Showing titles in Literary Fiction

In a heady whirlwind of independence, lust and defiance, 16-year-old Karuna falls pregnant. Not on purpose, but not entirely by accident, either. Incensed, Karuna’s mother, already over-protective, confines her to their 14th-storey housing-commission flat, to keep her safe from the outside world - and make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. Stuck inside for endless hours, Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of power in her own life, as a new life forms and grows within her.

When best-selling author Carrie McClelland visits the windswept ruins of Slains Castle, she is enchanted by the stark and beautiful Scottish landscape. The area is strangely familiar to her but she puts aside her faint sense of unease to begin her new novel, using the castle as her setting, and one of her own ancestors, Sophia, as her heroine. Then Carrie realizes her writing is taking on a life of its own and the lines between fact and fiction become increasingly blurred.

Hannah, Cate and Lissa are young, vibrant and inseparable. Living on the edge of a common in East London, their shared world is ablaze with art and activism, romance and revelry - and the promise of everything to come. They are electric. They are the best of friends. Ten years on, they are not where they hoped to be. Amidst flailing careers and faltering marriages, each hungers for what the others have. And each wrestles with the same question: what does it take to lead a meaningful life?

Beautiful, popular, and fortunate, Anna Karenina is an upright wife and mother. But her passionless marriage to a senior statesman leads her into the arms of Count Alexey Vronsky. The dashing cavalry officer stokes in her something exciting and defiant. In abandoning the rules of her noble station, she's aware of the risks: a degraded reputation and the hostile recriminations of St. Petersburg society. But there are even greater stakes as Anna follows desires both romantic and carnal, emancipating and destructive.

On winter solstice, the birds disappeared, and the mist arrived. The inhabitants of Nebulah quickly learn not to venture out after dark. But it is hard to stay indoors: Cabin fever sets in, and the mist can be beguiling too. Eventually only six remain. Like the rest of the townspeople, Pete has nowhere else to go. After he rescues a stranded psychic from a terrible fate, he’s given a warning: He will be dead by solstice unless he leaves town - soon.

Tehran, Iran 1979: Simmering religious tensions explode and the Shah is forced to flee Iran. A British helicopter company—secretly owned by the Noble House of Hong Kong—with a fleet of helicopters registered in Iran faces bankruptcy if their copters are claimed or destroyed by the uprising. The pilots need to escape, but they’ve built lives in Iran, some even have families. Finnish pilot Erikki Yokkonen has married Azadeh, an Iranian woman of noble birth, whose family is caught up in the political situation exploding around them.

Meet Jimmy Flick. He's not like other kids - he's both too fast and too slow. Jimmy's mother, Paula, is the only one who can manage him. She teaches him how to count sheep so that he can fall asleep. She holds him tight enough to stop his cells spinning. It is only Paula who can keep Jimmy out of his father's way. But when Jimmy's world falls apart, he has to navigate life on his own and make things right.

My Struggle: Book One introduces American listeners to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intensely, irresistibly readable.

One year on from the death of her husband, Emma feels no closer to moving forward with her life. Seeking distraction, she quits her job and begins working at the local garden centre. Here, Emma begins to open up and finds herself attending boss Les’ talk on the Titanic. Intrigued, Emma sets out to research who would have arranged the flowers on-board.

Tonight 19-year-old William Lavery is dressed for success, his first black-tie do. It's the Midlands Chapter of the Institute of Embalmers Ladies' Night Dinner Dance, and William is taking Gloria in her sequined evening gown. He can barely believe his luck. But as the guests sip their drinks and smoke their post-dinner cigarettes, a telegram delivers news of a tragedy. An event so terrible it will shake the nation. It is October 1966, and a landslide at a coal mine has buried a school: Aberfan.

Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, was deeply opposed to Beren, and imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. Undaunted by Lord Thingol’s challenge, Beren and Lúthien embark on the supremely heroic attempt to rob Morgoth, the greatest of all evil beings, of a Silmaril, one of the hallowed jewels that adorn the Black Enemy’s crown.

Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimke is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift.

The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But at last the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards--some strange and otherworldly--but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.

Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched pair - one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic.

Zoe, a sometime artist from California, has recently lost her husband. Martin, an engineer from Yorkshire, is alone after a messy divorce. Both have ended up in Cluny, central France, on a separate journey to walk the Camino: 2,000 kilometres to Santiago, in northwestern Spain. The Camino changes you, it's said. It's a chance to find a new version of yourself. But can these two very different people find each other?

This year's shortlist of six exceptional stories each take the listener on an intense and gripping journey into the human heart. With poise, precision, and a light-footed grace, they conjure dramatically different, starkly real worlds. Hailing from Ireland, the United States and The Bahamas, the finalists of 2020 share stories on subjects as far apart as their settings, exploring among them romantic and marital discord, dark secrets, homelessness and even a high school football team; yet each one opens doors into its characters' lives in surprising and moving ways.

A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska. Jack and Mabel have staked everything on making a fresh start for themselves in a homestead 'at the world's edge' in the raw Alaska wilderness. But as the days grow shorter, Jack is losing his battle to clear the land, and Mabel can no longer contain her grief for the baby she lost many years before. The evening the first snow falls, their mood unaccountably changes.

Meet Helen - youngest of the Walsh sisters and a law unto herself. She’s easily bored, has an inability to filter her thoughts and was fired from every job she ever had before she found her true calling as a private investigator. But times are tough for PIs, and Helen’s had no choice but to take on the search for AWOL boyband has-been Wayne Diffney: The Wacky One.

14-year-old Adunni has a dream: to be educated. But her father needs her bride-price, so sells his daughter to an older man, who demands she give him the fine boy-children his first two wives have failed to produce. When things go tragically wrong, Adunni flees to Lagos. It's what she has always wanted, to leave Ikati and see the world, and though her heart is full of sorrow for her lost family and the shame she has left behind, still Adunni will not be quiet and do as she's told.

Baby Frankie is born into an unusual family. Her mother is desperate to find someone to take care of her child, and she doesn’t have much time. Noel doesn’t seem to be the most promising of fathers but despite everything, he could well be Frankie’s best hope. As for Lisa, she is prepared to give up everything for the man she loves; surely he’s going to love her back? And Moira is having none of it. She knows what’s right, and has the power to change the course of Frankie’s life.