Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

A beautiful, funny and surprising story of autism, family and love, perfect for fans of The Rosie Project, David Nicholls' Us and Nick Hornby's About a Boy. Life is built on the little things.... Eight year-old Sam has always been different - beautiful, surprising and autistic. For all he loves his family, dad Alex has always struggled to connect with Sam, and the strain has pushed Alex's marriage with Jody to the edge.

After Paige Winterbourne is ousted as leader of the American Coven of Witches, all she wants to do is hide under her duvet for a few months. Let the supernatural world manage without her, see if she cares… But fate, of course, has other plans. A murderer is on the loose - someone with superhuman skills. When Paige learns that the killer is targeting children, she realises she has to get involved in the covert investigation.

Brought to you by Penguin. The hilarious romantic comedy from NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR Sophie Kinsella Lexi wakes up in a hospital bed after a car accident, thinking she's twenty-five with crooked teeth and a disastrous love life. But, to her disbelief, she learns it's actually three years...

ONE OF THE EVENING STANDARD'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Barney Campbell's Rain is a searingly powerful début that reads like a British Matterhorn ******** Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Rain by Barney Campbell, read by Mark Meadows. 'Corporal Thomas (my acting...

Lester Ferris needs a rest. He's spent his life being shot at, and Afghanistan was the last stop on his road to exhaustion. Mancreu is the ideal place for Lester to relax. A former British colony, soon to be destroyed because of its very special version of toxic pollution. But Lester Ferris makes a friend: a street kid with a comicbook fixation who will need a home - who might, Lester hopes, become an adopted son. But in a place like Mancreu, just what sort of hero will the boy need?

Iron Druid Atticus O'Sullivan, hero of Kevin Hearne's epic New York Times best-selling urban fantasy series, has a point to make - and then drive into a vampire's heart. When a druid has lived for 2,000 years like Atticus, he's bound to run afoul of a few vampires. Make that legions of them. Even his former friend and legal counsel turned out to be a bloodsucking backstabber. Now the toothy troublemakers - led by power-mad Theophilus - have become a huge problem requiring a solution.

Perfect for fans of Ann Cleeves, Susan Hill, Nicci French and Val McDermid, this is an astute and intelligent psychological thriller centring around obsession and rage from international multi-million copy seller Joanne Harris. Fast paced with unexpected twists and turns, it will get right under...

'An incredible achievement, a story of friendship, memory, loss, and moral duty unlike any I've read before' Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee What if you can no longer trust your memories? Mary is struggling with her memory. She does not have too few recollections but too many...

Once a successful surgeon, Frederick Welin now lives in self-imposed exile on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Nearly twelve years have passed since he was disgraced for attempting to cover up a tragic mishap on the operating table. One morning in the depths of winter, he sees a hunched figure struggling towards him across the ice. His past is about to catch up with him.

Ben is, at last, leaving home. At 22, he’s the youngest of the family. His mother, Edie, is distraught. He husband, on the other hand, is rather hoping to get his wife back, after decades of family life. Ben’s brother is struggling in a relationship in which he achieves and earns less than his girlfriend. His sister is wrestling with debts and the end of a turbulent love affair. As the children’s lives become more complicated, they retreat to the simplicities of their childhood. But can you ever go home?

Hidden by London’s wealth, energy and need for cheap labour, the city’s immigrant population is powerless, despised and often illegal. So when a young woman’s body is discovered on Hampstead Heath one cold morning, she could be anyone...Rich or poor, outsider or insider, five strangers are connected in undreamed-of ways as greed, courage, murder and kindness link their lives.

Dreamer. Bombshell. Icon. Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe presents the actress in a startling new light. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she had an uncertain and unforgiving upbringing. She grew up in Los Angeles and would dream about...

Mr Phillips wakes on the morning of July 31st in his modest, nearly mortgage-free home, in the bed he has contentedly shared with his wife of 30 years - though to be honest, at night he lies beside her and dreams of other women. He's ready to face another ordinary day. Except that for Mr Phillips, it is not an ordinary day, for on July 28th, he was summarily sacked. Nonetheless, he rises at his usual hour and prepares himself as he has done his entire working life for the office he no longer has.

In name and by birth, Celia was a Dunne. She had inherited the beautiful old family home by the Rydd Water – but was she bound to live her life by the principles of her predecessors? Was there some hidden restraint that compelled her to heed the past? Celia’s house is a moving and poignant story of the struggle between old and young: the older generation anxious to preserve the values they have helped create while their children are determined at all costs to make lives of their own.

Shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize. Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat told with bristling tenderness and black humour the stories of that titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, and his clever, misunderstood wife, Betty. Last Friends, the final volume of this trilogy, picks up with Terence Veneering, Filth's great rival in work and - though it was never spoken of - in love.

Brought to you by Penguin. The new novel from Salley Vickers, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Librarian Artist, Hassie Days, and her sister, Margot, buy a run down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left...

'Will you marry me?' I think of you, then. I think of you every day. But usually in the quietest part of the morning, or the darkest part of the night. Not when my boyfriend of two years has just proposed. I look up at Richard with his hopeful eyes. 'Lily?' he prompts. It's been ten years, but...

The incredible new novel and brand new world from the international bestselling author of the Wool trilogy. The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost. Palmer has never been the same since his father walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away from the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to embrace it.

Brought to you by Penguin. From Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past, comes a compulsive new novel about one woman's sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London 1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to...

Richard is a modern day everyman; a middle-aged divorcee trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one. His life has slowed almost to a standstill until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world. One day he wakes up with a knotty cramp in his back, which rapidly develops into an all-consuming pain. At the same time a wide hole appears outside his living room window, threatening the foundations of his house.