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Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
It's time to confess their sins.
In the wake of her beloved grandfather’s death, Lou and her family gather at their coastal family home for a long-awaited family reunion. The windswept and wild surroundings remind Lou of who she was before being a mother, a wife, and a professional failure. They bring back memories of Michael, her toxic first love and, according to the family, her ‘bad luck penny’. Then a shocking crisis in the country disrupts the funeral arrangements and forces the family together for longer than planned. As secrets rise to the surface, the threads of Lou’s life unravel and she faces a difficult choice – after all, it’s only a bad luck penny if you pick it up.
“Hillbrow, 1967. The New York of Africa. Someone wrote that the place would soon have more people per square kilometre than Tokyo. Everyone quoted that article to everyone. Some even cut it out and kept it folded in their wallets.” While other boys daydream about racing cars and football, eleven-year-old stutterer Phen sits reading to his father. In number four Duchess Court, Phen’s dad looks like a Spitfire pilot behind his oxygen mask. But real life is different from the daring adventures in the books Phen reads and he is forced to grow up faster than other boys his age. This is until Heb Thirteen Two shows up: in his pinstriped suit pants and tie-dyed psychedelic top, the stranger could be any old bum, or a boy’s special angel come to live among men. Poignant, witty and wise, John Hunt's "The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head" is a meditation on being alive and shows us the power of books when we need them the most.
Brenda has always worked hard to fit in – from her school days, when
her talent in athletics gave her access to a richer world, to marriage
to her soulmate, which bound her to that world.
The number one Sunday Times bestselling series featuring Detective Matthew Venn, the second novel in Ann Cleeves’ Two Rivers crime series, following her Sunday Times bestseller, The Long Call. North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder – Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed. His daughter Eve is a glassblower, and the murder weapon is a shard of one of her broken vases. Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He’s a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband. Then another body is found – killed in a similar way. Matthew finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home . . .
The Woman in the Blue Cloak is a brilliant novella which will thrill and entertain fans of Deon Meyer's much-loved detective Benny Griessel. Benny Griessel is a cop on a mission: he plans to ask Alexa Bernard to marry him. That means he needs to buy an engagement ring - and that means he needs a loan. So Benny has a lot on his mind when he is called to a top-priority murder case. A woman's body is discovered, naked and washed in bleach, draped on a wall beside a picturesque road above Cape Town. The identity of the victim is a mystery, as is the reason for her killing. Gradually, Benny and his colleague Vaughn Cupido begin to work out the roots of the story, which reach as far away as England and Holland... and as far back as the seventeenth century.
A masterful new novel completes an incomparable trilogy from J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate and two-times winner of the Booker Prize In The Childhood of Jesus, Simon found a boy, David, and they began life in a new land, together with a woman named Ines. In The Schooldays of Jesus, the small family searched for a home in which David could thrive. In The Death of Jesus, David, now a tall ten-year-old, is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends in the street. He shows unusual talent. When David announces that he wants to go and live with Julio and the children in his care, Simon and Ines are stunned. David is leaving them, and they can only love him and bear witness. With almost unbearable poignancy J. M. Coetzee explores the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.
This is not a love story. This is IMPOSSIBLE. "Sometimes love doesn’t come in the form you think it will." Nick: Failed writer. Failed husband. Dog owner. Bee: Serial dater. Dress maker. Pringles enthusiast. When fate brings them together over a misdirected email, the connection is instant. They feel like they’ve known each other all their lives... It should have been the perfect love story. Instead it was IMPOSSIBLE.
‘What are you thinking about?’
The remarkable new novel from the author of the multimillion-selling
international sensation The Midnight Library
Burnt out after years as a professional dancer, Ella Burchell moves to a small town on the KwaZulu Natal north coast hoping to rebuild her life. Things look up when she gets a job teaching dance to children at a for-profit private school. But Ella hasn't reckoned with the cabal of private-school mums who run the Pines Academy as their own personal fiefdom. Circling into cliques at the school gates every morning, the mums are a force to be reckoned with. Soon Ella is too busy fielding their demands to concentrate on her own troubles. Distraction arrives in the form of an attractive cricket coach, but Ella hardly has time to pay attention. Fun, fast-paced and hilarious, this novel by an award-winning author skewers the world of private-school privilege.
