Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Les thought that playing minder to Peregrine Normanhurst III sounded like a dead-set snack: Les would keep Peregrine out of trouble. So what if he was on the run from the IRA? They’d never follow him to Australia… But Les quickly finds himself thrust into an adventure that moves at breakneck speed from the corridors of power in Canberra to the grimy tenements of Belfast, to climax in a nerve-shattering, blood-spattered shoot out on a survivalist fortress in the Tweed Valley.

'A compulsive and hilarious read. In Maggie, Hartley has created one of those indelible characters of whom we must thoroughly disapprove and yet cannot help but love.' Karen Joy Fowler Maggie Cotton's life is a hot mess. In one day, she's dumped by her boyfriend, disinherited by her mum, and...

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.

Three sisters, one birthday, one little problem... The three Kettle sisters have had a mortifying mishap. Their raucous, champagne-soaked birthday dinner has come to an abrupt end following a violent argument and an emergency dash to the hospital. So who started it this time? Was it angry, hurt Cat, still recovering from the 'night of the spaghetti'? Was it Lyn, so serenely successful, at least on the outside? Or was it quirky, dreamy Gemma, the sister who can't keep a secret except for the most important one of all?

Norton needed a holiday - anywhere - as long as it was out of Bondi. Price was only too willing to oblige - Les could have his house at Terrigal. All he had to do was look after George Brennan's nephew for a week while he was there. Sounded okay to Norton, and it was better than spending his own money. Jimmy Rosewater was young, cool and the original brown-eyed handsome man. He loved good wine, going to restaurants, going line-dancing, and the ladies loved him. This suited Les nicely.

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.

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...

Okay, so it looks like the Kelly Club is finally closing down - it had to happen sooner or later. And it isn’t as if Les Norton will starve. He has money snookered away, he owns his house, and his blue-chip investment - a block of flats in Randwick - must be worth a fortune by now. Except that the place is falling down, the council is reclaiming the land, there’s been a murder in Flat 5, and the tenants are the biggest bunch of misfits since the Manson family.

The world's toughest car race. Twenty-one days of searing heat and rock-hard desert tracks; of blowouts and breakdowns; of subterfuge and sabotage. Ten thousand miles of dust and glory. Driving at breakneck speed over Australia's roughest roads and through the most appalling conditions imaginable, six competitors break free from the pack and fight for the lead, gradually finding themselves entangled in a web of deceit, betrayal and danger. Dust and Glory is best-selling author Evan Green's stirring account of the most grueling race of them all.

Each of the four who travel this journey has a story to tell. An environmentalist fights to save the primitive and beautiful Pilbara coast from the careless ravaging of mining conglomerates; a Vietnam War veteran rises above crippling injuries to discover a talent that gains him an international reputation; and an ambitious geologist joins forces with a hard-core businessman to lead the way in the growth of Perth from a sleepy town to a glittering citadel.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE IRRESISTIBLE ROMANTIC COMEDY FROM THE GLOBAL MULTI-MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR. Discover the joy that awaits when you set yourself free... Sasha is well and truly over it all: work (all-consuming), friendships (on the back burner), sex-life (non-existent)...

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 Alice Love surfaces from a beautiful dream to find she's been injured in a gym, she knows that something is very wrong – she hates exercise. Alice's first concern is her baby – she's pregnant with her first child, and she's desperate to see her husband, Nick, who she knows will be worried about her.But Alice isn't pregnant. And Nick isn't worried.

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.

The past: For Hattie, the cafe has been her refuge for the last 50 years - her second chance at a happy ending after her dreams of being a star were shattered. But will the ghosts of her past succeed in destroying everything she’s worked so hard to build? The present: For Alice, the cafe is her livelihood. After Hattie took her in as a teenager, Alice has slowly forged a quiet life as the cafe’s manager (and chief cupcake baker). But with so many tragedies behind her, is it too late for Alice’s story to have a happy ending?

They called him Bane the Bastard - though none said it to his face. Born of treachery, his name a curse, he grew up among the warriors of the Rigante. They valued his skills in war, but they feared the violence in his heart. And when, as a Wolfshead and Outlaw, he left Rigante lands, they breathed sighs of relief. But Bane would return, the destiny of the Rigante in his hands, the fate of the world resting on his skills with a blade.

There's no two ways about Les Norton - the carrot-topped country boy who works as a bouncer at Sydney's top illegal casino. He's tough and he's mean. He's got a granite jaw, fists like hams, and they say the last time he took a tenner from his wallet Henry Lawson blinked at the light. Lethal but loyal, he's always good for a laugh. In this, the third collection of Les Norton adventures, Les gets his boss off the hook. But not without the help of the boy from Binjiwunyawunya. Les then finds himself in a spot of bother in Long Bay Gaol then in a lot more bother on a St. Kilda tram in Melbourne.

The stunning new novel from Costa-Novel-Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell: a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976.

A wardrobe of Dior gowns, a secret kept for sixty-five years, and the three women bound forever by war... from the New York Times bestselling author of The French Photographer England, 1939 Talented pilot Skye Penrose joins the British war effort where she encounters her estranged sister...

A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend. So...