CONTEMPORARY FICTION

Elle has the chance of a lifetime to write a movie set in New York City. The only problem? Her recent writer's block.

When Elle returns to NYC, she finds her new neighbour to be none other than handsome tech billionaire Parker Warren. The same guy she had a disastrous hook up with two years ago. When seeing him again leads to a night of hate-fuelled writing, Elle realises he might just be her twisted muse.

Parker needs a fake relationship to help secure a business deal. Elle needs to test date spots for her screenplay. So, they make a deal.

Not for the first time – in fact, for the 343rd time – Jill 'Doll' Blaine finds herself crashing down to earth, head-first, rear-up, to accompany her latest charge into the afterlife. She soon realises however that this man is not quite like the others.

For powerful oil tycoon K.J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold life, and the world is better for it… isn't it?

As death approaches, a cast of worldly and otherworldly visitors arrive. Crowds of people and animals – alive and dead – materialise, birds swarm the dying man's room, and associates from decades past show up, all clamouring for a reckoning.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope.

One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors - until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

The acclaimed actor and star of Sex Education, Gillian Anderson, brings a groundbreaking volume of anonymous female correspondence about sexual desire, which reveals so much that is usually left unsaid.

She introduces the anonymous sexual fantasies of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous submission). They are all extraordinary: full of desire, fear, intimacy, shame, satisfaction and, ultimately, liberation.

Yeongju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeongju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, and follows her dream. She opens a bookshop.

In a quaint neighbourhood in Seoul, surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge. From the lonely barista to the unhappily married coffee roaster, and the writer who sees something special in Yeongju - they all have disappointments in their past. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop becomes the place where they all learn how to truly live.

A poetic, intricate exploration of war, injury and home.

1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

A life without freedom to choose is not worth having.

Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of the beautiful Bella, who he brings back to life in a Frankenstein-esque feat. But his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for his creation... but what does Bella think?

This story of true love and scientific daring whirls the reader from the private operating-theatres of late-Victorian Glasgow through aristocratic casinos, low-life Alexandria and a Parisian bordello, reaching an interrupted climax in a Scottish church.

WINNER OF THE ORANGE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019

Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens the gods, she is banished to the island of Aiaia where she hones her occult craft, casting spells, gathering strange herbs and taming wild beasts. Yet a woman who stands alone will never be left in peace for long - and among her island's guests is an unexpected visitor: the mortal Odysseus, for whom Circe will risk everything.

Twelve-year-old Harriet is doing her best to grow up, which is not easy as her mother is permanently on medication, her father has silently moved to another city, and her serene sister rarely notices anything. All of them are still suffering from the shocking and mysterious death of her brother Robin twelve years earlier, and it seems to Harriet that the family may never recover. So, inspired by Captain Scott, Houdini, and Robert Louis Stevenson, she sets out with her only friend Hely to find Robin's murderer and punish him. But what starts out as a child's game soon becomes a dark and dangerous journey into the menacing underworld of a small Mississippi town.