The hugely anticipated new Penn Cage novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy and Cemetery Road, about a man—and a town—rocked by anarchy and tragedy, but unbowed in the fight to save those they love. When a brawl at a rap festival triggers a bloody mass shooting in Mississippi, Penn Cage finds himself in a country on the brink of eruption. As the stunned cities of Natchez and Bienville reel, antebellum plantation homes are being torched and the deadly attacks are claimed by a Black radical group as historic acts of justice. Panic quickly sweeps through the communities, driving the prosperous Southern towns inexorably toward a race war. But what might have been only a regional sideshow of the 2024 Presidential election explodes into national prominence, thanks to the stunning ascent of Robert E. Lee White on social media, a Southern war hero funded by an eccentric Mississippi billionaire, who seizes the public imagination as a third-party candidate. As his hometown devolves into chaos, Penn Cage tears into Bobby White’s pursuit of the Presidency and ultimately risks a second Civil War to try to expose its motivation to the world, before the America of our Constitution slides into the abyss.
From the author of The Longest Ride and The Return comes a novel about the enduring legacy of first love, and the decisions that haunt us forever. 1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at sixteen to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until she met Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce showed her how much there was to love about the wind-swept beach town—and introduced her to photography, a passion that would define the rest of her life. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote locations around the world. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him. As they count down the last days of the season together, she begins to tell him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier—and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.
The heartwarming and hilarious new novel by the author of cherished bestsellers, The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village and The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home The Marjorie Marshall Memorial Cafeteria has been serving refreshments and raising money at the hospital for over fifty years, long after anybody can remember who Marjorie Marshall actually was. Staffed by successive generations of dedicated volunteers, the beloved cafeteria is known as much for offering a kind word and sympathetic ear (and often unsolicited life advice) as for its tea and buns. Stalwart Hilary has worked her way up through the ranks to Manageress; Joy has been late every day since she started as the cafeteria's newest recruit. She doesn't take her role as 'the intern' quite as seriously as Hilary would like but there's no doubt she brings a welcome pop of personality. Seventeen-year-old Chloe, the daughter of two successful surgeons, is volunteering during the school holidays because her mother thinks it will look good on her CV. Chloe is at first bewildered by the two older women but soon realises they have a lot in common, not least that each bears a secret pain. When they discover the cafeteria is under threat of closure, this unlikely trio must band together to save it.
Set over one sizzling August, BOOK LOVERS is the new chemistry-filled 'rivals to lovers' romcom from New York Times #1 bestseller Emily Henry. Nora is a cut-throat literary agent at the top of her game. Her whole life is books. Charlie is an editor with a gift for creating bestsellers. And he's Nora's work nemesis. Nora has been through enough break-ups to know she's the woman men date before they find their happy-ever-after. That's why Nora's sister has persuaded her to swap her desk in the city for a month's holiday in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina. It's a small town straight out of a romance novel, but instead of meeting sexy lumberjacks, handsome doctors or cute bartenders, Nora keeps bumping into... Charlie. She's no heroine. He's no hero. So can they take a page out of an entirely different book?
Kieran Elliott's life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that haunts him still resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home. Kieran's parents are struggling in a community which is bound, for better or worse, to the sea that is both a lifeline and a threat. Between them all is his absent brother Finn. When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge in the murder investigation that follows. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away...
She was a girl, caught in an ocean riptide in the Caribbean Sea. He was an East Coast teenager on vacation with his family. Without a moment's hesitation, he swam out and saved her. With hardly a word of thanks, her family hustled her off while she looked back. Ten years later, they meet again when Jack Ryder is a daring secret agent with the FBI, and Lizzie James is on a pristine island trapped in the unthinkable. Once again, the stakes are deadly high, with both their lives on the line. When the mission is over and Lizzie is free of the drug and sex trafficking ring that would have held her forever, she agrees to help Shane and the FBI free more victims. She will work for them until she is 21, and they will erase any record of what she did while working for the ring. Shane and Lizzie are sent on separate missions as she nears 21. Neither of them thought they’d see each other again, but now they are reunited in a new mission that is complicated and dangerous. Could a breathtaking love catch them off-guard? Sometimes miracles happen not once, but twice … on a distant shore.
