Showing results for "Black" in Literary Fiction

'Black Bag made me laugh aloud dozens and dozens of times. It's brilliant, a triumph of a book . . . I loved its inventive originality and its ambition: it is very powerfully worth your time' Katherine Rundell 'A campus novel for our end times . . . Black Bag fizzes with wit and invention and...

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.

Brought to you by Penguin. Black Dogs is a dark and brooding masterpiece from Booker-prize winning Sunday Times bestselling author Ian McEwan. In 1946, June and Bernard set off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they had planned an idyllic holiday, but in...

'Edgy, dark, funny and perceptive' The Herald 'Immensely readable' Jo Brand 'Brilliant' The Sun 'Vulnerable and raw' Tom Allen A life-affirming debut novel from one of Britain's most-loved comedians, Kevin Bridges - exploring dysfunctional friendships, family, and how to face your problems head...

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside. When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege.

Hertell Daggett isn't what he used to be—he'd once been married, he'd once been a physicist, and he'd once been shot in the head. The doctors got the bullet out, but a few tiny specks of copper stayed behind, floating inside his brain, connecting parts that aren't connected in the rest of us, filaments of species memory going back to the beginning of time.

**Pre-order UTOPIA AVENUE, the spectacular new novel from David Mitchell.** The dazzling novel from critically-acclaimed David Mitchell. Shortlisted for the 2006 Costa Novel Award Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006 January, 1982. Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor - covert stammerer and...

Ex-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels, Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece. But the doorbell and the phone keep ringing and every ring brings with it an ex-wife, a friend in need, a sister in trouble or a young woman seeking a teacher and so dusty, selfish Bradley is plunged into the muddles and mysteries which will end in his doom.

Wyoming, 1876. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Black Leopard, Red Wolf is the kind of novel I never realized I was missing until I read it. A dangerous, hallucinatory, ancient Africa, which becomes a fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made, with language as powerful as Angela Carter's. I cannot...

When the game begins in New Orleans this Super Bowl Sunday . . . 80,000 people had better get ready to die. The Super Bowl--where thousands have gathered for an all-American tradition. Suddenly it's the most terrifying place on earth . . . Michael Lander is the most dangerous man in America. He...

Black Mischief, Waugh's third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala", the rightful ruler's demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies and a good deal more mischief.

Young Julien Sorel, the son of a country timber merchant, carries a portrait of his hero Napoleon Bonaparte and dreams of military glory. A brilliant career in the Church leads him into Parisian high society, where, 'mounted upon the finest horse in Alsace', he gains high military office and wins the heart of the aristocratic Mlle Mathilde de la Mole. Julien's cunning and ambition lead him into all sorts of scrapes.

Brought to you by Penguin. New Hyde Hospital’s psychiatric ward has a new resident. It also has a very, very old one. When an altercation with the police leads to Pepper being mistakenly admitted to a mental institution in Queens, NYC, he doesn’t expect to stay there long. It will be a...

High in the Himalayas near Darjeeling, the old mountaintop palace shines like a jewel. When it was the General's 'harem' palace, richly dressed ladies wandered the windswept terraces; at night, music floated out over the villages and gorges. Now, the General's son has bestowed it on an order of nuns, the Sisters of Mary. Well-intentioned yet misguided, the nuns set about taming the gardens and opening a school and dispensary for the villagers.

Trapped between his unfulfilling career, a dwindling grasp on reality and his childhood memories, Jay Mackintosh takes the snap decision to buy a derelict French farmhouse, running from London to the village of Lansquenet. Returning to his childhood haunt, Jay is forced to confront a ghost from his past, a secretive widow and the terrible secret she's hiding.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and '90s San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and metatextual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.

British M16 Agent and former SAS trooper Jack Tate is trying to escape his past when he witnesses a terrorist attack of unthinkable scale. An electro-magnetic pulse knocks out the US power grid, killing anything with a computer processor, throwing the whole country into chaos. Under the cover of the blackout, a clandestine operation aims to assassinate prominent public figures on US soil. Looting and violence spreads across the country. And Jack Tate’s past comes back to haunt him. 

Birdie's keeping it together, of course she is. So she's a little hungover sometimes on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter Emaleen to work while she waits tables but it's a tough town to be a single mother, and she needs to get by. Maybe the shine is starting to wear off life at Wolverine Lodge. Maybe Birdie's ready for a fresh start. And then Birdie meets Arthur, who is quieter than most men, but makes her want to listen; who is gentle with Emaleen, and understands Birdie's fascination with the mountains in whose shadow they live.