CONTEMPORARY FICTION

The princess isn’t supposed to dethrone the king.

Elsa
He told me he’d destroy me - and he did.
I might have lost the battle, but the war is far from over.
They say it takes just one move to dethrone a king.
No one warned me he’d drag me down with him on the way.

Aiden
If Steel’s little princess wants a war, then she’ll get one.
There’s only one rule: follow mine - or none at all.
So go ahead, sweetheart.
Show me what you’ve got.

The London winter of 1947 is as cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. Albertine, the wife of a British army officer often abroad on covert government business, finds herself increasingly lonely.

Eager to distract herself with work, she takes a job as companion to the mysterious 'Monsieur Ka', a Russian emigre. As she is drawn into Ka's dramatic past, her own life is shaken to its foundations.

As a girl, Clara del Valle can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, Rosa the Beautiful, Clara is mute for nine years. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon to the stern and volatile landowner Esteban Trueba.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck is a sweeping novel that intertwines the lives of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, over multiple generations in California's Salinas Valley. The story explores complex themes of good and evil, free will, and the struggle for identity and redemption.

The narrative primarily follows the Trask family, beginning with Adam Trask, who moves to California after a tumultuous relationship with his half-brother, Charles. Adam marries the enigmatic and morally corrupt Cathy Ames, who later abandons him and their twin sons, Caleb ("Cal") and Aron. Cathy becomes a brothel owner, embodying the novel's exploration of inherent evil.

The Hamilton family, particularly Samuel Hamilton and his daughter, Liza, provide a counterpoint with their integrity and moral strength. Samuel becomes a close friend to Adam Trask, helping him through his struggles.

As the story progresses, the focus shifts to the next generation, particularly the contrasting paths of Cal and Aron. Cal, feeling overshadowed by his idealized brother Aron, grapples with feelings of guilt and a desire for his father's approval. The novel culminates in Cal's ultimate struggle with his own nature and the choices he makes, echoing the biblical story of Cain and Abel.

What’s worse than a big little lie? An even bigger little truth...

It has been a decade since the ill-fated quiz night at Pirriwee High. A man died. Accusations of murder were rife. For mothers and best friends Madeline, Celeste and Jane, the fall out still feels like it happened yesterday. Never mind that their kids have grown into grouchy teenagers with too many hormones. Or that, as their frazzled mothers, they don’t have enough.

Because life always has its challenges, big and small.

Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world.

A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships - but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor - and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.

It is 18th century Saint Domingue, and Tété never knew her parents. All she knows is that her mother was a slave, and that her white father’s identity will forever remain a mystery.

As a child she is sold to the plantation-owner Toulouse Valmorain, and finds herself subjected to his unwanted attentions. Still, in spite of everything, she finds community and comfort among the other slaves. And as a revolution gains momentum and opportunities surface, she can’t help but wonder: will freedom, one day, be in reach?

In colonial Chile, 1832, the infant Eliza is found on the doorstep of the British Import and Export Company. Adopted by the maternal Miss Rose, she is raised dutifully, with Victorian piety and propriety. But as a young woman, Eliza falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta – and when he leaves for the gold-laden hills of California, she can’t help but follow.

Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.

Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story.

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026 AND AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A BARACK OBAMA 2026 SUMMER READING LIST PICK

Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbours, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad―at himself and the people around him―and turns a question over and over in his mind: how is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?

And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear―and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.

From the bestselling author of the Dream Harbor series, comes a new small-town romance set in the quirky town of Maple Hollow.

The darker the woods, the bigger the secrets…

Ruby Bellerose lives on the edge of the woods, in a cottage more akin to a fairy tale than modern day life. Her love life is practically non-existent, and she keeps away from the whispered gossip that travels through Maple Hollow.

Until a chance encounter with Rafe.

As mysterious as he is brooding, Ruby is drawn to the woodsman, curious to find out about the stranger who lives deep within the woods.

Deluxe limited edition, sprayed edges.

For Lily, mastering Chinese means connection:

To her family

Her heritage

To herself

But what if waiting for perfection means it's too late to get the answers she wants most?
Yale student Lily Chen arrives in Taipei hungry: for family, for culture, for connection.
But her summer of discovery quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate unbearable, and a reckless, deeply awkward trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon ignites vicious gossip.
Then her grandfather dies.
Grieving and adrift, Lily must confront her own questions about the culture she inherited but never fully understood. She embarks on a wryly funny, often devastating search for understanding: of herself, her family, and the meaning of home.

For Lily, mastering Chinese means connection:

To her family

Her heritage

To herself

But what if waiting for perfection means it's too late to get the answers she wants most?
Yale student Lily Chen arrives in Taipei hungry: for family, for culture, for connection.
But her summer of discovery quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate unbearable, and a reckless, deeply awkward trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon ignites vicious gossip.
Then her grandfather dies.
Grieving and adrift, Lily must confront her own questions about the culture she inherited but never fully understood. She embarks on a wryly funny, often devastating search for understanding: of herself, her family, and the meaning of home.

