Showing results by publisher "Isis Publishing Ltd" in Literary Fiction

Miss Hester Harper, middle-aged and eccentric, brings Katherine into her emotionally impoverished life. Together they sew, cook gourmet dishes for two, run the farm, make music and throw dirty dishes down the well. One night, driving along the deserted track that leads to the farm, they run into a mysterious creature. They heave the body from the roo bar and dump it into the farm's deep well. But the voice of the injured intruder will not be stilled and, most disturbing of all, the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.

It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser. Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change?

Max Grimes is homeless, living on the streets of Auckland – among the forgotten, the invisible. But now someone is hunting the homeless, killing them one by one. Trying to put his shattered life back together, Max is pulled into a deadly game when a face from his past reappears, reopening wounds he thought were long buried. As whispers of a Grim Reaper spread terror through the city, Max must race against time – not only to find the killer, but to outrun the ghosts chasing him. Because if he fails, he'll be next.

Andrew and his girlfriend Jess are making a life for themselves in London, but it's a bit of a grind, and now their relationship is beginning to suffer. Andrew's best friend Jaryd, on the other hand, is living every young man's dream - a beautiful apartment in Paris, a happy relationship with the lovely Liv, and a business venture gone global. But when the two couples head off on a summer road trip around Italy, relationships are tested by temptation, drugs, and an accident that will come to define them.

In 1964 the eccentric American novelist Patricia Highsmith is hiding out in a cottage in Suffolk, to concentrate on her writing and escape her fans. She has another motive, too - a secret romance with a married lover based in London. Unfortunately it soon becomes clear that all her demons have come with her. Prowlers, sexual obsessives, frauds, imposters, suicides and murderers: the tropes of her fictions clamour for her attention, rudely intruding on her peaceful Suffolk retreat.

Set in the forest in northern New Zealand, Mila is a young woman descended from healers. A family death causes her terrible guilt and sets her on a path away from home and to the distant city. Her friend Tommy, the quirky boy next door who makes models from bones, helps to bring her home, where she belongs.

Tom and Clara are two struggling academics in their mid-30s who decide to take their first holiday in 10 years. On the flight over to Indonesia, Tom experiences a debilitating panic attack, which he keeps hidden from Clara. At the resort, they meet Madeleine, Jeremy and their five-year-old son, Ollie, and the two couples strike up an easy friendship. The holiday starts to look up, but when Clara and Madeleine become trapped in the maze-like grounds of the hotel during 'the fogging' - a routine spraying of pesticide - the dynamics suddenly shift between Tom and Clara.

Penny Baker is winning at life. Sort of. Her work is demanding, her kids are demanding and her husband seems to be undergoing some weird midlife crisis but she is juggling it all - with the added delights of the menopause. But when the charity she works for is thrown into crisis and her mother's dementia advances, the strain starts to show. Can she navigate it all and still somehow keep a smile on her - flushed - face?

Sebastian James Murphy is 20 years, six months and two days old. He loves swimming, fried eggs and Billy Ocean. Sebastian is autistic. And lonely. Veronica wants her son Sebastian to be happy. She wants the world to accept him for who he is. She is also thinking about paying a professional to give him what he desperately wants. Violetta is a high-class escort, who steps out into the night thinking only of money.

Anna is a child of special, unknowable qualities. She is a happy child, always willing to smile at the world around her. But she also presents profound challenges. For her mother Jess, still in her early 20s, living alone in North London and hoping to embark on an adventurous career, her arrival will prove life-transforming. Over the course of decades, in ways large and small, Anna will affect the lives and loves of those around her. While Anna herself will remain largely unaltered by the passing years, she will live through a period of dramatic change.

Ethan Scofield returns to the place of his birth to bury his father. Hidden in one of the upstairs rooms of the old man’s house, he finds a strange manuscript, a collection of stories that seems to cover the whole of his father’s turbulent life. As his own starts to unravel, Ethan works his way through the manuscript, trying to find answers to the mysteries that have plagued him since he was a child.

