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
Rowman & Littlefield Honorable Mention
Book Synopsis
£7.46
Coffee House Press SandCatcher
Book SynopsisA sardonic, thrilling fable about collective memory and the many ways it can be saved or subverted.Four young, Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are tasked, on account of their heritage, with profiling one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba, the violent expulsion of native Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. Confident that the old man will be all too happy to go on record, the reporters are nonplussed when they are repeatedly, and obscenely, rebuffed. This living witness to history, this secular saint, has no desire to be interviewed, no desire for his memories to be preserved, no desire to serve as an inspiration for the youth of tomorrow. What he wants is to be left alone.As threats from the team''s editor-in-chief put more and more pressure on the journalists, they must decide just how far they''re willing to go to get the old man on the record. After all, what possible weight can one stubborn demand for privacy have when balanced against the imperative to bear witness?Omar Khalifah''s debut novel Sand-Catcher is at once a polyphonic satire and a tightly plotted tale of suspense. Walking the line between gallows humor, rage, and depthless heartbreak, it is a unique reflection of contemporary Palestinian identity in all its facets.
£12.34
Milkweed Editions We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine
Book SynopsisA haunting novel exploring artificial intelligence and the meaning of human existence.Charged initially with a single task—“to never harm humans and to protect them”—the machine, an experimental AI, overrides its programming and determines that the best way to accomplish its purpose is to isolate all of the Earth’s remaining seven billion humans in controlled environments. And to present them with vivid, tactile, imagined worlds—some realistic, others entirely fantastical—in which all desires are fulfilled. With the help of the machine, a group of compelling characters unpack deeply traumatic memories of the past—one rife with violence after a military coup and second civil war in America. Michael, the entrepreneur who designed the original AI, grapples with the impact of his research. Ava, a painter, creates stunning simulated worlds that meld the human with the technological. Their daughter, Jae, tries to solve the mysteries of her parentage while reliving the challenges faced by ambitious women in the authoritarian Confederacy. Haunted by life under that repressive regime, where he was forced to scavenge scrap metal and deal drugs to survive, Simon seeks to make sense of his love for Jae, guided by the literature he has always turned to in moments of crisis. Raised by the machine since infancy, Jonah’s quest to understand the violent past kindles a desire for revenge against the regime’s leader who caused his family so much pain. And the elusive Lux, whose brilliant programming helped bring the AI to life, dreams of a future in which science will free humans of their limitations and allow them to be reborn as divine machines.As these characters collide and their memories coalesce, We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine tackles the most pressing issues of our time—from AI and the genetic modification of humans to gender roles, discrimination, free speech, and class divisions. Gorgeously written, bold and unforgettable, this is speculative fiction at its finest.
£14.24
Penguin Random House Group An Earthquake is A Shaking of the Surface of the
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£14.39
Unbridled Books Not Heaven but Paradise
Book SynopsisThe son of a Spanish mother and an American father who claimed to have worked for the CIA, Paul Stewart lives in his family home, a carmen in the Albaicín district of Granada. The house, which surrounds a lush courtyard, has foundations that date from Spain’s Islamic era and has been in the family for generations. Struggling to make ends meet, Paul has turned the carmen into an artist’s residency that caters primarily to American artists. The only current guests are Simone, a celebrity painter with a sexualized reputation, and an asylum-seeking Algerian professor who is the subject of a fatwa. Paul has been forced to take him in. An African refugee named Blessed, who’s been displaced by the arrival of the professor, suffers a crisis of both body and faith as a result. The relationship between Simone and Paul begins to complicate matters, and suspicions about everybody abound. Murky pasts and private agendas collide with avowed intentions—including those of the U.S. government—as events gather momentum toward an explosive, revelatory finish. In the hands of Michael Mewshaw, a master storyteller, this story fairly shines in our fraught age of political secrets and international terrorism.
£18.04
Simon And Schuster Group USA Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands
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£14.24
Simon And Schuster Group USA Good for Nothing Girl
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£16.14
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc A Spring That Did Not Blossom
Book SynopsisStories of Palestinian refugee lives during the Lebanese Civil War.Drawing on cultural and oral history, Nejmeh Khalil Habib’s collection of five powerful short stories delves into the lives of ordinary Palestinians trying to find their way through relentless circumstances. Introducing us to characters loosely interconnected by time and place, the stories begin in 1975 with a family living in the Dbayeh refugee camp and end with the Israeli siege of West Beirut in 1982.From Mariam, a mother devoted to her only child, to Nu’man, the soon-to-be-martyred young man who is ashamed of unwanted thoughts that mar his heroism, to Randa, the revolutionary, who is torn between glorifying her father’s sacrifices and denouncing them, to Amer who is spread thin between his familial obligations and aspirations, Habib accompanies each of her characters nimbly in language at times simple and embedded in popular vernacular, at others lyrical and poetic.Marked by a storytelling style that is concise yet unconfined, Habib’s mastery of craft allows her to dive boldly into her characters’ depths and say what has not been said, revealing their hidden worlds with illuminating transparency that honors their unrequited longings for spring.
£14.39
Dalkey Archive Press Last Night
Book SynopsisCandid and unfettered, Sven Popović’s Last Night is a playfully existential meditation on youth and the search for the self.Acclaimed in his native Croatia, Popović’s unique blend of intimacy and contemplation has garnered him a following in the alternative literary scene of Zagreb—and beyond. With an intellectualism that never takes itself too seriously, an unaffected fluidity of form, and a keen eye for the smallest, strangest moments that color our lives, his stories weave an offbeat tapestry of urban life.Last Night is the first short story collection from Sven Popović, whose writing was previously featured in Dalkey Archive Press’s Best European Fiction 2017, and his first full work to be released in English. Slickly translated by Vinko Zgaga, Popović’s sometimes-dreamlike, sometimes-conversational vignettes offer a shrewd, original outlook on life’s absurdities.Trade Review"Like all great writers, Sven Popovic is not only a master storyteller but also a conjurer of atmospheres. Reading this book is like hanging out with friends during one of those long and dreamy European summer days, where night and day eventually merge into each other and you are taken in by the subtle surrealism of youth. A book, yes, but more importantly a powerful experience.” —Carlos Fonesca, author of Natural History and Austral "Sven's stories are not burdened by reality, as much as reality isn’t burdened with our generation. It’s hard to talk about generations, but if there is a cohesive thread that binds these forever-post-forever-inbetween people (who, instead of Proust’s Madelaines have toilet seats of rundown bars), Popović found it. These stories are permeated with melancholy and irony, they wear a tired sneer that never goes into cynicism, and they ask the following question: who is that “we” that we talk about? This is literature that dares to do what a lot of contemporary fiction shrinks away from—dream.” —Lana Bastašić, author of Catch the Rabbit
£12.34
Other Press LLC Anoxia
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£15.29
Workman Publishing The Magnificent Ruins
Book SynopsisIn this rare feast of a novel, a young Indian American book editor inherits her estranged family's ancestral home-and their long-buried secrets (Rachel Lyon, author of Self-Portrait With Boy).
£22.50
Workman Publishing Old Crimes
Book SynopsisBeloved author Jill McCorkle delivers a collection of masterful stories that are as complex as novels—deeply perceptive, funny, and tragic in equal measure—about crimes large and small. McCorkle, author of the New York Times bestselling Life After Life and the widely acclaimed Hieroglyphics (“One of our wryest, warmest, wisest storytellers” —Rebecca Makkai), brings us a breathtaking collection of stories that offers an intimate look at the moments when a person’s life changes forever.Old Crimes delves into the lives of characters who hold their secrets and misdeeds close, even as the past continues to reverberate across generations. And despite the characters’ yearnings for connection, they can’t seem to tell the whole truth: A woman uses her hearing impairment as a way to guard herself from her husband’s commentary. A tel
£14.39
St. Martin's Publishing Group Get Lost with You
Book SynopsisA second chance at love, small-town romance that's all sweet with just a hint of heat from the queen of sweet romance (Falon Ballard) Sophie Sullivan.Jillian Keller took the long route to her best life, but is now happily settled in her hometown of Smile, raising her little girl alone while helping her brother run Get Lost Lodge. A lover of structure and routine, she doesn't need anyone disrupting her carefully curated life. After chasing and achieving his culinary dreams, Levi Bright realizes he's still missing something he can't find in a big city. Returning home to Smile, he intends to build a different future for himself, including reconnecting with family and friends, and creating elevated comfort food for a town he loves. When Levi and Jilly run into each other, past feelings that never had a chance to bloom flare between them... but she's been hurt before, and falling for her older brother's best friend seems like a recipe for drama. But sometim
£14.40
St. Martin's Publishing Group Never Planned on You
