Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address... What would happen if your memory of these began to fade? When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold onto the past when her future is slipping through her fingers...?

Wenige Autoren können ihre eigenen Texte so gut lesen wie Jan Weiler: lebendig, witzig, mit Selbstironie. Erfolgreich und allein – so steht der Architekt Peter Munk mit 51 Jahren da. Beziehungsweise liegt da, mit einem Herzinfarkt auf der Rolltreppe in der dritten Etage eines Kaufhauses. Er überlebt, doch es gibt niemanden, den er vom Krankenhaus aus benachrichtigen möchte. In der Rehaklinik trägt sein Therapeut ihm auf, in seiner Selbsterforschung bei den Menschen zu beginnen, die ihn zu dem Mann gemacht haben, der er ist.

Maggie O'Farrell's second novel is an intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love, with all the frisson and psychological intensity of Rebecca. When Lily moves into Marcus's flat and plunges headlong into a relationship, she must contend not merely with the disapproval of...

Gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts machen sich zwei junge Deutsche an die Vermessung der Welt. Der eine, Alexander von Humboldt, kämpft sich durch Urwald und Steppe, befährt den Orinoko, kostet Gifte, zählt Kopfläuse, kriecht in Erdlöcher, besteigt Vulkane und begegnet Seeungeheuern und Menschenfressern. Der andere, der Mathematiker und Astronom Carl Friedrich Gauß, der sein Leben nicht ohne Frauen verbringen kann und doch in der Hochzeitsnacht aus dem Bett springt, um eine Formel zu notieren.

Marigold Green calls herself ‘hideous, quaint and barmy’. Other people call her Bilgewater, a corruption of Bill’s daughter. Growing up in a boys’ school where her father is housemaster, she is convinced of her own plainness and peculiarity. Groomed by the wise and loving Paula, upstaged by bad, beautiful Grace and ripe for seduction by entirely the wrong sort of boy, she suffers extravagantly and comically in her pilgrimage through the turbulent, twilight world of alarming adolescence.

With the Rector Peter Harris and his family arrive back from Africa, the villagers of Turnham Malpas heave huge sighs of relief, everything is back to normal. But Peter has other ideas. He decides to return to Africa and fulfil his promise of working there for a year. The family he leaves behind is a very troubled one. Caroline's emails to Peter hide the fact that the twins, Beth and Alex, are traumatised by their experiences in Africa and her own distress that they will not share their feelings with her.

パートナーなしの妊娠、出産を目指す夏子のまえに現れた、精子提供で生まれ「父の顔」を知らない逢沢潤――生命の意味をめぐる真摯な問いを、切ない詩情と泣き笑いに満ちた極上の筆致で描く、21世紀の世界文学!

Hester Christie has spent a blissful 18 months living in Kenya, where husband Tim is posted. But now it’s back to England to be with her two nearly grown children. She rents a house near the village of Old Quinings in England’s North Country and plans a quiet summer with the children near the inn owned by her beloved former maid Annie and her husband. But things are never quiet for long with Mrs Tim, and she must navigate curious neighbours, a dishonest landlady and a troublesome travel companion who makes an unwelcome appearance in Old Quinings.

Caterina Pellegrini is a young Venetian musicologist hired by two competing cousins to find the truthful heir to an alleged treasure concealed by a once-famous, but now almost forgotten, baroque composer. Sworn to secrecy, Caterina can solve the mystery only by searching through the papers contained in the composer’s two chests that have not been opened for centuries. As she delves into all quarters of his life, from professional to personal, she is drawn into one of the most scandalous affairs of the baroque era.

Grace and Tom Penderford are the luckiest people alive. They have a wonderful marriage, a comfortable life and a beautiful baby girl, Chloe. Then, in a heartbeat, happiness becomes despair, and their lives change forever. When three-year-old Chloe falls ill and dies, Tom and Grace's world is...

The worst has happened. On the eve of their return to Blighty, Brigg and his fellow National Servicemen find themselves sentenced to another six months in Panglin Barracks. Many of the surviving characters from The Virgin Soldiers live again in these pages: dogged Tasker, the odious Sergeant Wellbeloved, the vulnerable Colonel Bromley Pickering and the comically touching Juicy Lucy.

Captured, abducted and married into Boko Haram, the narrator of this story witnesses and suffers the horrors of a community of men governed by a brutal code of violence. Barely more than a girl herself, she must soon learn how to survive as a woman with a child of her own. Just as the world around her seems entirely consumed by madness, bound for hell, she is offered an escape of sorts - but only into another landscape of trials and terrors amidst the unforgiving wilds of northeastern Nigeria. 

Paul West, a young Englishman, arrives in Paris to start a new job and finds out what the French are really like. They do eat a lot of cheese, some of which smells like pigs' droppings. They don't wash their armpits with garlic soap. Going on strike really is the second national participation sport after petanque. And, yes, they do use suppositories.

In the quaint seaside town of Newbay, a beginner's cookery course is starting. And three very different students have signed up.... Liz, determined to find love, has heard the old adage that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. John is newly widowed after 57 years of marriage, facing a lifetime of cheese on toast. Twenty-two-year-old DeeDee has been drifting from one dead-end job to another. The only thing they have in common: between them, they can barely boil an egg!

Written by Allama Iqbal Shikwa(Complaint), was published published in 1909, and Jawab-e-Shikwa(Response to complaint) was published in 1913.

Justice Laxmi Narayan Thakur and his wife, Mamta, spend their days watching anxiously over their five beautiful (but troublesome) alphabetically named daughters. Anjini, married but an incorrigible flirt; Binodini, very worried about her children's hissa in the family property; Chandrakanta, who eloped with a foreigner on the eve of her wedding; Eshwari, who is just a little too popular at Modern School, Barakhamba Road; and the judge's favourite (though fathers shouldn t have favourites): the quietly fiery Debjani.

The Fletcher family doesn't have time for politics; they are just trying to love and look after each other. But as the UK dissolves into conflict, they find themselves in danger. Not just from dodgy neighbours with brand new machine guns, but from inside their own family. What would happen if the UK broke apart? One family faces Britain's next civil war.

Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving finds Vic Brown in a bleak Yorkshire industrial town, striving for maturity in his relationship with girlfriend Ingrid and her small-town ways. The story examines in great detail his feelings as the relationship develops.

Richard Huw perfectly captures the mood and the character in his reading.

This is the unabridged audio recording of M R James' excellent ghost story The Rose Garden. Read by David Collings, this is sure to scare and delight in equal measure.

The second in Catherine Jones's wonderful series about the goings-on behind the facade of the market town of Little Woodford. The town of Little Woodford seems peaceful and picture-postcard beautiful, with its marketplace, ancient church and immaculate allotments. But behind the tranquil facade...