Life Fiction

How do you define yourself when others have already decided who you are? Six years ago, when Camden Daniels came back from war without his younger brother, no one in the small town of Alba, Colorado, would forgive him - especially his father. He left, swearing never to return. But a desperate message from his father brings it all back. The betrayal. The pain. And the need to go home again. But home is where the one person he still loves is waiting. Willow. The one woman he can never have. Because there are secrets buried in Alba that are best left in the dark.

When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.

1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening. Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier; Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.

After traveling through time in Shadow of Night, the second book in Deborah Harkness's enchant­ing series, historian and witch Diana Bishop and vampire scientist Matthew Clairmont return to the present to face new crises and old enemies. At Matthew's ancestral home in France they reunite with their families - with one heart-breaking exception.

Book 1: Too Little, Too Late? Maddie Anderson puts her needs behind those of her patients. Until she met a beautiful, mature co-worker who turned her world upside down. But the sexy younger woman is so unwilling to relax and let her guard down that Lourdes Russo is afraid she’ll never get the chance. All she knows for sure is that they’re complete opposites with little in common, except for the chemistry. What remains to be seen is if that’s enough to keep them together… Will a health crisis convince Maddie to open her heart to Lourdes—and to love? Or will it all be too little, too late?

Jackie Howard returns to the Walter ranch after a summer in New York. She needed space—and got it. But she doesn't know where things stand with her and Cole Walter after that goodbye kiss. Over the summer, she stopped texting him. She never stopped thinking about him. Still, with Cole living off in town to work at Tony's garage before he heads off to college, Jackie thinks it'll be easy to avoid him—only to find that when she sees him face to face at last, it's, well . . . impossible to resist him.

Desperate to escape their high-pressure life in Los Angeles, the Finch family moves to rural Oregon. But it doesn’t take long to learn that “small town” is not code for “stress-free.” As the new owners of Applegate's one and only general store, the Finches find that the simple life’s anything but simple when your little store is the town's only grocery store, gas station, hardware store, fire station, and occasional dentist’s office.

When retired Maths teacher Grace is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the Balearics, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

He’s spent months watching my every move. Stalking me from the shadows, waiting for the right moment. When he strikes, I’m not ready. I’m surrounded by strangers, and far from anyone who might have cared, or at the very least, noticed if I suddenly disappeared.

Jackie does not like surprises. Chaos is the enemy! The best way to get her successful, busy parents to notice her is to be perfect. The perfect look, the perfect grades—the perfect daughter. And then Jackie's family dies in a freak car accident and she has to move cross-country to live with the Walters—her new guardians. Now Jackie must trade in her Type A personality and New York City apartment for a Colorado ranch and all the wild Walter boys who come with it. How can she fit in and move on when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?

Max is back on Earth, but it’s not the Earth he remembers. His friends are in trouble, humanity is in critical danger, and he’s broke. Again. Now he needs to meet up with his friends, some of whom are very powerful and well known now. Getting an audience with someone important, when one is a brand new Returner, is going to be a challenge. He’ll have to join the system, get tested, pull some strings, and break some rules to accomplish his goals.

The dazzling new novel from Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel, best seller and winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Set in Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is a mesmerising novel about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies and as nations. It feels at once firmly classic and exhilaratingly contemporary.

Detective Sam Helsdown hasn’t seen his daughter Zoe in two years and he’s excited and more than a little nervous to be at the airport picking her up for a visit. She’s 10 years old and has flown on her own for the first time. Flight BA631 from Athens has already landed and soon a trickle of people begins entering Arrivals. Among them is a little girl who runs towards him, head down, and throws herself into his arms saying ‘Daddy!’. But then he looks at her properly. This is not Zoe. This is not his daughter.

A key figure in the metaphysical movement known as New Thought, Florence Scovel Shinn has influenced many modern spiritual leaders, including Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Deepak Chopra, May McCarthy, and Louise Hay. Through stories of real-life situations and biblical tenets, Shinn teaches that the empowering use of positive attitude and affirmations can create a path to wealth, good health, and loving relationships. Intuition, love, and prosperity can expand through intentional thoughts and prayer.

Seamus is facing life in prison without parole. While doing his time, he's given an option by the Department of Justice and the biggest virtual game maker around, Mindblown Entertainment. If he will help them test long-term immersion, he will get the chance to play the latest game from Mindblown - Alpha World. All he has to do is sign away his legal rights and sign an NDA.

Hacker Kita Yamasaki would do anything to escape the post-apocalyptic landscape that was the result of the Forever Winter. But for a normal person, the only options are the war-hungry nation-state of Ex Cathedra or the isolationist United California. Fortunately, Kita is anything but normal. When she finds a faded brochure for the BC Oasis—an underground greenhouse capable of sheltering a quarter million people—she jumps at the opportunity, even going so far as to steal a fission battery the oasis requires to operate at full capacity.

On the secluded continent of Edenvale, possessing magic is a death sentence. Those who have it are labeled Cursed, and by order of the king, they are Cleansed—a horrific event utilizing a hot, hungry pyre and an iron collar. Enemy to the king, a group known as the Cursed rebels defend their lands from his reach, creating an ongoing bloodthirsty war. When Sage's brother is conscripted for the war, she is forced to trade in her cozy, peaceful cottage life and join the Cursed rebels to get him back.

One boy, one boat, one tiger.... British comedian, actor and broadcaster Sanjeev Bhaskar, OBE performs this brilliant edition of a work of fiction that is loved by fans around the world. After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a 16 year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan - and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for an extraordinary adventure.

EMS helicopter pilot Penny Carlton is used to high stress situations, but being forced to land on a mountain in a raging storm with a critical patient - and a serial killer on the loose - tests her skills and her nerve to the limit. She survives with FBI Special Agent Holt Satterfield's help. But she's not out of the woods yet.

When the External Womb Programme is launched, the news is controversial. Hundreds take to the streets in protest, feeling strongly that growing a baby outside of the human body is "unnatural". But thousands more people rejoice: at last, an alternative for those who wish to have children but worry about the physical toll it may take. A chance that throwing a baby-shaped grenade into one's career path might not derail it entirely.