Showing titles in Genre Fiction

New to a small town, Jackie and Paula envision a quiet life for their kids: a young adopted son and two teenage foster children, including the troubled Star. However, they quickly butt heads with their neighbor, Clementine, who disapproves of their lifestyle and is incensed when Star befriends her spirited horse, Comet. Haunted by past tragedy and unable to properly care for Comet, Clem nevertheless resents the bond Star soon shares with the horse.

In the Black Country in the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has moved to Britain with his wife to secure a brighter future for themselves and their children. At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London - escaping from a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and the desolate, disempowered Black Country - but finds himself at a loss for a new centre of gravity and turns to sex work to create new notions of love, fatherhood and spirituality.

Raised in a brothel at the edge of a dying empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, a herb-scented garden, a loud and dangerous tavern, and the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ – prostitutes and slaves from every corner of the empire – conduct their business.

Hanne is nearly 15, and the domestic world of womanhood is quickly closing in on her. A child of nature, she yearns instead for the rush of the river, the wind dancing around her. Hanne finds little comfort in the local girls, and friendship doesn't come easily, until she meets Thea and she finds in her a kindred spirit and finally, acceptance. Hanne's family are Old Lutherans, and in her small village hushed worship is done secretly—this is a community under threat.

1970s Weston-Super-Mare, and 10-year-old oddball Eustace, an only child, has life transformed by his mother's quixotic decision to sign him up for cello lessons. Music making brings release for a boy who is discovering he is an emotional volcano. He laps up lessons from his young teacher, not noticing how her brand of glamour is casting a damaging spell over his frustrated and controlling mother.

When Rosie and Jules discover a ground-breaking clinical trial that enables two women to have a female baby, they jump at the chance to make history. Fear-mongering politicians and right-wing movements are quick to latch on to the controversies surrounding Ovum-to-Ovum (o-o) technology and stoke the fears of the public. What will happen to the numbers of little boys born? Is there a sinister conspiracy to eradicate men at play?

Poland, 1980. Anxious, disillusioned Ludwik Glowacki, soon to graduate university, has been sent along with the rest of his class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together, they spend a dreamlike summer swimming in secluded lakes, reading forbidden books - and falling in love. But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw, and to the harsh realities of life under the Party. Exiled from paradise, Ludwik and Janusz must decide how they will survive; and in their different choices, find themselves torn apart.

After the success of The Northern Clemency, which was short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher brings us the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of the small English town of Handsmouth. Usually a quiet and undisturbed place, Handsmouth becomes the centre of national attention when an eight-year-old girl vanishes. The town fills with journalists and television crews, who latch onto the public's fearful suspicions that the missing girl was abducted.

Truckers have long been ingrained in the American popular imagination, celebrated in movies like Smokey and the Bandit and many a country-western ballad. They're also a favorite queer sexual icon, joining such types as sailors, cops, firemen, and other guys who "service society". For some gay men, life on the road conjures up images of hairy, sweaty, blue-collar joes traveling from town to town in their big 18-wheelers, pulling into all-night diners, gas stations, cheap motels, and highway rest stops for sex.

The lonely life of fifteen-year-old Theron David Alden is transformed when he meets Jake. Older, cooler, more confident and startlingly beautiful, Jake likes the same bands, the same drugs, and has the same drive to oblivion. Over the course of two decades, Theron and Jake get high, drift apart, and are brought hurtling back together, until a final collision tears them apart forever.

Angelina Sicco was born and raised in Cadenze, an ugly little mountain town that's dead most of the year. Determined to be content with her lot in life, she walks her mongrel dog, attends her brother's heavy metal concerts, holds court in the local dive bar, and does everything she can to bait hot, queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown. On the night of a family party, Angelina runs into the sternly handsome Jagvi, who's back in town for a spell. And who just so happens to be her brother's ex-girlfriend.

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. Less roves across the 'Mild Mild West', through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo.

Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s - a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

Enid is many things: lesbian, serial dater, deaf in one ear, space obsessive, true crime fanatic. When she's not listening to grizzly murder podcasts, she's managing her crippling phobia of bald people and trying hard not to think about her mortifying teenage years—which is hard, when she's lost the password to her old YouTube account and the (many) vlogs that her teen self once uploaded. She's worried about herself, her depressive mother, and what the deal is with gender reveal parties.

The first thing on our list of Save Miles from the Dark Magic That Might Be Making Him Do Ridiculous Things is to destroy the ominous book that's snagging my attention. But what I don't expect is to be dragged into the book filled with dark mysteries that leaves me with more questions and a lack of pants. But it's nothing that Havoc and I can't handle.

After an unconventional upbringing, Ben Sedgwick is perfectly content with the quiet, predictable life of a country vicar, free of strife or turmoil. When he’s asked to look after an absent naval captain’s three wild children, he reluctantly agrees, but instantly falls for the hellions. And when their stern but gloriously handsome father arrives, Ben is tempted in ways that make him doubt everything.

Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her uncle disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Arctic but she doesn't know why or how. She and her husband are trying to make a name for themselves as paleontologists but, in 1850s' London, scientific success requires wealth and connections - neither of which they possess. But then Mary discovers some old family papers that allude to the truth behind her great-uncle's past, of his attempts to create a living being and the creature that ultimately killed him. Perhaps this idea will prove to be their salvation.

You know what's best for your child. Don't you? Riley Pieterson is an adventurous girl with lots of questions. There's plenty she doesn't know yet: What a human brain looks like. All the constellations in the night sky. Why others can't see her the way she sees herself. When Riley confides in her parents - Sally and Theo - that she feels uncomfortable in her own skin, a chain of events begins that changes their lives forever. Sally wants to support her daughter by helping her be who she dreams of being. Theo resists; he thinks Riley is a seven-year-old child pushing boundaries.

Mae and Ari are not your average power couple. Their love story started when they met at Leeds University. Back when Mae, whilst never short of a date and confident about who she is at her core, needed Ari's bright light to help her grow into herself. Ari, having run from New York following an undisclosed scandal and battling his own demons, held onto Mae as his grounding anchor. Though they quickly become inseparable, their inimitable bond must survive guilt, secrets, growing up and, ultimately, love in all its complex and fluid forms.

Perfect for mature teens and nostalgic adults, this LGBTQ+ series celebrates authentic intimacy, realistic relationships, and the beautiful chaos of growing up queer. Rewind to the nineties and join a group of teenagers as they try to figure out who they are, and who they want to love. Meet your new friends: