Contemporary Fiction

The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover. This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.

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One holiday. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn’t see coming…

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‘Her best yet’ Taylor Jenkins Reid, Malibu Rising
‘One of my favourite authors’ Colleen Hoover, It Ends With Us
‘Magical, delightful, and utterly one of a kind’ Ali Hazelwood, The Love Hypothesis

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 one men date before finding their happy-ever-after. To prevent another dating dud, Nora’s sister has persuaded her to swap her city desk for a month’s holiday in Sunshine Falls.

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?

Brimming with witty banter, characters you can’t help but fall for and off-the-charts chemistry, BOOK LOVERS is Emily Henry’s best novel yet.

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‘Emily Henry’s books are a gift, the perfect balance between steamy and sweet’ V. E Schwab, Gallant

‘So smart, so funny, so sexy’ Beth O’Leary, The No-Show

‘Emily Henry has another hit on her hands’ Sophie Cousens, Just Haven’t Met You Yet

‘A thoroughly modern yet classic romance’ Sunday Times

‘Heartfelt, funny, and full of joy. (Also, three cheers for Nora’s super-relatable bangs journey!)’ Tia Williams, Seven Days in June

‘The master of witty repartee’ Daily Mail

‘Super fun, sassy, smart, sexy… Emily Henry is now an auto-buy author for me’ Red Magazine

‘Book Lovers is Schitt’s Creek for book nerds’ Casey Mcquiston, One Last Stop

‘The most phenomenal portrayal of enemies to lovers I have ever read. . .’ Laura Jane Williams, Our Stop

Sunday Times bestseller, May 2022

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A novel of the friendships and woes of two couples, which tells the story of their lives in lyrical, evocative prose by one of the finest American writers of the late 20th century.

When two young couples meet for the first time during the Great Depression, they quickly find they have much in common: Charity Lang and Sally Morgan are both pregnant, while their husbands Sid and Larry both have jobs in the English department at the University of Wisconsin. Immediately a lifelong friendship is born, which becomes increasingly complex as they share decades of love, loyalty, vulnerability and conflict. Written from the perspective of the aging Larry Morgan,Crossing to Safety is a beautiful and deeply moving exploration of the struggle of four people to come to terms with the trials and tragedies of everyday life.

With an introduction by Jane Smiley.

Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) was the author of, among other novels, Remembering Laughter, 1937; A Shooting Star, 1961; Angle of Repose (Pulitzer Prize), 1971; The Spectator Bird (National Book award), 1977; Recapitulation, 1979. Three of his short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements. His collected stories were published in 1990.

Jane Smiley is the author of many novels and works of non-fiction, including, most recently, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel”, about the history and anatomy of the novel. Her most recent novel is “Good Faith”. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for “A Thousand Acres”, and was shortlisted for The Orange Prize in 2001 for Horse Heaven.

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‘One of the greats’ – Lucy Caldwell, author of Intimacies
‘Comic brilliance’ – Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations
‘Ingenious’ – The Irish Times
‘Daring, funny, heartbreaking’ – Observer

Following the prize-winning Sweet Home, Wendy Erskine’s Belfast is once again illuminated. Meet Drew Lord Haig, called on to sing an obscure hit from his youth at a paramilitary event. Meet Max as he recalls an eventful journey to a Christian film festival. And Mrs Dallesandro who dreams of being a teenager again as she sits in a tanning salon on her wedding anniversary. In these stories, Erskine’s characters’ wishes and hopes often fall short of their grasp. Brilliantly drawn, Dance Move is about the hugeness of life as seen through glimpses of the everyday.

‘A masterpiece’ – David Keenan, author of Monument Maker

‘Wendy Erskine’s debut, Sweet Home, was pitch perfect . . . Dance Move is equally brilliant’ – The Daily Mail

‘Erskine’s stories open slight, but they contain more than it seems possible for short stories to contain’ – Keith Ridgway, author of Hawthorn & Child

‘She isn’t just one of the leading writers of short fiction at work today but one of the leading writers, period.’ – Matt Rowland Hill, author of Original Sins

As Read on BBC Radio 4
Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize
Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year
The Irish Times Books of the Year 2022

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‘The best book I’ve read this year … darkly comedic and full of tension and surprise’ Marina Abramovic

‘Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.’

When Hanio Yamada realises the future holds little of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits. A world of murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisoned carrots, code-breaking, a hopeless junkie heiress and makeshift explosives reveals itself to the unwitting hero. Is there nothing he can do to stop it? Resolving to follow the orders of his would-be purchasers, he comes to understand what life is worth, and whether we can indeed name our price.

