Showing titles in Literary Fiction

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

The night before the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a prestigious black-tie Gala dinner. It is a fitting testament to the glamour of the occasion that top chef Max Moreton is cooking the evening's meal. Founder of the racing town's favourite Michelin-starred restaurant, the Hay Net, Max is something of a celebrity in Newmarket circles.

Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling experiences in the landscape of Gold Rush America. And they bicker a lot. Arriving in California, and discover that Warm has invented a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad....

As a boy, Alexander dreamed of matching the heroic feats of Achilles. At 18 he led the Macedonian cavalry to a stunning victory against the Greeks. By 25 he had crushed the Persians in three monumental battles and was the master of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Men began to call him a god. But behind the legend was another, more complex story.

Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband, Richard, is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy. Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby and to prove the physician wrong.

The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die. Laura hasn’t had it easy: she's survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn't love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it. But now someone’s on to her - Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger.

What happens when we discover who we really are? And how do we come to terms with it? Can we even meet each other's eye, after we have seen who we really are? Fearless and original, The Zone of Interest is a violently dark love story set against a backdrop of unadulterated evil, and a vivid journey into the depths and contradictions of the human soul.

Over-educated and underpaid, Phoebe Forde is finally settling into her new life in Copenhagen with her anxious dog Dolly. Almost three years into her gender transition, she has learned to move through the world carefully, savouring small moments of joy. A woman without a past can be anyone she wants - that is, until an unexpected visit from her first (and only) girlfriend brings her face-to-face with a life she thought she would never see again.

The first book in the Darkwar series, from worldwide best-selling author of Magician, Raymond E. Feist. The Conclave of Shadows, the undercover organisation charged with the protection of Midkemia, have problems: the evil magician Leso Varen is still at large, and thousands of portals to a parallel dimension inhabited by the cruel and fiendish Dasati have been discovered in Novindus.

Set in the world of the Victorian professional and landed classes, the story centres on Mr Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to it.

It’s the tabloid sensation of the year: two well-known footballers standing in the dock, charged with sexual assault, a series of vile text messages pointing towards their guilt. As the trial unfolds, Evan Keogh reflects on the events that have led him to this moment. Since leaving his island home, his life has been a lie on many levels. He’s a talented footballer who wanted to be an artist. A gay man in a sport that rejects diversity. A defendant whose knowledge of what took place on that fateful night threatens more than just his freedom or career.

Upon her brother's death, missionary Rose Sayer and Charles Allnutt, disreputable skipper of the African Queen, become allies as, marooned in German Central Africa during World War I, they fight their old launch downriver 'to strike a blow for England'.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them, in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul, they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.

When Simeon Simcox, a socialist clergyman, leaves his entire fortune not to his family but to the ruthless, social-climbing Tory MP Leslie Titmuss, the Rector's two sons react in very different ways. Henry, novelist and former 'angry young man' turned grumpy old reactionary, decides to fight the will and prove their father was insane. Younger brother Fred, a mild-mannered country doctor, takes a different approach, quietly digging in Simeon's past, only to uncover an entirely unexpected explanation for the legacy.

Venice, 1954. Rosy Gilchrist thinks luck may be on her side. Her boss at the British Museum has chosen her to travel to Venice to track down a rare edition of Horace's Odes for their collection. Things soon take a drastic downward spiral. A wealthy recluse offers a million-pound reward for anyone who can find the treasure. Soon Rosy finds herself in a race against time as her rivals will do anything for money. Even murder.

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America - where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain - the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences.

Max Skinner is a man at the heart of London's financial universe until his employers embark on a little asset-stripping of their own. Himself. Amid the grey London drizzle, there is one potential ray of sunshine: Max's Uncle Harry has left him his estate in his will, an eighteenth-century chateau and vineyard an hour's drive from Avignon.

Monti Schroeder is on a quest for peace. She has been since the moment she was born. But peace has remained elusive. Living as a nomad, she takes work where she can get it. When her sister calls with a favor for her neurotic boss, Monti agrees to it for a few extra bucks. What Monti finds when she arrives is a woman just as broken as she is. And no matter what, she can't leave Athena to flounder on her own.

'What are you looking for?' asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. She is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she has read every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they're looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

To Fast Eddie Felsen, a young pool hustler, there was only one thing that mattered: to make the big time and the big money in the world of pool by beating the best in the country. Hustling suckers in small towns for good stake money was practice for his goal, and when he felt ready he went to Bennington's pool hall in Chicago to find Minnesota Fats. Eddie and Fats pit nerve against skill in a fantastic match over an unbroken 36 hours.