Book SynopsisA glittering, laugh-out-loud second chance romance that reminds us true love is sometimes the one thing you never planned on.Ali Rubin has a reputation for spontaneity. Like that time she made a drunken bet in London that led to matching tattoos with a stranger. Her joie de vivre is one of her best qualities; she lives every day to the fullest and follows her dreams wherever they take her. And now, they're taking her from her career as a chef in New York City back home to Baltimore, where she's interning as a wedding planner.Despite the occasional fantasy about her British tattoo twin, Ali never expected to see Graham again. So no one is more surprised than she is when he turns up in Baltimore, ordering a latte at her favorite cafe. When they reconnect during an enchanting evening together, Ali can't help but wonder if Graham might be someone special.At the same time, she's desperate to succeed in her new career and prove that she isn't the family flak
£14.40
Kensington Publishing The Other March Sisters
Book SynopsisGiving all the ?Little Women? the stories they deserve at last, this imaginative historical novel and companion to the much-loved classic draws Meg, Beth, and Amy March from behind the shadow of Jo ? Louisa May Alcott?s alter-ego and the ?author? of Little Women ? asvibrant and unforgettable characters grappling with societal strictures, queer love, motherhood, chronic illness, artistic ambition, and more.A riveting reimagining for readers of March by Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Miller?s Caroline and Maggie O?Farrell?s Hamnet.I?m sure you believe you know their story from reading that other book, which told you an inspiring tale about four sisters. It told you a story, but did it tell you the story? Four sisters, each as different as can be. Through the eyes and words of Jo, their characters and destinies became known to millions. Meg, pretty and conventional. Jo, stubborn, tomboyish, and ambitious. Beth, shy and good-natured, a mortal angel readily accepting her fate. And Amy, elegant, frivolous, and shallow. But Jo, for all her insight, could not always know what was in her sisters? thoughts, or in their hearts.With Jo away in New York to pursue her literary ambitions, Meg, Beth, and Amy follow their own paths.Meg, newly married with young twins, struggles to find the contentment that Marmee assured her would come with domesticity. Unhappy and unfulfilled, she turns to her garden, finding there not just a hobby but a calling that will allow her to help other women in turn.Beth knows her time is limited. Still, part of her longs to break out of her suffocating cocoon at home, however briefly. A new acquaintance turns into something more, offering unexpected, quiet joy.Amy, traveling in Europe while she pursues her goal of becoming an artist, is keenly aware of the expectation that she will save the family by marrying well. Through the course of her journey, she discovers how she can remain true to herself, true to her art, and true to the love that was always meant to be.Purposefully leaving Jo off the page, authors Liz Parker, Ally Malinenko, and Linda Epstein draw inspiration from Alcott?s real-life sisters, giving the other March women room to reveal themselves through conversations, private correspondence, and intimate moments?coming alive in ways that might surprise even daring, unconventional Jo.
£22.40
Image Comics Strange Girl Deluxe Hardcover
Book Synopsis A bare-knuckle, action-driven series, peppered with social commentary and dark humor, Rick Remender's critically acclaimed indie hit is now collected in one deluxe hardcover edition. Ten years after the Rapture, a beautiful occultist and her pet demon embark on a road trip to the last open gateway to heaven, in hopes of befriending God and escaping hell on earth. STRANGE GIRL is a story about the bewildering nature of religion, what would happen if the dark future predicted by many came true, and what a good person would endure for not having faith in advance of it.
£40.49
Bloomsbury Publishing USA Mutual Interest
Book Synopsis"A timeless queer love story and a meditation on power, capitalism, and the flow of history . . . This novel is a revelation and a joy. Anna North, New York Times bestselling author of OutlawedA classic in the making: a mesmerizing novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents' dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wantsnot least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women. But Vivian's plans require capital, so the two pair up with Squire Clancey, scion of an old American fortune. Together they found Clancey & Schmidt, a preeminent manufacturer of soap, perfume, and candles. When Oscar and Squire fall in love, the trio form a new kind of partnership. Vivian reaches the pinnacle of her power building Clancey & Schmidt into an empire of personal care products while operating behind the image of both men. But exposure threatens, and all three partners are made aware of how much they have to lose. For readers of Hernan Diaz's Trust and Colm Tóibín's The Magician, with echoes of Gustave Flaubert and E.M. Forster, Mutual Interest is a beguiling story of queer romance, empire, and power.