Russell Bass is a potter living on the edge of Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains. His wife has been dead less than a year, and although he has a few close friends, he is living a mostly solitary life. Each month he hikes into the valley below his house to collect rock for glazes from a remote creek bed. One autumn morning, he finds a chocolate wrapper on the path. His curiosity leads him to a cave where three siblings - two young children and a teenage girl - are camped out, hiding from social services and the police.

DI Liam McLusky, freshly transferred from Southampton and just recovered from having been injured in the line of duty, has no time to settle in before he is pushed in at the deep end in a new and unfamiliar city. Everyday objects, transformed into explosive devises by a man trying to revenge himself on the world for reasons unknown, are being left across Bristol, maiming or killing those who pick them up.

Margaret Woodruff is slowly dying in a care home. When her son is presented with the chance of exceptional care in her final months, he finds the offer hard to resist. Winifred is assigned to Margaret’s care. She’s a Helper: a new kind of carer that’s capable, committed and completely tireless - because she’s a synthetic human being. Under Winifred’s care Margaret’s health improves beyond everyone’s expectations, and Winifred begins to learn from Margaret what it means to be alive. But how will Winifred use what she learns from Margaret - and what does she truly want from her?

London, Christmas 1999. The world is on edge. With the new millennium just days away, fears of the Millennium Bug are spiralling – warnings of computer failures, market crashes, even global catastrophe. But 50 miles east, on the frozen Blackwater Island, a different kind of mystery unfolds. A child's body is discovered on the bracken, untouched by footprints, with no sign of how he died. And no one has come forward to claim him. At the International Tribune, reporter Jonny Murphy senses something is off. Police are appealing for relatives, not suspects.

In Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg's so-called 'problem area', an American couple is found brutally murdered in a derelict villa. Prosecutor Chastity Riley is assigned the case, and quickly finds herself waist-deep in a murky tangle of city planners, shady investors and vanishing officials. The gentrification machine is rolling on, and someone is sending a very clear message...

Multan, Pakistan. A conservative city where an unmarried woman over the age of 25 is considered a curse by her family. Ayesha is 27. Independent and happily single, she has evaded an arranged marriage because of her family's reduced circumstances. When she catches the eye of powerful, wealthy Raza, it seems like the answer to her parents' prayers. But Ayesha is in love with someone else, and when she refuses to give up on him, Raza resorts to unthinkable revenge. Ayesha travels to London to rebuild her life and there she meets Kamil, an emotionally damaged man with his own demons.

New South Wales, 1972. Following the death of her beloved Aunt Hilda, widow Clare Barclay inherits Bellevue, an historic property in the Blue Mountains township of Numbulla, Australia. Giving up her teaching job to move there, Clare plans to restore the house to its original glory. She also hopes to track down a box of missing documents that may shed light on why her husband Jack secretly second-mortgaged their home. Clare makes friends with the locals, including a boy named Joe. She soon hears of plans to redevelop Numbulla, and to exploit the land bordering the protected wilderness area.

Renowned photo-journalist Jude Montgomery arrives in Glasgow in 2014, in the wake of the failed Scottish independence referendum, and it's clear that she's searching for someone. Is it Anna Mason, who will go on to lead the country as First Minister? Jamie Hewitt, guitarist from eighties one-hit wonders The Hypnotist? Or is it Rabbit—Jude's estranged foster sister, now a world-famous artist? Taking us back to a school shooting in her Texas hometown, and a 1980s road trip across the American West, Jude's search ends in Glasgow, and a final event that only one person can fully explain.

Australia is the Lucky Country, and Joey Driscol knows it. It’s a far cry from his native Ireland, but he believes this is the place he and his wife can forget the troubles of the past. There’s a good life, a new house, regular work and, in time, they welcome their new son Marti into the world. Joey’s wife has been struggling, their marriage is on the rocks and suddenly, she disappears taking Marti with her.