Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Abigail Rosen, nicknamed Appassionata, was the sexiest, most flamboyant violinist in classical music, but she was also the loneliest and the most exploited girl in the world. When a dramatic suicide attempt destroyed her violin career, she set her sights on the male-dominated heights of the conductor's rostrum. Given the chance to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Abby is ecstatic, not realising the RSO is composed of the wildest bunch of musicians ever to blow a horn or caress a fiddle.

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is...don't make any afternoon plans.

Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.

At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive - known locally, as 'Larks'. His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save what is a fast-sinking school from closure.

When Anna takes on the role of companion to the owner of Wynthorpe Hall on the outskirts of Wynbridge, she has no idea that her life is set to change beyond all recognition. A confirmed ‘bah humbug’ when it comes to Christmas, Anna is amazed to find herself quickly immersed in the eccentric household, and when youngest son Jamie unexpectedly arrives home it soon becomes obvious that her personal feelings are going all out to compromise her professional persona.

A fateful car crash sets in motions a series of events for Floriana, Esme. Floriana gathers the courage to attend the wedding of her one true love, and Esme journeys with her to Lake Como to find the man who stole her heart many years ago. It’s time for Esme and Floriana to face the past - and the future - on the shore of the most romantic and enchanting of lakes.

It’s the 1st of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and celebrated adventurer is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be.Stanton knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already history.Somehow he must change that history. He must prevent the war.

Ashcombe was the most beautiful house Saskia had ever seen as a little girl, providing a perfect sanctuary to hide from the tragedy which shattered her childhood. Now an adult, Saskia is still living at Ashcombe and, as a book restorer ,devotes her days tending to broken, battered books. When she discovers a notebook carefully concealed in an old Bible, Saskia finds herself drawn into a heart-rending tale of wartime love....

Gianluca's life is empty. His City job, his seven-figure income, his glossy girlfriends - all have long ceased to satisfy him. His marriage is over, and he barely knows his young daughters. In search of serenity and a deeper purpose, he flees to Italy. But life on the sun-drenched Amalfi coast is not as peaceful as Luca anticipates.

Maurice Denham stars as John Mortimer's famous comic creation Rumpole of the Bailey. Defender of the underdog, friend of South London villains and scourge of QCs, much-loved barrister Horace Rumpole was first brought to life on television, and in 1980 BBC Radio 4 introduced him to the airwaves for a 13-episode series.

In this incandescent novel, V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man, an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.

The complete finale of the hit BBC Radio 4 sitcom- 2 episodes. Cabin Pressure is set in the wing and prayer world of a tiny, one-plane airline, staffed by two pilots, one on his way down, and one who was never up to start with. In this, the finale of the whole series, we discover that for MJN Air, whether it's choosing an ice-cream flavour, putting a princess in a van or remembering your grandmother's name, no job is too small, but, many, many jobs are too difficult.

In the second novel in the Pop Larkin series, the Larkin family descends upon Brittany in France. Like fish out of water, they find that things don't quite turn out their way: The weather is less than ideal, the food is awful, and the hotel is in a bad state of repair. But things slowly improve as Pop manages to sweet-talk Mlle Dupont, Angela Snow and her sister, Iris; and Charley and Mariette celebrate their first wedding anniversary. A Breath of French Air is a delightful book full of nostalgia, fun, and frivolity.

The brand-new novel from the Sunday Times best-selling author of The Perfectly Imperfect Woman - a gorgeous listen full of love, life and laughter. Sophie Mayhew looks like she has the perfect life. Wife of rising political star John F Mayhew, a man who is one step away from the top job in the government, her glamour matches his looks, power, breeding and money. But John has made some stupid mistakes along the way, some of which are threatening to emerge.

On a normal day, in a normal house, on a normal street, wife and mother Fran has had enough. She packs a case, leaves a note for her bullying husband, Pete, and one for her beloved 21-year-old son, Harry, and heads to the airport - and freedom. In another house, on another street, Helena is desperately baiting her husband, Jack, into a fight. These days it feels like the only way to get Jack to take notice of her. Passionate, volatile, increasingly fragile, Helena is fast running out of hope.

Kostya ha dieci anni quando si mette in viaggio per arrivare dalla nonna Irina, domestica a Napoli. Nello zaino, la foto di una madre mai conosciuta e un indirizzo. Suo padre è al fronte per difendere l'Ucraina appena invasa. Tra soldati che cercano di bloccarlo al confine e sconosciute che gli dànno una mano, il bambino riesce ad arrivare. Vita, la signora per cui la nonna lavora, lo scopre addormentato sullo zerbino. Quattro anni fa lei ha perso suo figlio e ora passa le giornate da sola, o con Irina, che ha letto Dante e parla italiano come un poeta del Duecento.

The scene of this entertaining story is laid in a charming English village. The plot centres round Miss Barbara Buncle, a maiden lady who was obliged to write a book because – as she naively explained – her dividends were so poor. Unfortunately, Miss Buncle had no imagination, so she wrote about her friends – quite kindly and truthfully, of course, for she was a benevolent and veracious soul.

Marnie Sellick is adrift when she lands a job at the coveted, mysterious beauty brand rytual cosmetica. The enigmatic founder and CEO, Luna Peters, takes a liking to Marnie, and as the two grow closer Marnie becomes intoxicated by the life that Luna, and rytual, can offer her. But all is not...

A week on an island sounds like the stuff of beach dreams, but for Paisley Royce, it's a nightmare. Her little sister is marrying her ex-college sweetheart, and Paisley is serving as maid of honor. To add insult to injury, nobody will let Paisley forget she's single. Bachelorette weekend changes everything when she runs into her old college frenemy, Klein Madigan. Klein is still intelligent and funny, and somehow time has only made him more attractive.

Arthur MacDonald, 85, is having an end-of-life crisis. His beloved, dying wife of over 60 years no longer knows who he is. His older brother still has all his hair and a wife almost half his age. The man his middle-aged daughter is dating has a ponytail. His teenaged grandson wants to cook desserts for a living. And his daughter wants him to move into Silvermine retirement home. Then Arthur meets the gorgeous, radical, 80-something-year-old Robbie and learns that nobody is ever too old to fall in love all over again.

The People of the Abyss (1903) is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several weeks, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. In his attempt to understand the working-class of this deprived area of London the author stayed as a lodger with a poor family. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.