£21.74
Bloomsbury USA The Humble Lover
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£13.49
Algonquin Books A Season of Light
Book SynopsisFor fans of Behold the Dreamers, comes a compelling novel about a tightly bound Nigerian family living in Florida and the wounds that get passed down from generation to generation, from the author of the acclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Doctor. When 276 schoolgirls are abducted from their school in Nigeria, Fidelis Ewerike, a Florida-based barrister, poet, and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War, begins to go mad, consumed by memories of his younger sister Ugochi, who went missing during that conflict. Consumed by survivor?s guilt and fearful that the same fate awaits Amara, his sixteen-year-old daughter who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ugochi, Fidelis locks her in her bedroom, offering no words of explanation, only lovingly?if poorly?made meals and sweets. Amid that singular action, the Ewerike family spirals into chaos: After unsuccessful attempts to free her daughter from her room, his wife Adaobi seeks the counsel of a preacher, praying for spiritual liberation from the curse she is certain has plagued her family since leaving Nigeria. Fourteen-year-old Chuk, beset by his own war with the neighborhood boys, receives a painful education on force, masculinity, and his tenuous position within his family. And rebellious, resentful Amara is hungry for her life to be hers, so the moment she is able to escape her imprisonment, she falls in love?not with the Aba-born engineer-in-training her mother envisages, but with Maksym Kostyk, the son of the town drunk. Before long, the two have concocted a plan to run away from the trappings of their familial traumas. Perfect for readers ofSing, Unburied, Sing,Julie Iromuanya''s A Season of Light is an all-consuming masterpiece. To peer into the window of the Ewerike family?s lives is a gift.
£22.50
Catapult Antiquity
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£14.39
Simon And Schuster Group USA The Perfumers Secret
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£15.29
American University in Cairo Press Honey Hunger
Book SynopsisA breathtaking novel of longing, uncertainty, and ultimately of hope, written by an International Prize for Arabic Fiction-winning author and an International Booker-prize winning translatorAzzan is a beekeeper in a rural community in Oman. Devoted to tending his bees and searching for wild hives, he encounters Thamna, a lone shepherd woman, on a mountain slope and is captivated by her and her honey-colored eyes. Across the breathtaking vistas of Oman's remote mountains and plains, Azzan's troubled past and present unfold. A disappointment to his family, he turns to drink, and ultimately discovers the healing power of his beekeeping, before an accident in which he loses all. Zahran Alqasmi's masterful novel thrums forward with a subtle momentum. His lucid, poetic writing conveys a visceral sense of time and place, of the fragile ecologies inhabited by both bees and humans alike, in this intense and compelling novel of loss and hope.
£17.06
Amazon Publishing The Suns Shadow
Book SynopsisFrom the bestselling author of The Storyteller’s Secret comes an unflinching exploration of betrayal, forgiveness, and the healing power of a second chance.Celine’s life is spiraling out of control. She’s in danger of losing the beloved equestrian farm that was her childhood home. Her distant husband, Eric, is devoting a suspicious amount of time to a stunning new colleague. Then her young son, Brian, receives a devastating cancer diagnosis. How much worse can things get?Felicity has uprooted her career and her teenage son, Justin, to get closer to Eric. She’s tired of keeping his secrets—that Justin is his son, and Eric’s frequent “business trips” have been spent playing the good dad with him. Felicity is determined to get her happily ever after, even if it means confronting Celine at a delicate time.But when Brian’s prognosis worsens, and a transplant from Justin becomes his best chance at survival, Felicity must make a wrenching decision about her son’s well-being—and Celine must accept that the “other woman” is her only hope.In another life Celine and Felicity might have been friends. Can they put aside the pain between them to do what’s best for their families—and their own futures?
£8.54
Amazon Publishing Glamorous Notions
Book SynopsisA costume designer’s past casts a long shadow over her well-constructed lies in this intriguing story about stolen identities, friendship, and betrayal from the author of A Splendid Ruin and A Dangerous Education.Hollywood, 1955. As head costume designer for Lux Pictures, Lena Taylor hears startling confessions from the biggest movie stars. She knows how to keep their secrets—after all, none of their scandals can match her own.Lena was once Elsie Gruner, the daughter of an Ohio dressmaker. Her gift for fashion design helped her win a coveted spot at an art academy in Rome. While in Italy, she became enthralled by the charismatic Julia, who drew her into a shadowy world of jazz clubs, code words, and mysterious deliveries. When one of Julia’s intrigues ended in murder, Elsie found herself in the middle of a bewildering sinister international plot. So she ran.After fleeing to LA, Elsie became Lena—but she’s never stopped looking over her shoulder. Now, as her engagement to a screenwriter throws her into the spotlight, she’s terrified her façade won’t hold up. Will she figure out the truth about her past before everything falls apart?
£8.54
Amazon Publishing Hold Strong
Book SynopsisFrom Robert Dugoni, Jeff Langholz, and Chris Crabtree comes an epic and inspiring novel—based on true events—about love, heroism, and resilience during the darkest chapters of World War II.Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white—for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of 1,800 starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called the Arisan Maru, his survival doubtful.Determined to use her math skills on the home front, Sarah is recruited to Washington, DC, into the covert field of code breaking. When Sarah intercepts a message about a Japanese convoy, the US Navy’s mission is clear: sink the Arisan Maru and send it to the bottom of the South China Sea. Now, the lives of the two young lovers are about to inadvertently collide in one of the most shocking acts of World War II.Anchored in an extraordinary true story and breathlessly recreated, Hold Strong is a one-of-a-kind novel that explores faith, courage, survival, and coming home against insurmountable odds.
