AUDITION Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025

When your life flashes before your eyes, what will matter most?

For Wilbur it was his time with Maggie, the love of his life. Their honeymoon in Venice. Before he threw it all away.

Years later, on the brink of his own death, a train arrives. It can take Wilbur back in time. To relive his most important moments. Soon he realises just how much he would have changed.

Dark and steamy motorcycle club romance Jakob Larson is going to be the death of me.

That's what I think every time he strides into my bar. The Kings of Kearny run this small Texas town, and Jakob is their chief enforcer. The Viking, they call him. He's a criminal. As dangerous as he is sexy. The kind of man who makes my inner cavewoman sit up and take notice.

I'm ready to indulge her desires, but just for one night.

Unfortunately, Jakob has other plans. Someone in town is breaking one of the cardinal rules set by the leader of The Kings, and Jakob thinks they're using my grandmother's nursing home to do it. Now I'm neck-deep in trouble with him, and every time I think I've figured out what's really going on, Jakob reveals another piece of the puzzle.

Professional bull rider Emmett Bush is not looking for love - he's looking for a paycheck to save his family's farm from bankruptcy. So, when he agrees to be the leading man on a hot new reality dating show, Romance Ranch, he's already decided it's all one big performance.

Until Julia Silva walks onto his property. Smart, snarky, beautiful, and off-limits in more ways than one. As the location consultant on set and the little sister of his most bitter professional rival, Theo, she's the last woman who should pique his interest.

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Welcome to Tenderness!

A quaint seaside town in Kitakyushu, Mojiko is full of hidden delights. And one unexpected treasure is the 24/7 convenience store, Tenderness.

At first glance, it's a store like any other.

Sure, it's a bit odd that the handsome manager has his own fan club. And perhaps the customers are somewhat eccentric. But there's a warmth about Tenderness that draws you in.

The fifth book in a dark mafia romance series

Beautiful but bruised, Lyla sells her body each night to survive a sinister underworld that threatens to destroy her.

But someone is watching her. The Shadow Man – Lyla’s stalker and saviour – who targets any man that tries to possess her.

So when Lyla is dragged even further into the unrelenting clutches of those intent on claiming her, her tormented guardian angel is just behind.

The fourth book in a dark mafia romance series

Raised on the streets, Alessandro ‘Alpha’ Villanova has had to scrap his way to the top. A city that once shunned him is now the one he rules as the king of a dark empire.

Far from Alpha’s world, Zephyr de la Vega has led a normal life. Normal family, normal drama. But when a chance encounter puts her on Alpha’s past, she makes him a proposition that changes everything.

A motocross racer who can’t stop whispering in her ear.
A criminal from across the tracks who can’t stop looking.

Old ghosts.
And old enemie
She doesn't want a babysitter anymore, and if she ever finds out why I left town, she'll know why I'm not the best role model.

As the child of an ex-pro wrestler and a Hooters waitress, Margo Millet's always known she'd have to make it on her own. When she finds herself pregnant by her English professor and in need of cash fast, she comes up with a plan: she'll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, producing content and writing storylines unlike anything else out there.


Luckily, what Margo lacks in options she makes up for in ingenuity, and before she knows it, she's an online phenomenon. Could this be the answer to all of Margo's problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

A dark romance about an assassin Mafia heir and the villainess who refuses to become his next victim.

There's a bullet with my name on it. And Achilles Ferrante is the man who'll pull the trigger. I'd always known one of us would kill the other. I'd just hoped to do the honor.
Twice I betrayed him.
First, I broke his heart. Then, I sold him out to the Feds. Even if I hadn't, I doubt he could spell mercy, much less spare me any.
The Camorra prince promised he'd make a spectacle of my death when he caught me. Let him try. He could chase me until the end of Earth.
To love is to destroy, and I'd loved Tierney Callaghan far too long, and far too much. She's a fatal weakness, but unlike the Greek mythology warrior - I will remain undefeated.

My little flame can run fast, but my bullet is faster.

Once upon a time, she was the only person who saw my humanity. She's about to meet the monster everyone else knows.

THE ROAD - but with hope.

Hig, bereaved and traumatised after global disaster, has three things to live for - his dog Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour, and his Cessna aeroplane. He's just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys, and saves his remaining fuel.

But, just once, he picks up a message from another pilot, and eventually the temptation to find out who else is still alive becomes irresistible. So he takes his plane over the horizon, knowing that he won't have enough fuel to get back. What follows is scarier and more life-affirming than he could have imagined.

Daisy is fed up with being unlucky in love, and after several weddings she has done the flowers for end in divorce, her beloved flower shop has gained a reputation of being cursed, thanks to Mayor Kelly and his infamous visions.

Dream Harbor newcomer, Elliot, has been adjusting to town life following his own relationship turmoil. And until now he’s avoided the flower shop at all costs. If the mayor is correct, he doesn’t need any more bad luck in his life.

But with his family coming to visit, Elliot finds himself reluctantly in front of Daisy’s store in need of some flowers. As the petals blossom in the sunlight, Daisy and Elliot might find that love comes when you’re least expecting it.