Showing titles in Contemporary Fiction

Another incredible novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Alchemist. July 14, 1099. The city of Accra awaits the invasion of the crusaders who have surrounded the gates. There, within the city walls, men and women of every age have gathered to hear the words of a mysterious...

第155回（2016年）芥川龍之介賞受賞作

36歳未婚女性、古倉恵子。
大学卒業後も就職せず、コンビニのバイトは18年目。
これまで彼氏なし。
オープン当初からスマイルマート日色駅前店で働き続け、
変わりゆくメンバーを見送りながら、店長は8人目だ。
日々食べるのはコンビニ食、夢の中でもコンビニのレジを打ち、
清潔なコンビニの風景と「いらっしゃいませ！」の掛け声が、
毎日の安らかな眠りをもたらしてくれる。
仕事も家庭もある同窓生たちからどんなに不思議がられても、
完璧なマニュアルの存在するコンビニこそが、
私を世界の正常な「部品」にしてくれる――。

ある日、婚活目的の新入り男性、白羽がやってきて、
そんなコンビニ的生き方は
「恥ずかしくないのか」とつきつけられるが……。

現代の実存を問い、
正常と異常の境目がゆらぐ衝撃のリアリズム小説。

It's the May Day holiday, and a fair has come to the village of Thrush Green. The residents of Thrush Green all have their own views about the fair. For young Paul, just recovered from an illness, it is a joy to be allowed out to play at the fair; for Ruth, who returned to the soothing tranquility of Thrush Green nursing a broken heart, the fair is a welcome distraction from her own problems. And for Dr Lovell, the fair brings an unexpected new patient.

Caroline Cliburn was to be married next Tuesday, and yet she suspected that gratitude was the wrong reason to become a bride. Perhaps that was why she and her younger brother Jody had taken the long drive north to Scotland in search of her missing brother Angus.... When a sudden spring blizzard leaves them stranded by the roadside, it is the snow that gives both her and a lonely young Scot one last chance to find the healing warmth of love.

"[B]rilliant narration by the actor Éanna Hardwicke."—Financial Times "Éanna Hardwicke's narration highlights the rich emotionality of Rooney's newest novel. Hardwicke's smooth voice shifts to capture every mood--becoming desperately angry, bitter, and frantic yet also achingly tender...

The end of the school year often brings unmitigated rapture for schoolteachers, and so it should for Miss Read, schoolmistress in the charming English village of Fairacre. But on the very first day of the long summer holiday, she falls and breaks her arm. Just when her summer seems ruined, her old friend Amy Garfield, comes to her aid with a diverting suggestion. They travel to Crete for two weeks, and the change of scene provides a welcome break for both of them.

Even down to its well-set Georgian townhouses, Edinburgh is a hymn to measure and harmony. But on Scotland Street, domestic accord is in short supply. Matthew and Elspeth welcome three new arrivals, though the joys of multiple parenthood are somewhat lost due to sleep deprivation and the difficulties of telling their brood apart. Angus and Domenica are to marry, and Domenica has ambitious and disturbing plans for their living arrangements, especially when it appears that Antonia, in Italy recuperating from Stendhal Syndrome, may not return.

A poignant story about friendship, betrayal, obsession and second chances – this novel is an immensely powerful portrayal of human resilience. Sierra Leone: civil war has left an entire population with terrible secrets to keep. In the capital's hospital Kai, a gifted young surgeon, is plagued by demons. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a university professor who recalls the love that drove him to acts that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer and into the path of one woman at the centre of their stories.

New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips magic is vibrantly alive, and it's on display in This Heart of Mine, the fifth book in her wildly popular Chicago Stars series! Molly Somerville loves her career as the creator of the Daphne the Bunny children's book series, but the rest...

The stunning new novel from Costa-Novel-Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell: a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976.

Flora and Rose are identical twins who do not know of each other's existence. Rose has been raised by her frivolous mother with the glossy international jet set. Flora has spent her childhood in the beauty and quiet of her father's Cornish cottage. And then, by chance, they meet. The encounter seems heaven-sent to Rose, who longs to escape from a man she no longer desires. Flora can free her, and, in taking her sister's place, her uneventful life is changed forever.

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe--a vast and impenetrable thicket of green. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself. But over the centuries, the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled, too; now they live in Arden, at the end of Hawthorne Close, and are hardly a family at all.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. With a new introduction by...

Brian has arrived at university with a stronger desire than the acquisition of knowledge: he's going to be a star of TV's hottest quiz, University Challenge. But his progress on 'The Challenge' is somewhat stymied by his growing desire for the beguiling Alice Harbison, struggling to make her mark as an actress. And as obstacles impede their affair, Brian becomes more and more convinced that only overwhelming success on the quiz show will win her.

Captivating and suspenseful, Best Kept Secret is the third novel in international bestseller Jeffrey Archer’s outstanding Clifton Chronicles. It sees our hero Harry Clifton and Giles Barrington, brother of Harry’s beloved wife Emma, become entwined in the fate of the Barrington family...

In the small Irish town of Knockglen, best friends Bernadette ('Benny') and Eve are inseparable. Benny is an adored only child, and Eve, a poor, birdlike orphan brought up by nuns. On their first day at University College, Dublin, a fatal road accident brings the pair together with fellow...

He is Dexter Mayhew, tall, dark and (she can't deny it) handsome. She is Emma Morley, bottled red hair, wilfully badly dressed, all principles and no action. Could this be the dawn of the rest of their lives? Or are Dex and Em living proof that - despite an unlikely beginning - men and women really can be just good friends?

At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive - known locally, as 'Larks'. His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save what is a fast-sinking school from closure.

Von der unbedingten Anwesenheitspflicht im eigenen Leben. Selma, eine alte Westerwälderin, kann den Tod voraussehen. Immer wenn ihr im Traum ein Okapi erscheint, stirbt am nächsten Tag jemand im Dorf. Unklar ist allerdings, wen es treffen wird. Davon, was die Bewohner in den folgenden Stunden fürchten, was sie blindlings wagen, gestehen, verschwinden lassen oder in Ordnung bringen, erzählt Mariana Leky in ihrem Roman - und natürlich noch viel mehr. Was man von hier aus sehen kann ist das Porträt eines Dorfes, in dem alles auf wundersame Weise zusammenhängt. Aber es ist vor allem ein Buch über die Liebe im Modus der Abwesenheit.

Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity...