfie' unearths the hidden cruelties in a predominantly white, working-class Boston suburb where Francisco came of age, and explores the pressures of living between worlds all his life. Monkey Boy is a new masterpiece of fiction from one of the most important American voices in the last forty years.Trade Review...a story that travels relentlessly between a difficult present and an unfinished past....In this case, bringing together the child and the seasoned adult may involve a kind of spiritual revolution, a casting off of the past by a reliving of it, a turn in the middle years toward a different way of being... he must change his life...At the heart of the novel's own tenacity and optimism is Frankie's mother, his mamita, Yolanda Montejo...her gaiety and crooked, defiant spirit... Monkey Boy steadily becomes a moving and tender elegy for a woman who seems to have spent most of her life suspended warily between visceral love of her birthplace and learned gratitude for her adopted home. -- James Wood * The New Yorker *Francisco Goldman's new novel, Monkey Boy... is positively boiling over with original metaphors and insights...he's a writer of real force and originality...with rare vitality and humor...This book is about all these women, and how alive they are, but not just as presences who appear and speak for themselves. It's also about how vivid these women are in the mind, and in the interior life, of the narrator... a connoisseur of female strength and eccentricity. -- Rachel Kushner * Literary Hub *The novel gently insists on the relationship between...two realms of intimate violence...This did not come at the cost of [Goldman's] youthful tenderness, the quality that makes Monkey Boy so moving. * TLS *Reading this book is like reading a family saga, a memoir and a novel while listening to an old friend telling stories about his life... The seriousness of these topics is counterbalanced by Goldman's knack for beautiful language, straightforward prose and sense of humor... And it's all carried by Goldman's distinct style. His words will linger in the minds and hearts of readers long after they've turned the last page. -- Gabino Iglesias * San Francisco Chronicle *Masterful...For Goldman...the autobiographical novel isn't the last puff of a dying genre but a form through which to consider the competing moral and aesthetic demands of the real and the imagined...Monkey Boy is a fascinating hybrid... tightly, almost symmetrically structured, concerned from beginning to end with the possibility, and transformative power, of love...Monkey Boy doesn't jettison fiction for nonfiction, the artificial for the real, but considers the truths of both. The novel is dead; long live the novel. -- Anthony Domestico * Commonweal *Here the author of the achingly beautiful Say Her Name takes center-stage in an enthralling autofiction...A tour de force reminiscent of Susan Choi's Trust Exercise. * O Magazine *Irresistible...Convincing intimacy illuminates Monkey Boy, which, despite exposing historical, generational, familial denial and horror, ultimately proves to be a beguiling, surprisingly droll portrait of an unsettled middle-aged man (still) searching for love and (self-)acceptance. * Shelf Awareness *Goldman fuses autobiography and invention to create fiction of nearly nuclear intensity...This is a journalist's notebook and an artist's sketchbook ? every detail vivid and meaningful, every captivating character a portal into the struggle for freedom and dignity. Although steeped in trauma and loneliness, prejudice and brutality, secrets and lies, Goldman's ravishing, multidirectional novel is also iridescent with tenderness, comedic absurdity, sensual infatuation, reclaimed love, the life-sustaining desire to "remember every single second," and the redemption of getting every element just right. * Booklist, starred review *The warmth and humanity of Goldman's storytelling are impossible to resist. * Kirkus Reviews (starred) *Captivating...Goldman's direct, intimate writing alone is worth the price of admission. * Publishers Weekly *Francisco Goldman . . . Francisco Goldberg? . . . Frankie Gee! - crafter of the tenderest dirtiest love scenes! - the wisest and spookiest children! - the fathers whose monstrosity breaks our hearts with compassion for them - who else can do all this? Francisco Goldman is uncategorizable, as is this book which made me grow a second heart just to contain all its fierce tenderness. Goldman has been my literary hero from his first entrancing Long Night of White Chickens to this latest take-no-prisoners Monkey Boy. He is a true original, that rarest of writers, the kind we cannot live without. -- Susan Choi, National Book Award winning author of TRUST EXERCISEFrom the painful intimate violence in a suburban New England home, to racial cruelty among high school teenagers, to the US government's political and military interventionism in Latin America, Goldman's sweeping gaze runs through multiple circuits of America's violence, showing us how deeply connected they in fact are. With the exact balance of outrage and hope, Monkey Boy takes us on an eye-opening journey, full of tenderness and horror, through the often-ignored layers of this country's history. A powerful, necessary book. -- Valeria LuiselliFrancisco Goldman, one of our most brilliant political writers, is also, miraculously, a Chekhov of the heart. This novel is wild, funny, and wrenching, as well as a profound act of retrieval and transformation. -- Rivka GalchenMonkey Boy is written with tenderness and emotional precision. It tells what it means to be an American, to have an identity that is nourished by many sources, including ones that are mysterious and shrouded in secrecy. It is a story of two cities - Boston and Guatemala - and an account of a man's relationship with his mother, who is evoked here in sharp and loving detail. It is a book about how we piece the past together. Goldman bridges the gap between imagination and memory with stunning lyricism and unsparing clarity. -- Colm Tóibín
£9.49
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Reptile Memoirs: A twisted, cold-blooded thriller
Book SynopsisDark, disturbing and deliciously twisty, Reptile Memoirs is a biting and brilliant exploration of the cold-bloodedness of humanity - perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Jo Nesbø and Tana French.What readers are saying about Reptile Memoirs'Truly unusual and terrifying' 'Dark, heart-wrenching and creepy''Graphic''Dark, challenging and unforgettable''Chilling''Not for the faint hearted''Unique, dark and disturbing, gripping and very, very clever'Late one night, Liv sees a TV nature show and finds herself compelled to buy a pet snake. As she bonds with her new Burmese python, she is unaware how much he takes in with his cold, impassive eyes. He watches.Thirteen years later, Mariam Lind goes on a shopping trip with her eleven-year-old daughter, Iben. Following an argument Mariam storms off, expecting her young daughter to make her own way home . . . but she never does. Detective Roe Olsvik is assigned to the case of Iben's disappearance. As he interrogates Mariam, he instantly suspects her - but his response to the situation seems unusually personal . . .A biting and constantly shifting tale of family secrets, rebirth and the legacy of trauma, Reptile Memoirs asks the question: Can you ever really shed your skin?Trade ReviewThe narrative twists make your jaw drop...An astonishing debut. * The Times - Books of the Year *This astonishing debut gradually tightens its grip and leaves you gasping...Silje Ulstein is a daringly original writer. * The Times *A remarkable literary debut offering a twist on the Nordic police procedural * Financial Times, Best books for summer *Original, sharp, tender and chilling, Reptile Memoirs is hugely ambitious and hypnotically readable. -- Chris Whitaker, author of WE BEGIN AT THE ENDA beautifully dark and twisty story with jaw-dropping twists and pin-point plotting. -- Joanna Cannon, author of THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEPNeither Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), nor Paula Hawkins (Girl on the Train), nor Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient) - to name some well-known examples from the last decade - can measure up to Ulstein . . . This debut is a great discovery . . . A thriller that really stands out. * Aftenposten *Ulstein has written the best and creepiest Norwegian crime debut in years . . . A novel that stands out due to both its dark, clever and intricate plot as well as the author's solid insight in the human mind. * Adresseavisen *A nerve-wrecking and highly original psychological thriller . . . The book is very hard to put down and if you do the plot will keep playing out in your mind. * Dagbladet *This book is a shapeshifting marvel. I found it compulsively readable, and not just for the unexpected paths by which it unpacks its secrets. Silje Ulstein writes about snakes in ways that made me feel I've never really seen them before: In language that is as seductive as it is prickly, she pries open the boundaries between reptiles and humans, adults and the children they once were, and criminals and victims. An uncanny, unsettling and totally immersive read. -- Emily Fridlund, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of HISTORY OF WOLVESReptile Memoirs is a magnetic ocean tide: a bold, heart-stopping and genre-defying debut which compels us to sink toward the darkest depths of our past. A masterfully shocking and at times wonderfully uncomfortable exploration of obsession, desire and rejection, sexuality and taboo, Ulstein leaves us breathless in her quest to examine which version of the self is capable of love and violence. -- Sarah Schmidt, author of SEE WHAT I HAVE DONEExtraordinary and terrifying, Reptile Memoirs sinks teeth into you from page one. Through relentless and, at times, almost unbearable tension, Ulstein delivers a menacingly layered thriller unlike any you've read before. -- P. J. Vernon, author of BATH HAUS
£9.49