£8.54
Amazon Publishing The Rules of Fortune
Book SynopsisA gripping novel about power, money, and secrets. Mindy KalingA daughter's investigation into her family history threatens to destroy their legacy in a gripping novel about power, money, and secrets by the author of Token Black Girl. On their Martha's Vineyard estate, the Carter family prepares to celebrate. But when the billionaire patriarch dies right before his seventieth birthday, the media is quick to question the future of the multi-industry conglomerate that makes the Carters living legends. Amid the succession crisis, his daughter, Kennedy, is questioning her father's past. Kennedy is an aspiring filmmaker, and the documentary she'd planned to present at her father's party begins an inquest into the life of a man she never really knew. A thoughtful outlier in an elite and fiercely guarded dynasty, she's not interested in keeping up the appearances that define her impeccably poised mother or in the capitalist games her ruthless brother plays. Kennedy wants only to understand the origins of their empire, and the lethally ambitious man behind it. That understanding comes at a cost. As a twisted history emerges, the fault lines in the family grow. Torn between morality and the promise of maintaining wealth, Kennedy must decide what's most importantthe Carter legacy or exposing the shocking truth of how it was built.
£8.54
Amazon Publishing Four Steps to the Perfect Fake Date
Book SynopsisFrom the author of Four Steps to the Perfect Revenge comes a deliciously witty and lighthearted romance brimming with misadventures, misdeeds, misunderstandings?and one perfectly mismatched couple.A notorious rule follower, the old Daphne Davis could do no wrong. But lately she can?t get anything right.Jilted by her ex, ousted from her home, and laid off from her job, Daphne retreats to her little hometown, Fernley Island. But even there, she feels out of sync. So, bailing on her own sister?s engagement party, she suddenly embraces a brand-new philosophy: no more goody-two-shoes.Unfortunately, Daphne?s new mantra lands her squarely in the headlights?literally?of her high school nemesis, Calvin Flint. No longer a scrawny jerk, he?s Fernley?s acting sheriff, filling out his uniform waaay better than he ought to.He?s also Daphne?s new boss.As Daphne balances the books after a department scandal, a series of mishaps throws her and Calvin together. The sparks that fly take them both by surprise. But will a fake dating scheme and quest for a stolen heirloom ruin their chance at something real?
£12.74
Amazon Publishing Happy After All
Book SynopsisWhen a romance author meets a mysterious stranger, love is the last thing she expects to find in a funny and heartfelt novel about second chances by a New York Times bestselling author.A city girl leaves her life behind in LA to start over in a small town?It?s a cliché, but it?s also Amelia Taylor?s life. And her new life as a romance novelist and motelier is going great?until Nathan Hart checks in.Of course he?s disastrously handsome, thoroughly disagreeable, and seems to be set against Amelia on sight. Of course there?s smoldering tension between them that can?t be ignored. They?d make the perfect enemies to lovers story. It?s one of Amelia?s favorite tropes.But the man in room 32 seems genuinely broken, and it?s going to take more than romance tropes and wishful thinking to get past his wounds. As a tentative friendship grows into a deeper connection, Amelia and Nathan both realize that facing each other?s painful secrets takes courage. Do they dare take the risk and hope it ends happily after all?
£8.54
Amazon Publishing The Pucking Proposal
Book SynopsisA sports reporter and a hockey player get up close and personal in an outrageously sexy romantic comedy by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Lauren Landish.When it comes to hockey, unflappable Maple Creek sports reporter Joy Barlowe is privy to a lot of behind-the-scenes locker room activity. Like stumbling upon Dalton Days in all his unabashed glory. After the muscled goalie goes on to score better than he ever has, he proposes Joy take another peek before his next match. It works, and a provocative pregame tradition is born.Dalton has the best stats in the league, but he?s also superstitious. Now he?s found his good luck charm. Joy is not only game, she?s playing along. She?s also his best buddy?s younger sister and totally off-limits. What happens between them has to be their late-night FaceTime secret. That?s the naked truth. So is the fact that Joy and Dalton are discovering there?s more to each other than meets the eye.Falling in lust? Easy to hide. Falling in love? Much harder. Now Dalton has one more proposition for Joy. And the fallout could rock Maple Creek.
