Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Mick is a nice guy from a small town. He lands himself a FIFO job. "Wow! I am going to be jet-setting around Australia just like a rock star." So he thought. Hear what really happens after the plane takes off.

Über der englischen Küste wird ein Flugzeug in die Luft gesprengt. Die einzigen Überlebenden dieses Terroranschlags sind Gibril Farishta und Saladin Chamcha, zwei indische Schauspieler, die buchstäblich vom Himmel fallen und wie durch ein Wunder unversehrt bleiben. Doch nach dem Absturz gehen seltsame Dinge mit ihnen vor: Der Muslim Gibril zeigt immer mehr Ähnlichkeit mit dem Erzengel Gabriel, während sich Saladin, der stets seine Herkunft verleugnete, zu einem Abbild des Teufels entwickelt.

The people who live in Salvation (known to the locals as Ruination) are villainous, perverse, and unashamedly venal: there is John, who runs the local pub, Jean Flinch whose reputation at the 'Virgin Wall' is infamous and little orphan Ernie, whose giant jawbone is both a curse and a blessing. When Ernie re-invents himself as The Slapping Man, all hell breaks loose as the locals clamor to find their own salvation by giving Ernie a good slap.

As a boy, William Bellman commits one small cruel act that appears to have unforeseen and terrible consequences. The killing of a rook with his catapult is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. And by the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, he seems indeed, to be a man blessed by fortune. Until tragedy strikes, and the stranger in black comes, and William Bellman starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, he enters into a bargain.

Cécile et Raymond coulent des jours heureux dans l'insouciance enivrante de l'été. Le père enchaîne les conquêtes faciles et se lasse déjà de la belle Elsa quand sa fille échange ses premiers baisers avec le jeune Cyril. Arrive Anne, âme superbe et cultivée, qui subjugue Raymond. Installée chez le veuf et sa fille, elle se donne pour mission d'ordonner ce chaos. Fascinée mais blessée qu'elle juge leur mode de vie frivole inférieur au sien, Cécile tire les ficelles pour lui jouer un tour qu'Anne paiera très cher.

亡き夫への後悔を抱く女性と、人生の選択に迷う会社員。失踪した仲間と、共に登る仲間への、特別な思いを胸に秘める音大生。娘の夢を応援できない母親と、母を説得したい山岳部の女子大生。

It's Sydney in the early 2000s, and Grub is spending the summer with her universally adored older brother, Elijah, and his magnetic but troubled best friend, Zed. Their days are filled with surfing, swimming and hanging out; life couldn't be better. But years later, Elijah disappears and Grub's family unravels. At first, Grub blames Zed: he was the one who derailed Elijah from a bright future in the arts. But as Grub looks back at those dreamy summer days, the sanctuary of her certainty crumbles. Was Zed really responsible for her brother's disappearance? Was anyone?

For philosophically-minded Isabel Dalhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, getting through life with a clear conscience requires careful thought. And whilst juggling the arrival of baby Charlie, a passionate relationship with his father Jamie, a truce with her furious niece Cat, and struggles for authority over her son with her formidable housekeeper Grace, Isabel finds herself drawn into the story of a painter's mysterious death off the island of Jura.

The second book in the delightful Barton-In-The-Dale series which began with The Little Village School. Elisabeth Devine certainly rocked the boat when she arrived in Barton-in-the-Dale to take over as head teacher of the little primary school. Now it's a new term, and after winning over the wary locals, she can finally settle in to her role. Or so she thinks... For the school is hit by a brand-new bombshell: it's to be merged with its arch rival, and Elisabeth has to fight for the headship with Urebank's ruthless and calculating headmaster. She has her work cut out for her.

The continuing adventures from Isabel Dalhousie, Edinburgh philosopher and curious observer of the behaviour of her fellow man.

A powerful, compressed masterwork for fans of Shirley Jackson and Claire-Louise Bennett. A woman moves from the place of her birth to a remote northern country to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. The youngest child of many siblings - more than she cares to remember - from earliest childhood she has attended to their every desire, smoothed away the slightest discomfort with perfect obedience, with the highest degree of devotion. The country, it transpires, is the country of their family's ancestors, an obscure though reviled people.

Lisa Scottoline, internationally best-selling author of Keep Quiet, returns with Every Fifteen Minutes, the compulsive tale of a doctor whose life is being unravelled from the outside in.... Dr Eric Parrish is the chief of a highly regarded psychiatric unit near Philadelphia. Recently separated from his wife, he is doing his best to be a single parent to his seven-year-old daughter, Hannah. But when Eric takes on a new patient, his entire world begins to crumble.

Once more, we catch up with the delightful goings-on in the fictitious 44 Scotland Street from Alexander McCall Smith. With customary charm and deftness, Alexander McCall Smith gives us another installment in this popular series, now running in its ninth season in the Scotsman. Anything could happen to Bertie and the gang....

零細企業の息子・山崎…

Eve Levine - half-demon, black witch and devoted mother - has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can't be killed again - which comes in handy when you’ve made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn’t too bad - all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter Savannah and she’ll be happy. But fate - or more exactly, the Fates - have other plans. Eve owes them a favour, and they’ve just called it in. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell.

New York in den 40er Jahren - von den schillernden Nachtclubs in Manhattan zu der dröhnenden Marinewerft in Brooklyn. Krieg liegt in der ölgetränkten, rauchigen Luft. Die Männer sind an der Front, nun stehen die Frauen in der Fabrik. Doch die junge Anna verfolgt beharrlich ihren Traum: Sie will Marinetaucherin werden. Mutig schwimmt sie gegen den Strom und taucht unter die gigantischen Kriegsschiffe an den Docks. Allein die Gedanken an ihren verschwundenen Vater vermögen es, sie in noch unbekanntere Tiefen zu ziehen.

Veit Kolbe verbringt ein paar Monate am Mondsee, unter der Drachenwand, und trifft hier zwei junge Frauen. Doch Veit ist Soldat auf Urlaub, in Russland verwundet. Was Margot und Margarete mit ihm teilen, ist seine Hoffnung, dass irgendwann wieder das Leben beginnt. Es ist 1944, der Weltkrieg verloren, doch wie lang dauert er noch? Arno Geiger erzählt von Veits Alpträumen, vom "Brasilianer", der von der Rückkehr nach Rio de Janeiro träumt, von der seltsamen Normalität in diesem Dorf in Österreich.

Najeeb's dearest wish is to work in the Gulf and earn enough money to send back home. He achieves his dream only to be propelled by a series of incidents, grim and absurd, into a slave-like existence herding goats in the middle of the Saudi desert. Memories of the lush, verdant landscape of his village and of his loving family haunt Najeeb, whose only solace is the companionship of goats. In the end, the lonely young man contrives a hazardous scheme to escape his desert prison.

"The Man Who Could Work Miracles" is a British fantasy-comedy short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1898 in The Illustrated London News. It carried the subtitle "A Pantoum in Prose." The story is an early example of Contemporary fantasy (not yet recognized, at the time, as a specific sub-genre).

ダメダメな僕のもとに突然現れたゾウの神様“ガネーシャ”。 なぜか関西弁で話し、甘いものが大好きな大食漢。