Isobel lives an isolated life in North London, working at a nearby library. She feels safe if she keeps to her routines and doesn't let her thoughts stray too far into the past. But a newspaper photograph of a missing local schoolgirl and a letter from her old teacher are all it takes for her ordinary, careful armour to become overwhelmed and the trauma of what happened when she was a pupil at The Schoolhouse to return. The Schoolhouse was different - one of the 1970s experimental schools that were a reaction to the formal methods of the past. The usual rules did not apply, and life there was a dark interplay of freedom and violence, adventure and fear. Only her teenage diary recorded what happened, but the truth is coming for her and everything she has tried to protect is put at risk. Set between the past and the present, The Schoolhouse is a masterful and gripping novel about childhood, secrets and trust.
When we all know we're going to die, how do we make sure we truly live? Clover Brooks has forgotten how to live. It might be because she spends her time caring for people in their final days, working as a death doula in New York City. Or it might be because she has a regret of her own - one she can't bring herself to let go of. But then she meets Claudia: a feisty old woman who has one last wish . . . As Clover begins a new adventure, will she remember how to live her own big, beautiful life?
One family's search for a better life: an immersive, kaleidoscopic debut for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, Homegoing and Pachinko. India, 1898. Pirbhai is thirteen when he steps into a dhow on the vague promise of work. His family is suffering and he will do anything to help. Yet the boat takes him to labour for the British on the East Africa Railway. He has no money, no voice, no power. He makes impossible choices in the name of survival. Sonal is fierce and loving, always willing to fight for what she believes in. When Pirbhai, weathered from his time on the railway but not broken, walks into her father's shop, she knows he is part of her future, and together they set out for a new life in Uganda. So begins the story of their family as they scatter across the world, fleeing the brutality of Idi Amin, forging new lives in London, marching for equality in 1990s Canada, searching for a safe mooring. But under everything lies a secret. And one day, a letter arrives that will fan its embers into a flame.
The remarkable new novel from the author of the multimillion-selling
international sensation The Midnight Library
Best friends and sisters, the four Padvano girls are thought of as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit Chicago neighbourhood. Julia, the eldest, is a planner. Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a life for herself other than the expected path of wife and mother. Cecelia and Emmeline, the twins, are the artist and the caregiver. From childhood, the four sisters complete each other. But when Julia falls in love with William Walters, their lives change. As William falls into darkness, it is Sylvie, not Julie, who steps in to help. Spanning decades and generations, Hello Beautiful captures what it means to be a family -- the joy and tragedy, the deep trust and devastating betrayals. Split apart by stubbornness and heartbreak, the Padavano family scatters across the country. Will the love and loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together?
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road returns with the first of a two-volume masterpiece: The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God. Look for Stella Maris, the second volume in The Passenger series, on sale December 2022. 1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul. Traversing the American South, from the garrulous barrooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.
From the acclaimed and award-winning author of What Will People Say?, Rehana Rossouw takes us into a world seemingly filled with promise yet bedevilled by shadows from the past. In this astonishing tour de force Rossouw illuminates the tensions inherent in these new times. Ali Adams is a political reporter in Parliament. As Nelson Mandela begins his second year as president, she discovers that his party is veering off the path to freedom and drafting a new economic policy that makes no provision for the poor. She follows the scent of corruption wafting into the new democracy’s politics and uncovers a major scandal. She compiles stories that should be heard when the Truth Commission gets underway, reliving the recent brutal past. Her friend Lizo works in the Presidency, controls access to Madiba’s ear. Another friend, Munier, is beating at the gates of Parliament, demanding attention for the plague stalking the land. Aaliyah Adams lives with her devout Muslim family in Bo-Kaap. Her mother is buried in religion after losing her husband. Her best friend is getting married, piling up the pressure to get settled and pregnant. There is little tolerance for alternative lifestyles in the close-knit community. The Rugby World Cup starts and tourists pour up the slopes above the city, discovering a hidden gem their dollars can afford. Ali/Aaliya is trapped with her family and friends in a tangle of razor-wire politics and culture, can she break free? Told with Rehana’s trademark verve and exquisite attention to language you will weep with Aaliya, triumph with Ali, and fall in love with the assemblage that makes up this ravishing new novel.
From the Booker-shortlisted, million-copy bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family. Charmers, liars, drinkers and dreamers, they will change history forever. Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise - but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history - the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Booth is a riveting novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family. |
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