Fiction

Faith or delusion? Fantasy or fact? When word gets out that Mary-Margaret O'Reilly, a slow-witted but apparently harmless young woman, may have been witness to a miracle, religious mania descends on the Church of the Sacred Heart in Battersea. The consequences will be profound, not only for Mary-Margaret but for others too - Father Diamond, the parish priest, who is in the midst of his own lonely crisis of faith, and Stella Morrison, adrift in a loveless marriage and aching for her ten-year old son, away at boarding school. Meanw... read more

1968. The year Paris takes to the streets. The year Martin Luther King loses his life for a dream. The year Eleanor Maud Portman is born. Young Elly's world is shaped by those who inhabit it: her loving but maddeningly distractible parents; a best friend who smells of chips and knows exotic words like 'slag'; an ageing fop who tapdances his way into her home, a Shirley Bassey impersonator who trails close behind; lastly, of course, a rabbit called God. In a childhood peppered with moments both ordinary and extraordinary, Elly's one... read more

'At times laugh-out-loud funny, at others gut-wrenchingly sad, the book is peppered with unique and complex characters who are so original, well-observed and believable that you'll be completely absorbed into their world' - Easy Living

'A story of siblings, friendship, secrets and love, told with sadness and humour' - Marie Claire

'A genuinely captivating read' - Glamour

The Victorian language of flowers was used to express emotions: honeysuckle for devotion, azaleas for passion, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it has been more useful in conveying feelings like grief, mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster care system, her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen, Victoria has nowhere to go, and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. When her talent is discovered by a local florist, she disco... read more

From one of Britain's most important writers, An Honourable Man is set in the tumultuous world of late Victorian England. Beginning in the Sudan and London of 1884, this extraordinary new novel is played out against the shambolic end of the Empire. Slovo draws on the lives of two real men: Charles Gordon, an heroic, hubristic, career army man whose refusal to obey orders helped bring down the Gladstone government, and W T Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, the father of tabloid journalism. Their story is intercuts with the tal... read more

'Before you fall in love, or find a dear friend, you should know: this is the day I will meet someone whose memory will touch my heart and change my world forever. I believe the ability to do this is buried deep within each of us, and if we could find it we could imprint on our minds what the world looked like before so we could take the full measure of what remains.' What Remains follows the tumultuous life of journalist Kate Price from her first assignment as a naive and idealistic young correspondent in Riyadh in 1991, to Baghda... read more

Jennifer Egan's spellbinding novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa. We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York ... read more

"Pitch perfect. . . . Darkly, rippingly funny. . . . Egan possesses a satirist's eye and a romance novelist's heart."--The New York Times Book Review

"At once intellectually stimulating and moving. . . . Like a masterful album, this one demands a replay."--The San Francisco Chronicle

"A new classic of American fiction."--Time

"Audacious, extraordinary."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"A spiky, shape-shifting new book. . . . A display of Egan's extreme virtuosity." --The New York Times

"Wildly ambitious...read more

'When Hitler came to power I was in the bath. The wireless in the living room was turned up loud, but all that drifted down to me were waves of happy cheering, like a football match. It was Monday afternoon ...' Ruth Becker, defiant and cantankerous, is living out her days in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. She has made an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past - and a part of history that has been all but forgotten.Another lifetime away, it's 1939 and the world is going to war. Ernst Toller, self-doubting revolutionary and poet,... read more

Here is the eagerly anticipated new novel from a brilliant writer whose last book, Good to a Fault, was shortlisted for the prestigious Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean. The Little Shadows revolves around three sisters in the world of vaudeville before and during the First World War.

When Charles Saint-Beuve, a French literary journalist met Victor Hugo, an ambitious young writer who intended to become famous, he was swept into a world of grand emotions, a world where words can become swords. But it is not Victor he is really attracted to - it is his wife Adele. Soon the two lovers are on the edge of a great scandal and a wounded Victor must exact his price for betrayal, a price that will change the lives of so many, including his own children. As Saint-Beuve - a man like no other man - struggles to hold on to ... read more

There were people on the banks of the river. Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women for ever. Dr Annick Swenson's work is shrouded in mystery; she refuses to report on her progress, especially to her investors, whose patience is fast running out. Anders Eckman, a mild-mannered lab researcher, is sent to investigate. A curt letter reporting his untimely death is all that returns. Now Marina Singh, Anders's colleague... read more

PRAISE FOR RUN: 'Her books are so warm, so overflowing with love and affection, that when you've finished reading one your first inclination is to embrace it' Guardian 'This is a spectacular read and more than a match for Bel Canto ... Full of suspense, exciting and unpredictable, this is a novel that keeps you guessing until the end' Sunday Express 'It is a long time since I have read such a delicately nuanced novel, where the overall pleasure lies simply in reading an award-winning writer at the top of her game' Sunday Telegraph 'Enthralling ... It's a skilled piece of writing, a jig..read more

Set in a tiny, traditional community on a Pacific island, this is the story of a marriage and a family, of great loves and great betrayals and how real island life is so much more than the blissful idyll Westerners see.
Ioane Matate has been a traveller running away from his island since he was fifteen, restless, dissatisfied and troubled. Amalia Hoko has grown up an island child, loved and sheltered, accepting as a boundary and limitation the sea that Ioane uses as his escape route. They belong to different worlds, but when ... read more

By the Booker-shortlisted author of Astonishing Splashes of Colour, a wry, poignant novel about a man trying to escape his fame as the boy in his mother's bestselling books.
Who is the Roundabout Man He doesn't look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a nearby motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children's books, but he's nearer retirement than childhood. What he hopes no one will discover is that he's the real Q... read more

The poignant -- and at times very funny -- new novel from the author of THE MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT, shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Latin terrorists storm an international gathering hosted by an underprivileged country to promote foreign interest and trade, only to find that their intended target, the President, has stayed home to watch his favourite soap opera on TV. Among the hostages are a world class opera singer and her biggest fan, a Japanese tycoon who has been persuaded to attend the party on the understanding that she will... read more

Ten years after 9/11, a dazzling, kaleidoscopic novel reimagines its aftermath.
A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner's name - and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. Their conflicted response is only a preamble to the country's.
The memor... read more

Swimming for his life towards traffickers on the Italian shore, Selim enters a world where Kurdish refugees disguise themselves as tomatoes, dates of birth are a matter of opinion, and a residency permit is a ticket to paradise. When he ends up in a small town in Germany, Selim believes he is finally safe, until the law catches up with him and the clock starts ticking. Selim realises there is only one way to avoid deportation, if he dare try ...Fifteen years later, in a town hall in Paris, a Registrar receives an unsettling book in... read more

Two sisters, opposite in every way - twenty-eight-year-old Emily is a CFO of an internet start-up, twenty-three-year-old Jess is a graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily's boyfriend is fantastically successful. Jess's boyfriend is an environmental activist. But the dot-com bubble must burst, while Jess's work on a cache of rare cookbooks uncovers strange erotic drawings and marginalia that bring her closer to their mysterious coll... read more

Things are heating up in Easy, a Central Otago town. After lobbying unsuccessfully to get their desperately needed public toilet, the women of Easy give up on council, conspiring to build it themselves. There's civic pride at stake, never mind the strained bladders. Luckily Jinx, a visitor in a campervan, has just the right credentials to get them started. When the town's unofficial mayoress, Martha, traps her builder in town, she discovers that Jinx, aside from her non-traditional job, is a hard-to manage lesbian with a pen... read more

'An honest account of contemporary issues facing small town New Zealand - radiates warmth and wry affection' -Annabel Fagan.

Seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. But his routines are disrupted when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved preschool take over his barn. As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents, and teachers, he must reexamine the solitary life he has made in the three decades since the sudden death of his wife. With equal parts affection and humor, Julia Glass spins a captivating tale about a man who can no longer remain a... read more

"Marvelous. . . . A delicate, nuanced, socially conscious story of one family's near-destruction, and how a slew of seemingly bad moves reconnects it." - "USA Today " "An enchanting story of familial bonds and late-life romance. Expect to be infatuated with Glass's protagonist ... he of generous soul, dry wit, and courtly manners." - "O, The Oprah Magazine " "Fans of "Three Junes "will find this fourth novel just as absorbing. It's like reading an involving letter from a long-lost friend." - "People " "This energized, good-humored novel . . . approaches the ties of kinship with the same ..read more