Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

From the bestselling author of The Thorn Birds and The First Man in Rome comes an exhilarating new novel. Colleen McCullough takes us back to 1960 and Sydney's notorious Kings Cross, and the story of a young woman determined to defy convention. Twenty-one year-old Harriet, a newly qualified X-ray technician earning a coveted male wage, ignores her father's warning that "only fools, Bohemians and tarts live in Kings Cross" and moves into Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz's rooming house.

The incredible new novel and brand new world from the international bestselling author of the Wool trilogy. The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost. Palmer has never been the same since his father walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away from the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to embrace it.

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: Trust no one. Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave. On a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, until Cassie meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan may be her only hope for rescuing her brother and even saving herself. Now she must choose....

Now a major film written and directed by the Coen Brothers. There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by Torn Chancy, who shoots him down for a horse, $150 cash, and two gold pieces. Ross's single-minded teenage daughter, Mattie, travels to claim his body... Then she meets Rooster - a man with grit - and persuades him to join her on a deadly quest to avenge her father's murder.

The blood scent was fresh. Hunger ached in her belly. The lioness slid forward as close as she dared. The little boy seconds away from death was two, maybe three years old. He was lost in the vast, heat-soaked sand that was the Kalahari desert.... Toddler Alex Theron is miraculously rescued by a passing clan of Kalahari bushmen. Over the ensuing years the desert draws him back, for it hides a beautiful secret...diamonds. But nothing comes easily from within this turbulent continent and before Alex can even hope to realise his dreams he will lose his mind to love and fight a bitter enemy.

Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and...

What would you do if you found out you'd been raising another couple's child - and they've been raising yours? Fourteen years ago, Kelsey and Raf Maccioni left hospital with their newborn daughter, Ammy. Days later, Shona and Nathan James welcomed the birth of their son, Zac. The only thing the...

'When I was 12 years old God spoke to my father for the first time. God didn't say much. He told my father to be a painter and left it at that.... ' So begins Niall Williams' magical tale about love and destiny. Nicholas Coughlan and Isabel Gore were made for each other - but fate doesn't always take the easiest or the most obvious route to true love. For a start, Nicholas and Isabel have never met and nor are they likely to, without some kind of divine intervention. But as God, ghosts, a series of coincidences and seemingly chance events and encounters conspire to bring the couple together.

If you read The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and enjoyed The Beekeeper of Aleppo, you will love The Stationery Shop of Tehran 1953, Tehran. In a small shop in a country on the brink of unrest, two people meet for the very first time. Roya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the...

Mia and Ben, an Australian couple in their early 30s, have relinquished one dream and embraced another, selling their Sydney flat and purchasing an old yellow house in the picturesque village of Cordes-sur-Ciel in southwest France. They soon meet sophisticated neighbours Dominic and Susannah, a British couple in their 60s who welcome them warmly but whose own relationship is in crisis. Mia and Ben are immediately starstruck and impressed by their lavish hospitality. However, things with Dominic and Susannah are not what they first seem.

In 1972, two seconds were added to time. It was in order to balance clock time with the movement of the earth. Byron Hemming knew this because James Lowe had told him and James was the cleverest boy at school. But how could time change? The steady movement of hands around a clock was as certain as their golden futures.Then Byron’s mother, late for the school run, makes a devastating mistake. Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Were those two extra seconds to blame? Can what follows ever be set right?

It is the early 1960s in a country village in Ireland. Caithleen Brady and her attractive friend, Baba, are on the verge of womanhood and dreaming of spreading their wings in a wider world - of discovering love and luxury and liquor and above all, fun. With bawdy innocence, shrewd for all their inexperience, the girls romp their way through convent school to the bright lights of Dublin – where Caithleen finds that suave, idealised lovers rarely survive the real world.

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Orange Prize-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, come 12 dazzling stories in which she turns her penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the West. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's prodigious storytelling powers.

The valley is nestled between rugged peaks, divided by a magnificent river. Within its peaceful green contours are held the secrets of generations of tribes, families and loners who have come under its spell.

The First Phone Call from Heaven tells the story of a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife. Is it the greatest miracle ever or a massive hoax? Sully Harding, a grief-stricken single father, is determined to...

Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet who wields her luminous beauty to intimidate and manipulate men. Astrid worships her mother and cherishes their private world full of ritual and mystery, but their idyll is shattered when Astrid's mother falls apart over a lover. Deranged by rejection, Ingrid murders the man, and is sentenced to life in prison.

As the sun sets on a cold November evening, the tiny community of St Agnes prepares for their annual Fifth-of-November festivities. Moments before the fireworks are scheduled to commence, an islander discovers a charred body left on the bonfire, and quickly it becomes clear that a killer is at large. Ben Kitto is the Deputy Chief of Police for the Scilly Isles, and with a killer on the loose, he has no choice but to forbid all residents from leaving the island. With a population of just 80 people, everyone is a suspect and no one is safe.

It begins with a glimpse or a passing thought. It ends in obsession. One day a renowned author discovers that his wife, a war correspondent, has disappeared leaving no trace. Though time brings more success and new love, he remains mystified - and increasingly fascinated - by her absence. Was she kidnapped, blackmailed, or simply bored with their marriage? The unrest she causes is as strong as the attraction she exerts.

"The bloody victory of the Corleone Family was not complete," begins the final chapter of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, "until a year of delicate manoeuvring established Michael Corleone as the most powerful Family chief in the United States." The Godfather: The Lost Years takes place in the years 1955-65, but it is built upon the story of that "year of delicate political manoeuvring" and how, in winning the battle of that year, Michael Corleone set the stage to lose the war.

Kate Webster is a loveable girl who likes to play hard now and worry about the consequences later. Rocked by the death of her mother, she takes on a dare at one of Australia's wildest rural social events - a Bachelors & Spinsters ball - to 'scalp' gorgeous farm boy Nick McDonnell. It's a dare that changes everything. For just as Kate is ready to start her new life, away from her grieving father and the pressures of the family farm, she discovers she is pregnant.