Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

In the small suburb of Gawler, South Australia, the tang of cut grass and eucalyptus seems to mingle perpetually on the warm air. The neat houses perched under the big gum trees on Church Street have been home to many over the long years. Years of sprinklers stuttering over clipped lawns, children playing behind low brick walls. A seemingly endless stream of youthful paperboys. Family barbecues. Gossipy neighbours. Arguments. Accidents. Births, deaths, marriages. This ordinary street has seen it all. Until the arrival of newlyweds Thomas and Elsie Mullet.

Scotland Street witnesses the wedding of the century of Angus Lordie to Domenica Macdonald, but as the newlyweds depart on honeymoon Edinburgh is in disarray. Recovering from the trauma of being best man, Matthew is taken up by a Dane called Bo, while Cyril eludes his dog-sitter and embarks on an odyssey involving fox-holes and the official residence of a cardinal. Narcissist Bruce meets his match in the form of a sinister doppelganger; Bertie, set up by his mother for fresh embarrassment at school, yearns for freedom; and Big Lou goes viral.

Un grupo de jóvenes que se «educan» en una disciplina militar implacable y violenta, aprenden a sobrevivir en un ambiente que lleva muy arraigados los prejuicios raciales y las diferencias entre clases sociales y económicas; donde todos se muestran como no son en realidad y la transgresión de las normas parece ser la única salida.

Melina Marchetta's brilliant, heart-wrenching new novel takes up the story of the group of friends from her best-selling, much-loved book Saving Francesca – only this time it's five years later and Thomas Mackee is the one who needs saving.

The BookWorld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a time of recuperation. If only life were that simple.

Caroline Cliburn was to be married next Tuesday, and yet she suspected that gratitude was the wrong reason to become a bride. Perhaps that was why she and her younger brother Jody had taken the long drive north to Scotland in search of her missing brother Angus.... When a sudden spring blizzard leaves them stranded by the roadside, it is the snow that gives both her and a lonely young Scot one last chance to find the healing warmth of love.

Brian has arrived at university with a stronger desire than the acquisition of knowledge: he's going to be a star of TV's hottest quiz, University Challenge. But his progress on 'The Challenge' is somewhat stymied by his growing desire for the beguiling Alice Harbison, struggling to make her mark as an actress. And as obstacles impede their affair, Brian becomes more and more convinced that only overwhelming success on the quiz show will win her.

Brought to you by Penguin. Annie's put fifteen years into safe, slightly obsessive Duncan, and now she's like her money back, please. It's time to move on. But she lives in Gooleness, the north's answer to a question nobody asked. Is she really going to find real, proper...

He straightened his spine, raised his head, and extended his gun arm towards me in a slow, vertical arc. I saw then what he was, and stood still in front of him, for he was here on business. He was a small, serious, stone-eyed angel of mercy. Janet is a skeptic, a journalist; Maxine revels in New Age fantasies; and Ray, a drifter, is a born-again Christian. The common ground is the house they share. But their fragile domestic balance is about to explode amid the smashing of ukeleles, the unexpected ascension of an angel and a sudden shower of jonquils.

As someone who fell off a chair not long ago trying to hear they what they were saying at the next table in a restaurant, I suppose I am obsessively interested in what some might consider the trivia of other people's lives'. Maeve Binchy is well known for her best-selling novels, the most recent of which was A Week in Winter. But for many years Maeve was a journalist, writing for The Irish Times.

The scene of this entertaining story is laid in a charming English village. The plot centres round Miss Barbara Buncle, a maiden lady who was obliged to write a book because – as she naively explained – her dividends were so poor. Unfortunately, Miss Buncle had no imagination, so she wrote about her friends – quite kindly and truthfully, of course, for she was a benevolent and veracious soul.

Pandora English is no ordinary small-town orphan. When she's invited to live with her mysterious great aunt Celia in New York City, she seizes the opportunity to escape her stifling hometown, break from her tragic past and make it as a writer.Things, however, are not what she is expecting. For starters, her great aunt's gothic mansion is in a mist-wreathed Manhattan suburb that doesn't appear on maps.

For fans of What You Are Looking For is in the Library and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop Translated by Philip Gabriel, the translator of IQ84 and The Travelling Cat Chronicles The Night Library is no ordinary library. Within it are found the rarest and most unusual collections – the books...

Even down to its well-set Georgian townhouses, Edinburgh is a hymn to measure and harmony. But on Scotland Street, domestic accord is in short supply. Matthew and Elspeth welcome three new arrivals, though the joys of multiple parenthood are somewhat lost due to sleep deprivation and the difficulties of telling their brood apart. Angus and Domenica are to marry, and Domenica has ambitious and disturbing plans for their living arrangements, especially when it appears that Antonia, in Italy recuperating from Stendhal Syndrome, may not return.

Lara is a dazzling movie star with the world at her feet, but at 32 she has yet to find a man capable of living with such a tempting object of desire.... Richard, Lara's ex, is a successful film director now married to Nikki, an up-and-comer producing her first film, Vengeance. Nikki likes to keep Richard close, but he is not the kind of man who takes orders. When Nikki persuades Lara to star in Revenge, a bitter struggle for control of Lara's life begins.... But then Lara meets Joey Lorenzo, a handsome young actor with a mysterious past.

Does your life feel like a dress rehearsal? Do you long to enter the limelight and steal the show? But what do you do when you're playing second fiddle to an arrogant actor who barely knows your name? And, more importantly, what do you do when you find yourself falling in love with his wife?

Former Australian Army officer Mike Williams is trying to forget a troubled past - with a carefree existence as an overland tour guide in Africa. But then one day on the road, he receives word that the South African Police have some news for him. A bloody and tragic run-in with ivory hunters in Mozambique the year before had left Mike's world in shreds. But now the authorities are on the poachers' trail and they need his help to catch them.

Tenacious English journalist Sarah Thatcher is along for the ride, and insists on becoming involved.

A Week in December takes place over the course of a single week. It brings together an intriguing cast of characters, each apparently in his or her own world but - as gradually becomes clear - intricately related. As the story builds to its climax, Faulks pulls together powerful ideas about family, money, religion and the way we live today.

In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders.... August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka takes in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry. In a split second, the world turns white.

Traumatised by an accident that involves something falling from the sky and leaving him eight-and-a-half million pounds richer, our hero spends his time and money obsessively reconstructing and re-enacting memories and situations from his past. But, when this fails to quench his thirst for authenticity, he starts reconstructing more and more violent events, including hold-ups and shoot-outs.