Showing titles in Literary Fiction

Captain Thomas Forsyth’s second tour of Afghanistan is cut brutally short when he’s badly wounded by a roadside bomb. Tom’s world is torn apart by the injury – the Army is his life. The thought of never rejoining his regiment is a terrifying prospect and one that he is not willing to entertain. Tom returns to Lambourn, to his childhood home, where his mother is a racehorse trainer and the ‘First Lady’ of racing.

In this vast and gorgeous tapestry of a novel, serf and master, Cossack and tsar, priest and Jew are brought together in a family saga which unrolls through centuries of history to reveal that most impenetrable and mysterious of lands - Russia. Through the life of a little town east of Moscow in the Russian heartland, Edward Rutherfurd creates a sweeping family saga from the baffling contradictions of Russia's culture and her peoples - bleak yet exotic, brutal but romantic, land of ritual yet riddled with superstitious fears.

The acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author presents a spellbinding tale of a mother's tragic loss and one man's last chance at gaining salvation. Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth? One moment June Nealon was happily looking...

Stuck in a job he doesn't want - but can't afford to lose - as nominal Head of the Communications Department at Fenland University, Wilt is still subject to the whims of The Powers That Be, both in and outside of work. The demands of his snobbish wife Eva, and the stupendous school fees of his despicable quadruplet daughters cause him the biggest headaches...apart from the hangovers, that is. When Eva signs him up for a summer job, teaching the gun-toting idiot son of a lusty local aristocrat, Wilt is not amused.

One day, sitting in traffic, Stella Sweeney attempts a good deed. The resulting car crash changes her life. But in this event is born the seed of something which will take Stella thousands of miles from her old life, turning an ordinary woman into a superstar, wrenching her whole family apart. For the first time real, honest-to-goodness happiness is just within her reach. But is Stella Sweeney, Dublin housewife, ready to grasp it?

To Porterhouse College, Cambridge, famous for rowing, low academic standards. and a proud cuisine, comes a new Master, an ex-grammar-school boy, demanding Firsts, women students, a self-service canteen, and a slot-machine for contraceptives. There is considerable opposition to this challenge to the established order, in the form of Skullion, the intransigent porter at Porterhouse, who is determined that the hallowed traditions of the College will never change.

When Stella is dumped at summer camp while her mum goes off on a posh honeymoon, things start badly. In the first few minutes she's mistaken for a boy and put in a room with snobby Louise and nasty Karen. Then she finds out she'll have to take dreaded swimming lessons, the one thing mum promised she wouldn't have to do. Can things get any worse?

Combine an offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose, and the result is the remarkable story Dance Dance Dance: high-class call girls billed to MasterCard, a psychic 13-year-old dropout has a passion for talking heads, and meet a hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. Don’t forget the one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem.

‘One of only two novels I've ever loved whose main characters are not human’ BARBARA KINGSOLVER For fans of The Essex Serpent and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock. ‘By far my favourite book of of the year’ Guardian One cold night, two newcomers emerge onto the streets of 1899 New York, and it...

Brought to you by Penguin. FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER RECIPIENT OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION AWARD Welcome to a world turned upside down. One minute, Doris, from England, is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their...

Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....

Brought to you by Penguin. This extraordinary novel gives the reader the heart-to-heart testimony of one of our finest writers - a wonder of literary invention and a boisterous modern classic. His most intimate and epic work to date, Inside Story is the portrait of Martin Amis' extraordinary...

Brought to you by Penguin. Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny...

The runaway international No.1 bestseller that launched Tom Clancy’s spectacular career – became a blockbuster film – and introduced Jack Ryan. THE HUNT IS ON… Silently, beneath the chill Atlantic waters, Russia’s ultra-secret missile submarine, the Red October, is heading west. The...

Brought to you by Penguin. The happily ever after is only part of the story… A funny, touching, hopeful gem about love, marriage and second chances It’s the day before her daughter’s wedding and things are not going well for Gail Baines. First thing, she loses her job – or quits...

Number Thirty-Two was once a family home. Anna was once a mother and a wife. Now, she is in arrears and alone. With little choice but to sell up, she is forced to confront the memories of the people who once inhabited the empty rooms. With the help of an unlikely ally in her next door neighbour's son, she is finally able to piece together the tragic events of forty years ago that have inextricably linked the fates of their families and ricocheted through both of their households for decades.

** Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2015 ** To find yourself, sometimes you must lose everything. A privileged elder son, and stammeringly shy, Harry Cane has followed convention at every step. Even the beginnings of an illicit, dangerous affair do little to shake the foundations of his...

Lucy Cardwell has recently lost her troubled father, Tom. While sifting through his papers, she finds he'd been researching an uncle she never knew he'd had. Intrigued, she visits her father's childhood home, the once beautiful Carlyon Manor. She meets an old woman named Beatrice who has an extraordinary story to tell. As Lucy listens to the tales of the past, she learns a secret that will change everything she has ever known... As Lucy listens to the tales of the past, she learns a secret that will change everything she has ever known....

London, 1988. Royal fever sweeps the nation as Britain falls in love with the ‘people’s princess’. Which means for Scotland Yard, the focus is on the elite Royalty Protection Command, and its commanding officer. Entrusted with protecting the most famous family on earth, they quite simply have to be the best. A weak link could spell disaster.  

Who owns the Eustace Diamonds? Lizzie Eustace claims that Sir Florian Eustace, her late husband, gave them to her. But Mr Camperdown, the family solicitor, insists that they are an heirloom, to be passed down from generation to generation. Lizzie is both beautiful and clever, yet Mr Camperdown believes her to be a scheming liar. And Mr Camperdown is right! The battle for the diamonds rages until a robbery intervenes and they disappear. Or do they...?