Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Two branches of the McAllister family lead very different lives on cattle stations in Central Australia. Rob, a stickler for correctness, manages a wealthy, company-owned property while his easygoing brother Sandy struggles to support his wife and son on an impoverished leasehold. When tragedy throws the families together, ultimately driving them even further apart, it's Sandy's young son Jim who suffers the most.

Hester Christie has spent a blissful 18 months living in Kenya, where husband Tim is posted. But now it’s back to England to be with her two nearly grown children. She rents a house near the village of Old Quinings in England’s North Country and plans a quiet summer with the children near the inn owned by her beloved former maid Annie and her husband. But things are never quiet for long with Mrs Tim, and she must navigate curious neighbours, a dishonest landlady and a troublesome travel companion who makes an unwelcome appearance in Old Quinings.

Casey Han's years at Princeton have given her a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, a popular white boyfriend and a degree in economics. But no job, and a number of bad habits. As Casey, the daughter of working-class Korean immigrants, navigates an uneven course of small triumphs and spectacular failures, a clash of values, ideals and ambitions plays out against the colourful backdrop of New York society.

A medical crisis brings one man close to death – and to love, art, and beauty – in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell. A poet’s life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.

Flora and Rose are identical twins who do not know of each other's existence. Rose has been raised by her frivolous mother with the glossy international jet set. Flora has spent her childhood in the beauty and quiet of her father's Cornish cottage. And then, by chance, they meet. The encounter seems heaven-sent to Rose, who longs to escape from a man she no longer desires. Flora can free her, and, in taking her sister's place, her uneventful life is changed forever.

Jealousy, tragedy, survival, and revenge - the discovery of Christopher’s diary in the ruins of Foxworth Hall brings new secrets of the Dollanganger family to light and obsesses a new generation. With Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind both now major Lifetime TV events, this first new addition to the Dollanganger story in nearly 30 years is a timely look at the events in the attic - from teenage Christopher’s point of view.

Hugh and Margaret Darcy are raising their family in Sydney amid the brothels, grog shops and run-down boarding houses of Surry Hills, where money is scarce and life is not easy. Filled with beautifully drawn characters that will make you laugh as much as cry, this Australian classic will take you straight back to the colourful slums of Sydney with convincing depth, careful detail and great heart.

Denise Hilton, a young single mother, is driving through Edenton, North Carolina, when her car skids off the road during a storm. With her is her four-year-old son, Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities for whom she has sacrificed everything. When volunteer fireman Taylor McAden finds her she is unconscious and bleeding, but when she wakes an even more chilling truth becomes clear: Kyle is gone.

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe--a vast and impenetrable thicket of green. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself. But over the centuries, the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled, too; now they live in Arden, at the end of Hawthorne Close, and are hardly a family at all.

Goodwood is a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone. It's a place where it's impossible to keep a secret. In 1992, when Jean Brown is 17, a terrible thing happens. Two terrible things. Rosie White, the coolest girl in town, vanishes overnight. One week later, Goodwood's most popular resident, Bart McDonald, sets off on a fishing trip and never comes home. People die in Goodwood, of course, but never like this. They don't just disappear.

The Silent Country is a vast and beautiful wilderness, a place which holds secrets and stories that are rarely spoken. TV producer Veronica Anderson travels to the Northern Territory to retrace the journey of an expedition that had set out 50 years earlier to film the outback, but which mysteriously ended in tragedy. Of the group, led by the eccentric Maxim Topov, few are still alive and they are reluctant to talk about the intriguing events.

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.

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.

When the Yarrowee River bursts its banks, Rian Farrell, a dashing Irish sea captain and part-time gunrunner, disappears in the torrential flood. Believing herself a widow, the headstrong and passionate Kitty Farrell's heart is left in tatters after the sudden death of her beloved husband. In her grief, she finally succumbs to the attractions of his longtime shipmate, Daniel, who has loved her from afar for many years. The consequences are disastrous and will challenge Kitty Farrell both physically and mentally.

From the author of the worldwide best seller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a new novel about learning how to listen and how to feel and about second chances and choosing to be brave despite the odds. Because in the end, music can save us all.... It's 1988. Frank owns a music shop. It is jam-packed with records of every speed, size and genre. Classical, jazz, punk - as long as it's vinyl, he sells it. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need. Then into his life walks Ilse Brauchmann.

This is... Denise. Married to Ray, her first and only love, Denise has never, for one moment, regretted putting the husband she idolised on a pedestal above everyone and everything else. But, after forty years of marriage, he is gone, leaving Denise to discover that their perfect marriage was fatally flawed. Now she faces a future alone. But first, she must face the betrayals of the past. This is... Claire. The estranged daughter of Denise, the woman who put her husband before her children, Claire took the opposite path and devoted her life to raising her family, sacrificing.

Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip is a modern tragedy set on a tiny copper-rich tropical island embattled by internal strife. After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda's island, there comes a time when all the white people have left. Only Mr Watts remains, and he wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley; the kids call him Popeye behind his back. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons and no books left to learn from - except for Mr Watts' battered copy of Great Expectations, 'by my friend Mr Dickens'....

Continuing the history of the Irish Darcys begun in Missus and continued in The Harp in the South, this third novel of the trilogy re-acquaints listeners with the vicissitudes of slum life in a Sydney suburb. An unforgettable family and a cast of unforgettable characters enliven a story that is sometimes tragic, but often humourous, in a time of poverty and destitution, hope and promise.

After a terrible argument with her father over their family property, 'Waters Meeting', Rebecca Saunders throws her swag in the ute and heads north with her three dogs. A job as a jillaroo takes her into the rowdy world of B&S balls, Bundy rum and boys. When she at last settles down to a bit of study at agricultural college, her life is turned upside down by the very handsome but very drunken party animal Charlie Lewis.

Carrie White is no ordinary girl. Carrie White has the gift of telekinesis. To be invited to Prom Night by Tommy Ross is a dream come true for Carrie – the first step towards social acceptance by high school colleagues. But events will take a decidedly macabre turn on that horrifying and endless night as she is forced to exercise her terrible gift on the town that mocks and loathes her...