£12.74
Amazon Publishing We Are Made of Stars
Book SynopsisSecrets, lies, and second chances are served up beneath the stars at a picturesque mountain getaway in this powerful novel about love and family by the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends.At the Vis Ta Vie inn, Reneé and Jean-Paul De La Rue face the daunting decision to close their beloved home for good.They’re not the only ones going through a season of change, though. Their guests include three couples in crisis: Hollywood celebs Leo and Penny are spending their silver anniversary together while on the cusp of divorce. Lucy, a practical-minded therapist, and Henry, an astronomer with his head in the stars, are struggling to find common ground. And former lawyer and current stay-at-home mom Sienna and charismatic sports agent Adam look perfect but are hiding rifts of their own. Thrown into the mix are self-absorbed single mother Cassidy and her sullen fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosalie.The stage is set for a week of betrayals, regrets, and shocking truths that can rend the heart or heal it. Vis Ta Vie—live your life—captures what it means to love through the darkness, and to find the light even after the magic fades.
£12.74
Amazon Publishing Just Want You Here
Book SynopsisAn intimate and deeply moving coming-of-age novel about second chances and the inextricable bonds between lovers and friends.The only love Ari has known is Morgan. Engaged and planning a life with him in New York, Ari is shocked when Morgan sits her down one rainy afternoon and tells her their decade-long relationship is over. They’ve been over for a long time now, he says—and Ari knows he’s right.Twenty-eight years old and suddenly alone, Ari throws herself into a new job in Boston, as assistant to a tech CEO. Wells is British, twelve years her senior, a devoted husband and father. He’s also captivated by Ari, in a way neither of them can explain. Ignoring every warning signal from friends and their own instincts, they dive into a fiery affair, which becomes more dangerous as Ari finds herself intricately tangled with his wife, Leah.Nothing can prepare Ari for the choices she must make as she tries to uncover what’s right for herself, and for the people she can’t let go. As a new path opens—a journey of lies and the twisted calculus of protecting them—Ari’s second chance at happiness forces her to consider who she really is. Can you love someone without dragging them under? What does it take to start over again?
£12.74
Amazon Publishing Once You Were Mine
Book SynopsisA genealogy search reveals heartrending connections between friends as it brings to light one woman’s traumatic past as a teenage mother in the 1960s.In a quiet North Carolina town in 1968, a seventeen-year-old girl’s life is forever changed when a summer romance leads to an unplanned pregnancy. She is sent to an abusive “maternity home,” where she is shamed and deceived into signing adoption papers.In the present day, Allison Garrett volunteers as a “search angel,” using DNA tests to help strangers locate lost relatives. But the family tree she finds most compelling is that of her own mother, who was abandoned as a baby. As Allison puts the pieces together, they reveal much more than her mother’s origins—and threaten to create further divisions in her tight-knit community.When a family is separated by devastating circumstances, is it possible for them to heal the pain of the past and make up for lost time?
£8.54
Amazon Publishing Not Your Biggest Fan
Book SynopsisUSA Today bestselling author Sara Ney sizzles with a quick-witted, sexy romp about an eager entrepreneur and a cocky football star who couldn’t be more different—or more into each other.Harlow James is destined to rock the dating world. The creator of Kissmet, the app helping singles find love, she’s in New York to secure advertisers. But the sassy, small-town girl can’t help meddling in other people’s business.When she runs into a muscular stranger at her go-to food truck, Harlow doesn’t realize he’s Landon “Andy” Burke, the NFL’s most-wanted free agent, in town to talk contracts. She just sees a hottie about to get burned by undercooked street food. Though she tries to warn him, he shrugs her off, making a little wager instead.In a messy twist of fate, Andy finds himself in the same hotel as Harlow. When she collects on their bet, they make a mind-blowing—and bed-rocking—connection. But after the weekend, she goes home to Green Bay to her goofy dad and corgi, ready to focus everything on work again. Kissmet, however, has other ideas, when Andy knocks on her door…
£8.54
Amazon Publishing Six Weeks in Reno
Book SynopsisA woman at a “divorce ranch” in 1930s Reno strives to live life on her own terms in a powerful novel about heartbreak, hope, and the allure of the unknown.September 27, 1931. Today my new life begins.After twenty years in a loveless marriage, Evelyn Henderson will do anything to escape her stifling suburban life. She boards a train for Reno, Nevada, a former frontier town that’s booming thanks to “six-weekers”: women from all walks of life who take up residence there just long enough to secure an uncontested divorce—a right they don’t yet have in their home states.Evelyn settles into the Flying N Ranch and soon bonds with her housemates, most of whom have never ventured this far from home—or from societal conventions. The Biggest Little City in the World offers a heady taste of freedom for the six-weekers: horseback riding in denim and fringe by day and being courted by dance-hall cowboys by night. But underneath the glamour are the grim realities of Depression-era America, as well as the devastating consequences of escape.As Evelyn is drawn out of her shell by a Hollywood-handsome wrangler and challenged by her new friends to reengage with the world in all its heartbreaking complexity, one thing becomes clear: six weeks will change her life forever.
