Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

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.

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.

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.

'A wonderful storyteller' Ciara Geraghty 'Meaney is utterly credible, utterly authentic, utterly irresistible' Irish Independent 'Roisin Meaney is a skilful storyteller' Sheila O'Flanagan The new novel from No.1 bestselling author Roisin Meaney. Another summer is in full swing on the island of...

Gracie Burton is a grandmother living quietly in Devon. She has rarely left the village over the past 40 years. Her daughter, Carina, is immensely high-powered, with her own fast-paced business in London. She has very little time for her 17-year-old daughter, Anastasia, away at boarding school, and even less time for her ageing mother. In many ways, the three of them barely know each other.

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...

Lifelong friends, now in their sixties, James, a teacher, and Hugh, a TV personality, both live with attractive women 25 years their junior. But the age difference is a time bomb, ticking away at the heart of both relationships. Kate's hunger for a life more in keeping with her own age threatens to bring her eight years with James to an end. And how is Julia to cope when her own career begins to blossom while Hugh's is withering before their eyes? The arrival of Miss Beatrice Bachelor, a razor-sharp Oxford spinster, fuels the discontent in both girls.

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.

Maurice has just killed a dragon with a breadknife. And had his destiny foretold...and had his true love spirited away. That's precisely the sort of stuff that'd bring out the latent heroism in anyone. Unfortunately, Maurice is pretty sure he hasn't got any latent heroism. Meanwhile, a man wakes up in a jar in a different kind of pickle (figuratively speaking).

When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. With no record of any reservation and no other cars available, it looks like Paul is stuck at the airport. That is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative.

Likoma Island in Lake Malawi is renowned throughout Africa for its exotic and treacherous beauty - and its secret history of human sacrifice, hidden treasure, and unspeakable horror. A history that cannot be hidden forever. Lana Devereax travels to Malawi seeking the truth behind her father's disappearance near Likoma Island 15 years ago. But Lana soon finds herself caught in a web of deceit, passion, and black magic that stretches back over 200 years and has ramifications that reach well beyond the shores of Lake Malawi.

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.

Einer der Größten des Kinos, vielleicht der größte Regisseur seiner Epoche: Zur Machtergreifung dreht G.W. Pabst in Frankreich; vor den Gräueln des neuen Deutschlands flieht er nach Hollywood. Aber unter der blendenden Sonne Kaliforniens sieht der weltberühmte Regisseur mit einem Mal aus wie ein Zwerg. Nicht einmal Greta Garbo, die er unsterblich gemacht hat, kann ihm helfen. Und so findet Pabst sich, fast wie ohne eigenes Zutun, in seiner Heimat Österreich wieder, die nun Ostmark heißt.

When an injured teenager goes missing at a remote bushland campground, local journalist Abby Bardot is determined to expose the area’s dark history. The girl bears a striking resemblance to the victims of three brutal murders that occurred 20 years ago, and Abby fears the killer is still on the loose. But the newspaper Abby works for wants to suppress the story for fear it will scare off tourists to the struggling township. Haunted by her own turbulent memories, Abby is desperate to learn the truth and enlists the help of Tom Gabriel, a reclusive crime writer.

Artist, Hassie Day and her sister, Margot, buy a rambling, run-down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left alone to work the large, long-neglected garden. She is befriended by eccentric, sharp-tongued Miss Foot, who recommends Murat, an Albanian migrant, out of place in the village, to help Hassie in the garden. As Hassie works in the garden alongside Murat, she begins to ruminate on her past life, her hostile mother, her diffident father and the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood.

It is summer in Edinburgh, and Isabel Dalhousie is once again caught between ‘gossip’ and significant rumour. It is none of her business that Patricia, the mother of her son Charlie’s little friend Basil, is estranged from Basil’s father or that the woman has a somewhat brazen attitude to childcare. And yet, it is curious. Isabel, however, has much else on her mind as editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. Along with the work involved for its impending next issue, she really needs to get her house in order and tend to the demands of her niece, Cat.

From the prize-winning author of West, a collision between old and new, east and west, in a former British hill station in contemporary South India. Fleeing the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in Britain, Hilary Byrd takes refuge in Ooty, a hill station in South India. There he finds solace in life's simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver, Jamshed, and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter, Priscilla, have taken Hilary under their wing.

In this stunning new novel, the inventor of the world's first clock is punished for trying to measure time. He is banished to a cave for centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more years for themselves. At last, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is...

Dorothy meets a handsome young man with an eye for her inheritance while she is in her sophomore year. They are to be married, and her life will be blissful; but Dorothy is pregnant, and her fiancé's plans are ruined, for Dorothy would be disinherited if her father discovered the truth. So the young man provides his bride-to-be with some pills that will solve the problem. Soon there will be no baby - and perhaps no Dorothy either....

Loulou Landers is about to turn 49 and she's feeling seriously overlooked. She hasn't had a relationship for 20 years, her 21-year-old daughter Theo is giving her the cold shoulder, and is that really a bunion making it so painful to walk, or is Christian Louboutin losing his touch? Theo can't see what her mum is so hung up about. It's only another birthday. And she has more important things to think about - mainly herself. For not only is Loulou permanently single, but so is Theo – despite her legendary good looks. But over the course of a summer, everything changes.