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The tenth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga.
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When Mona Ramsey married Lord Teddy Roughton to secure his visa―allowing him to remain in San Francisco to fulfil his wildest dreams―she never imagined she would, by age 48, be the sole owner of Easley House, a romantic country manor in the UK. Now, with her adopted son, Wilfred, Mona has opened Easley’s doors to paying guests to keep her inherited English manor afloat.

As they welcome a married American couple to Easley, Mona and Wilfred discover their new guests’ terrible secret. Instead of focussing on the imminent arrival of old friend Michael Tolliver and matriarch Anna Madrigal, Mona will need to use her considerable charm, willpower and wiles to set things right before Easley’s historic Midsummer ceremony.

Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1980s San Francisco and beyond. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

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THE NO. 1 EBOOK BESTSELLER

A witty, heartwarming story of love, life and second chances set in the idyllic Cotswolds, from the glorious Jill Mansell.

‘I completely adored it . . . Brimming with warmth, heart and jolly good fun’ Cathy Bramley

‘An absolute joy from start to finish’ Veronica Henry

‘Jill knocks it right out of the park with this fabulous story of love and friendship’ Milly Johnson

One minute Lou is happily employed, with a perfect flat. The next, her home and job have gone. Suddenly she has to start over.

The last thing Lou wants is to move to a tiny Cotswolds village. She certainly doesn’t intend to work for curmudgeonly eighty-year-old Edgar Allsopp. But Edgar is about to make her the kind of promise nobody could ignore. In return, she secretly vows to help him fall in love with life again.

Foxwell is also home to Remy, whose charm and charisma are proving hard to ignore. But Lou hasn’t recovered from the last time she fell for a charmer. She needs a distraction – and luckily one’s about to turn up.

Secrets never stay hidden for long in Foxwell, nor are promises always kept. And no one could guess what lies ahead . . .

Readers love Promise Me:

‘Pure escapism . . . A simply gorgeous read that I would highly recommend’ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘My book of the year! I really, really loved it’ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Another Jill Mansell belter which had me laughing out loud from the first few pages’ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘I loved every second I spent reading this book. It is warm, realistic and life affirming’ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘A wonderfully uplifting story, with a superb cast of characters who’ll stay in your heart after you’ve turned the final page’ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

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A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller

A deeply moving, gorgeously illustrated short story for people of all ages from the international bestselling author of The Kite Runner, brought to life by Dan Williams’s beautiful illustrations

‘The book may be brief, but it is beautiful, poetic – a distillation of his strengths’ Sunday Times

On a moonlit beach a father cradles his sleeping son as they wait for dawn to break and a boat to arrive. He speaks to his boy of the long summers of his childhood, recalling his grandfather’s house in Syria, the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, the bleating of his grandmother’s goat, the clanking of her cooking pots. And he remembers, too, the bustling city of Homs with its crowded lanes, its mosque and grand souk, in the days before the sky spat bombs and they had to flee.

When the sun rises they and those around them will gather their possessions and embark on a perilous sea journey in search of a new home.

Proceeds from the sale of Sea Prayer will go to The Khaled Hosseini Foundation and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency to help fund life-saving support and build better futures for refugees around the world.

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It’s not what you think, it rarely is, so flick the remains of your rubbish cigarette down the drain and don’t pay too much attention to the rumours. Things have been going missing from the bedroom of the woman with the purple eye shadow. Stewart tries to pull in the punters at the ailing nightclub by installing a car park diorama of gorillas and meerkats. Meanwhile, Yvonne gets a new job and nobody knows what’s happened to Daz. At Jonnie Rabbett’s shooting club, Barbara ‘Bunny’ Rabbett dispenses pork pies and sage advice, “It’ll be right, love.” Vincent smokes cigarettes, smells of paint and finally gets to the bottom of what exactly happened to Dame Judy. He must ring Kirsten and let her know! Paul’s life flashes before him as he drives around town in his aromatic van, “I’m here for the chickens!” he shouts. Sports and Social is a collection of short stories about the remarkable everyday things that happen when remarkable everyday people get together.

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The most scandalous Royal book of the year

In a rapidly changing world the Royal Family own swathes of the country, most of the seabed and more money than anyone could ever spend. It is the role of the Chamberlain of the NDAs to keep things that way.

From transgressions to successions, travesties to majesties, follow eighteen months in the life of trusted toady Fenton Footlicker Esquire as he takes Queen Elizabeth to rehab, foils a breakout from the Balmoral Labour Camp and runs a counter-espionage unit of royal lookalikes – the Crown Duals.

Fenton knows better than anyone that without the monarchy UK tourism would instantly collapse. Which is why he calls himself the Royal Flush: because he always cleans up the messes his charges leave behind.

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THE GIFT EVERY ZADIE SMITH FAN WILL BE HOPING IS WAITING FOR THEM BENEATH THE CHRISTMAS TREE!

‘A writer at the peak of her powers’ The Telegraph

Truth and fiction. Jamaica and Britain. Who gets to tell their story? Zadie Smith returns with her first historical novel.

Kilburn, 1873. The ‘Tichborne Trial’ has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be – or an imposter.

Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her novelist cousin and his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of façades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica, he knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise.

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what’s true can prove a complicated task.

‘It’s difficult to give any idea of how extraordinary this book is. One of the great historical novels, certainly. But has any historical novel ever combined such brilliantly researched and detailed history with such intensely imagined fiction? Or such a range of living, breathing, surprising characters with such an idiosyncratically structured narrative?’ Michael Frayn

‘As always it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smith’s mind, which, as time goes on, is becoming contiguous with London itself. Dickens may be dead, but Smith, thankfully, is alive’ New York Times

‘Zadie Smith’s Victorian-set masterpiece holds a mirror up to Britain . . . The Fraud is the genuine article’ Independent

‘Smith’s dazzling historical novel combines deft writing and strenuous construction in a tale of literary London and the horrors of slavery’ Guardian

SHOTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

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This edition is releasing to celebrate the release of the award winning film adaptation, starring Hermione Corfield, Will Fletcher and Mark Gatiss and directed by Richie Adams. Cinematic release set for May 2022 in UK and Irish cinemas. Winner of the Edinburgh International Film Festival Audience Award 2021.

Life in the Scottish Hebrides can be harsh – the edge of the world some call it. For the beautiful Kirsty Macleod, the love of Murdo and their dreams of America promise an escape from the scrape of the land, the repression of the Church and the inevitability of the path their lives would take.

But as the Great War looms Murdo is conscripted. The villagers hold a grand Road Dance to send their young men off to battle. As the dancers swirl and sup, the wheels of tragedy are set in motion.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
 
‘Funny, clever and sweet’– Sunday Times

‘The much loved comic proves adept at noirish fiction in a debut whose surrealist humour sets it apart’ – Observer

‘Like Spike Milligan, Mortimer has managed to use a novel for his distinctive comedic voice’ – The Telegraph 
 
‘Hilarious’ – Daily Mail
 
‘You’ll love it’ – Independent

My name is Gary. I’m a thirty-year-old legal assistant with a firm of solicitors in London. To describe me as anonymous would be unfair but to notice me other than in passing would be a rarity. I did make a good connection with a girl, but that blew up in my face and smacked my arse with a fish slice.

Gary Thorn goes for a pint with a work acquaintance called Brendan. When Brendan leaves early, Gary meets a girl in the pub. He doesn’t catch her name, but falls for her anyway. When she suddenly disappears without saying goodbye, all Gary has to remember her by is the book she was reading: The Satsuma Complex. But when Brendan goes missing, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Satsuma to get some answers.

And so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to finally bring some love and excitement into his unremarkable life…

A page-turning story with a cast of unforgettable characters, The Satsuma Complex is the brilliantly funny smash hit first novel by bestselling author and comedian Bob Mortimer.
 

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First published in 1961, The Severed Head is regarded is one of Iris Murdoch’s most entertaining works. A dark and ferocious comic masterpiece, the novel traces the turbulent emotional journey of Martin Lynch-Gibbon, a smug, well-to-do London wine merchant and unfaithful husband, whose life is turned inside out when his wife leaves him for her psychoanalyst.

In The Sea, the Sea the landscape shifts to the seclusion of an isolated house on the edge of England’s North Sea, where Charles Arrowby, a big name in London’s glittering theatrical world, has retired to write his memoirs. Arrowby’s plans begin to unravel when he meets his first love and becomes haunted by the idea of rekindling his adolescent passion.

The Severed Head and Booker prize-winner The Sea, the Sea are two of Iris Murdoch’s most accomplished novels, displaying all her talent for combining profundity with playful creativity. Both tragic and comic, brooding and hilarious, they brilliantly reveal how much our lives are governed by the lies we tell ourselves as well as our all-consuming desire for love, significance and, ultimately, redemption.

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