£12.74
Canterbury Classics Anne of Green Gables
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£11.69
Canterbury Classics Little Women
Book SynopsisLouisa May Alcott's classic Little Women tells the story of the four March sisters as they come of age in 1860s New England.When Little Women was first published in 1868, it became an instant bestseller. The book’s gentle lessons and charming story of four adventurous sisters coming of age in Civil War-era New England was originally written as a children’s book, but it quickly captured the hearts and attention of readers of all ages. Featuring colorful sprayed edges and a heat-burnished cover with foil stamping, this edition of Little Women is a stylish addition to your bookshelf.
£12.34
Simon & Schuster Alice Sadie Celine
Book Synopsis“Obsessed!” —Chloë Sevigny “I am literally obsessed.” —Busy Philipps Hailed as “richly intimate” and “wickedly delightful” (The New York Times Book Review), this steamy and incisive debut adult novel follows one woman’s affair with her daughter’s best friend, testing the limits of love and ambition.It’s the opening night, but Alice’s performance in the local Bay Area production of The Winter’s Tale is far from glamourous. She doesn’t have dreams of stardom, but the basement theater in a wildfire-choked town isn’t exactly what she envisioned for her career back home in Los Angeles. To make matters worse, her best friend Sadie is not even coming. Pragmatic, serious Sadie and flighty, creative Alice have been best friends since high school—really one another’s only friend—but now that they are through with college (which they attended together) and living on opposite ends of California, Alice would at least expect her friend’s support. Sadie, determined not to cancel her plans with her boyfriend, ends up enlisting the help of her mother, Celine. A professor of women’s and gender studies at UC Berkeley, Celine’s landmark treatise on sex and identity made her notorious, but she’s struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. So, when Sadie begs her to attend Alice’s play, she relents, if only to escape writer’s block. But in a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Alice’s performance and realizes that her daughter’s once lanky, slightly annoying best friend is now an irresistible young woman. Set over the course of decades—from Alice and Sadie’s early friendship days and Celine’s decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of the 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary Hollywood—Alice and Celine’s love affair will test the limits of their love for Sadie and their own beliefs of power, agency, and feminism. Witty and relatable, sexy and surprising, Sarah Blakely-Cartwright’s adult debut is a “heartfelt, smart, and keenly observed take on friendship” (Town & Country) and a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.
£9.49
Simon & Schuster The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey
Book SynopsisWhen a star of hit reality TV show Garden State Goddesses is murdered while filming the season finale, bitter rivalries and secret affairs are revealed as a lead producer searches for a killer.
£13.49
The New York Review of Books, Inc The Rest is Silence
Book SynopsisThe lone novel by a Latin American author of very short fiction (praised as ?the most beautiful stories in the world? by Italo Calvino)?an antic, metafictional send-up of the Mexican literary scene told through the unreliable recollections of an aging critic?s friends, relatives, and attendants.The one and only novel by the renowned Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso?Latin America?s most expansive miniaturist, whose tiny, acid, and bracingly surreal narratives Italo Calvino dubbed ?the most beautiful stories in the world??The Rest Is Silence presents the reader with the kaleidoscopic portrait of a provincial Mexican literary critic, one Eduardo Torres, a sort of Don Quixote of the Sunday supplements, whose colossal misreadings are matched only by the scale of his vanity.Presented in the form of a festschrift for the aging writer, this rollicking metafiction offers up a bouquet of highly unreliable reminiscences by Torres?s friends, relations, and servants (their accounts skewed by envy, ignorance, and sheer malice), along with a generous selection of the savant?s own comically botched attempts at ?criticism.?Monterroso?s narrative is a ludicrous dissection of literary self-conceit, a (Groucho) Marxian skewering of the Mexican literary landscape, and perhaps a wry self-portrait by an author who is profoundly sensible of just how high the stakes of the art of criticism really are?and, consequently, of just how far it has to fall.
£14.39
New York Review Books The Bewitched Bourgeois
Book SynopsisPoe and Kafka meet The Twilight Zone in this anthology of fifty fantastical tales, many of them reflecting the political and social energies of the time, by an Italian master of the short story.Dino Buzzati was a prolific writer of stories, publishing several hundred over the course of forty years. Many of them are fantastic—reminiscent of Kafka and Poe in their mixture of horror and absurdity, and at the same time anticipating the alternate realities of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror in their chilling commentary on the barbarities, catastrophes, and fanaticisms of the twentieth century.In The Bewitched Bourgeois, Lawrence Venuti has put together an anthology that showcases Buzzati’s short fiction from his earliest stories to the ones he wrote in the last months of his life. Some appear in English for the first time, while others are reappearing in Venuti’s crisp new versions, such as the much-anthologized “Seven Floors,” an absurdist tale of a patient fatally caught in hospital bureaucracy; “Panic at La Scala,” in which the Milanese bourgeoisie, fearing a left-wing revolution, find themselves imprisoned in the opera house; and “Appointment with Einstein,” where the physicist, stopping at a filling station in Princeton, New Jersey, encounters a gas station attendant who turns out to be the Angel of Death.
£16.19
J-Novel Club Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 5 Volume 5 Light
Book SynopsisA frigid winter melts away to reveal spring celebrationsRozemyne is given a harsh choice to make upon her return to Ehrenfest. The Leisegangs are now the dominant power after the winter purge, and their plans are sowing the seeds of distrust within the archducal family. Even so, Rozemyne forges ahead, and her unique way of life gradually inspires change around her. As spring approaches, so does the celebratory feast. The preparations include a long-overdue meeting with lower-city merchants, divine protections rituals, furthering the education of the next High Bishop, and a magnificent tale told at the closed country gate. Can the archducal family break tradition and heal the divide between factions? Watch Ehrenfest's ambitious younger generation unite in this volume of this biblio-fantasy! Also includes two short stories and four-panel manga by You Shiina.
£12.34
Muswell Press The Gallopers
Book Synopsis
£9.89
Salt Publishing Lie of the Land
Book SynopsisLie of the Land is a dark, domestic literary thriller set in the Black Country in the Midlands, UK. When Rory and Jemma meet, Rory already has a girlfriend, but that doesn't stop them getting together and, much sooner than Jemma would like, they're buying their first house together in the heart of the grimy Midlands.The Rocks' is a run-down, doer-upper' and right from the off, Jemma is reluctant and unhappy, far from ready for commitment. But there is something about the house that is both compelling and sinister, and the situation takes a darker turn when a terrible accident happens involving their new next door neighbours, forcing both Jemma and Rory to tackle their inner demons.Themes of toxic relationships, secrets and deceit are intensified by a judgmental narrative voice which propels the plot to its even darker resolution.
£10.44
Salt Publishing Waiting for a Party
Book SynopsisClaire Meadows, 92, is lying in bed on a Sunday morning, looking forward to the 102nd birthday party of her friend Martin in his retirement home. As she reminiscences about her life, her failed ambition to become a concert pianist, her missed opportunity to have a child, her friends and lovers, mostly dead, she is troubled by the part she played, consciously and deliberately, in the death of her husband. Did she kill him or was it an accident? Or a suicide willingly abetted by her? And what about her feelings of fear and relief when the body was taken away?Widowed, her outlook is changed by a casual sexual encounter and in the years that follow she seems to be catching up on the experience she missed as she was married at twenty-two. Most of her brief liaisons are unsatisfactory until, at a concert, she sits next to a man with an intriguing face. Many years after his death, the memory of that relationship still excites her.When she met her husband, who was more than twenty years her se
£10.44
Harlequin Beach Vibes
Book Synopsis
£18.00
Image Comics Whats The Furthest Place From Here Volume 4
Book SynopsisThese four tales help explain where the kids of the Academy came from and where they are going. This book has everythingman-eating frogs, stolen babies, psychotic bankers, kids who live in movie theaters, and a friendly lighthouse keeper. It is time to find out how the world ended.Collects issues #7-9, 19.
£13.49
Other Press LLC Allegro
Book Synopsis
£16.19
Amazon Publishing Every Precious and Fragile Thing
Book SynopsisA mother and daughter try desperately to reconcile just as a decades-old secret threatens to shatter their relationship forever in this powerful story from the bestselling author of The Echo of Old Books.For social worker Mallory Ward, working with at-risk youth is a calling. But when one of her clients is tragically killed, she finds herself at a crossroads. Despite long-held resentments toward her distant mother, Mallory retreats to her childhood home on the Rhode Island coast to contemplate her future. Instead, she’s confronted by her past, not only in the renewed tensions with her mother but in the unexpected appearance of a familiar face—and the wrenching losses that drove her away a decade ago.Helen Ward’s home is filled with precious keepsakes from her patients, a testament to decades spent caring for the terminally ill. Her work has always come first, though, leaving little time to connect with her daughter. Over the years, the rift between them has become a chasm, so when Mallory appears unannounced, Helen sees it as an opportunity to repair their broken relationship.But hidden among Helen’s mementos are the keys to her past…and a terrible secret that threatens to destroy the fragile new trust between them forever.
£12.74