More pleasure, more kink, more partners, more zest - this is desire turned all the way up.

If Want sparked the fire of a quiet revolution, More gives women the fuel to let it roar.
In this electrifying sequel to the landmark bestseller, Gillian Anderson invites us to leave shame and fear at the door as she dials up the heat on women's sexual fantasies and dares us to want more.

Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and unexpected, bitter betrayal.

Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past - and a love Peri had tried desperately to forget.

Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026

Every morning, Sybil Van Antwerp sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to attend a class she desperately wants to take, to her favourite authors to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.


Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – witty and wise – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arms’ length... until letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life.

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.

The deluxe limited collector's editions of the New York Times bestselling Twisted series will have gorgeous designed edges, gold foil, and exclusive art.

The deluxe limited collector's editions of the New York Times bestselling Twisted series will have gorgeous designed edges, gold foil, and exclusive art.

The deluxe limited collector's editions of the New York Times bestselling Twisted series will have gorgeous designed edges, gold foil, and exclusive art.

After a string of nightmare relationships, Emily's had it with modern-day men. She'd rather pour herself a glass of wine and curl up with Pride and Prejudice and her beloved Mr Darcy. So what if he’s a fictional hero?

Faced with spending New Year’s at yet another singles party, she books herself on a coach tour of Jane Austen country, but quickly realises she won't find her dream man here - just a coach full of pensioners and one particularly aggravating (if handsome) journalist, Spike.

That's until she enters a room and finds herself face-to-face with none other than Darcy himself. The actual, real Mr Darcy. From the book. And, suddenly, every woman's fantasy becomes one woman's reality . . .

The villain isn’t supposed to be king.


I have a simple plan.
Finish Royal Elite School and secure a place at my dream university.
But one glance from the school’s king blows my strategy up in smoke.
One glance and he suffocates my air.
Because everything about Aiden King is black.
Black mind. Black heart. Black soul.
I should’ve remained quiet and endured the time I have left.
I didn’t.

Briar Thornton has spent months outrunning her past, but when she's drawn to the small Montana town of Bane Falls with the death of her late uncle and his estate to handle, she runs straight into a new nightmare- and a man more dangerous than the one who tried to kill her.

Roman Syxx isn't a saviour. He's a weapon - cold, precise, and programmed by the Dark Forces to destroy anything and anyone. As the lieutenant of the covert Icarus Squad, he's in Bane Falls on orders: infiltrate, eliminate, disappear. But the new girl that randomly shows up in the small town fractures his control in ways no enemy ever could.

Three years ago, Emery Finch did something completely out of character: she got married. To Luca - the impossibly charming landscaper she met on one blistering night in Vegas who made her laugh, made her dance, made her feel.

But now, Emery is consumed by her top-secret job, missing dinners, forgetting anniversaries, and promising herself Luca will understand once her cutting-edge research comes to light. Until the unthinkable happens: a tragic accident takes Luca from her.

My name is Preston Armstrong, and I’m the most depraved bastard you'll ever meet.
I take what I want, ruin what I don’t, and live exactly how I please.
That is, until I crash into the force of nature that is Marcus Osborn.
Captain of our rival hockey team and the perpetual thorn in my side.

Haunted by her role in a massacre that reignited an ancient war, demigod knight Alira is cursed to relive her kingdom's destruction - dying again and again at the hands of the Blood Knight, a ruthless demon commander. But when the demons propose a peace marriage to end the bloodshed, Alira volunteers herself, desperate to break the cycle and save her people.

Betrothed to her enemy - who is also the lost demon boy she once tried to save - Alira must navigate a dangerous path between vengeance and forgiveness. Kalel Lornhelm, haunted by his own dark past and the monstrous hunger within him, is torn between hatred and a growing, forbidden attraction.

It ends where it begins. . .

Years ago, four dangerous men and a mysterious negotiator gathered in the shadows to broker a deal that would shape the future of the Tenebrae Outfit forever.

Now, the criminal world they created is far darker – far more dangerous – than anyone could have ever imagined.

To survive, four couples – tied to one another in ways none of them understand – must work together to uncover the mob’s deadliest secrets and break free from the darkness that made them.

Perfect families, perfect houses, perfect lives. Three mothers, Jane, Madeline and Celeste appear to have it all... but do they? They are about to find out just how easy it is for one little lie to spiral out of control.

Single mum Jane has just moved to town. She's got her little boy in tow - plus a secret she's been carrying for five years. On the first day of the school run she meets Madeline - a force to be reckoned with, who remembers everything and forgives no one - and Celeste, the kind beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare, but is inexplicably ill at ease.

Most people don’t even notice them – three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.