Showing results for "Phoenix" in Literary Fiction

SELECTED FOR THE BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB | WINNER OF THE MSLEXIA NOVEL COMPETITION 1759, Ipswich. Sisters Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the best of friends and do everything together. They spy on their father as he paints, they rankle their mother as she manages the books, they tear barefoot...

It is 1940 and bombs are falling on London. Watching from her attic window, Charlotte sees enemy planes coming in over the city, and her neighbours' homes destroyed. Still grieving her beloved brother who never returned from France, Charlotte has moved away from her overbearing family and built a new life for herself. She works as a typist for the Ministry of Information, rents a room on the top floor of Mrs Callaghan's ramshackle house, and shares gin and confidences with her best friend, Elena.

'Gripping and moving' NINA STIBBE 'A masterpiece' SATHNAM SANGHERA 'Creepy and compulsive, yet deeply touching' SABINE DURRANT 'I can't think of anyone who wouldn't love it' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON Camden, 1890. London is a city of gaslight, gossip and grisly headlines. Hannah Teale is a bright...

FROM THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE WEDDING PEOPLE Sally Holt has always been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally's questions about life, about love and about Billy Barnes, the high school basketball...

East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer and servant, has lived peacefully for more than four decades in her beloved Cleftwater. Everyone in the village knows Martha, but no one has ever heard her speak. One bright morning, Martha becomes a silent witness to a witch hunt, led by sinister new arrival Silas Makepeace. As a trusted member of the community, she is enlisted to search the bodies of the accused women for evidence. But whilst she wants to help her friends, she also harbours a dark secret that could cost her own freedom.

1891. Seventeen-year-old Leonie Vernier and her brother abandon Paris for the sanctuary of their aunt's isolated country house near Carcassonne, the Domaine de la Cade. But in the nearby woods, Leonie stumbles across a ruined sepulchre - and a timeless mystery whose traces are written in blood...

Winner of the McKitterick Prize 2025 Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2025 Runner up for the the ADCI Literary Prize 2025 'Absolutely loved this. Funny and heartbreaking in equal measure' DOUGLAS STUART 'Glorious . . . so unusual, so moving, so memorable' GUARDIAN 'Tom Newlands may make...

'THRILLING' Paula Hawkins 'COMPULSIVE' The Times 'SEARING' Brit Bennett 'DEVASTATING' Observer 'UNFORGETTABLE' Ashley Audrain 'BRILLIANT' Chris Whitaker Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. But this is not his story. Ansel doesn't want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood...

Simon & Schuster has a great audiobook for every listener...

Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. She wants to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a tumbledown cabin and into the heart of the Williams family, Civil learns there is more to her new role than she bargained for.

'I absolutely couldn't stop reading . . . It took me hostage' Marian Keyes 'Lively, original . . . packed with tension' Janice Hallett 'A revealing close-up of a claustrophobic community. I loved it' Jennie Godfrey 'Deeply impressive . . . The final twist is devastating' The Times Australia...

Ann is a reluctant Vicar's wife. She tries her best but her husband only has eyes for God, her son is asking questions she struggles to answer, and it is all too easy to displease the congregation. It may only be a matter of time before she makes the headlines of the local gazette: Vicar's wife gets giggles in church. Vicar's wife refuses to bake scones. Vicar's wife does not care about other people. When her brother needs her help, Ann travels from Cornwall up to London. 

'Exactly the novel we need right here, right now' TAYARI JONES 'Astonishing' JODI PICOULT 'Triumphant' ELLE A woman learns the astonishing truth of her family's ties to a vanished American Kingdom in this riveting new novel from the bestselling and award-winning author of Take My Hand Nikki...

Sisters Rei, Kiki and Ai have always had to look out for one another—but life has taken them on very different paths. Eldest daughter Rei is spiky and sensible, distracting herself with an all-consuming job at a financial corporation in London. Big-hearted Kiki is a single mother in Tokyo, juggling the demands of her young son and the cantankerous elderly residents of the retirement home she works in. The free-spirited youngest, Ai, is a Japanese pop idol who has found fame and fortune but lost herself along the way. 

This is a story about Clare, Louisa and Chris. And sometimes Paul, and less often, Beth. It is most certainly not about frittatas (a terrible concession), and more to do with lemon tart (a perfect contrast of textures). It's about what happens when your husband tells you that he doesn't love you anymore, or when your wife leaves you after too many rounds of IVF. It's about helping your new friend with her funeral catering business, and discovering that, sometimes, the most unlikely pairings are the best. It's about food that is outrageously good and comforting to sad people.

A spellbinding tour de force from the bestselling author of The Invisible Bridge—a novel about varieties of infidelity, the provenance of a literary masterpiece, and the power of storytelling to shape identity and destiny. “Luna, Phoenix, Queen breaks all the rules and makes its own...

Born at the beginning of the 20th century, Raphael Ignatius Phoenix is determined to take his own life as the new millennium begins and he turns 100 years old. But before he ends it all, he wants to get his affairs in order, and that includes making sense of his own life. He decides to write it down, remembering the experiences, the myriad encounters and, of course, the 10 murders he committed along the way.

Life has always been a banquet for Sappho, one to be savored to the fullest. Following a magnificent destiny, her strange and sensual odyssey has carried her to the far corners of the ancient world, from Delphi to Egypt, to the Land of the Amazons, and the realm of Hades. For Sappho, it was always about love—love that seduced her into a plot to depose a dictator, and love that made her trade an unwanted marriage bed of a despised and drunken husband for a seemingly endless series of lovers, both male and female.

When Juliet moves into her late mother's house, making friends with the neighbouring families is the last thing on her mind. Grief and guilt are weighing her down, and working motherhood is a juggle. But for her husband Liam, the morning coffees and after-school gatherings soon reveal the secret struggles, fears and rivalries playing out behind closed doors—all of which are perfect inspiration for his new novel . . . When the rupture of a marriage sends ripples through the group, painful home truths are brought to light. 

'Heartbreaking, hopeful . . . nothing short of a joy' Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of Open Water Rupert's eclectic charity shop, The Chest of Small Wonders, sits on an ever-changing high street in an ever-changing corner of London. He once had big dreams for the place, but times are tough, and...