Contemporary Fiction - Страница 25

It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warr..

When a convenience store robbery goes horribly wrong the three young men who perpetrated the crime make a run for it. Hotly pursued by the police they crash into the suburban home of an accountant and take the family hostage, and before they know it, an armed siege ensues. This is the last thing the..

Orrec, the son of the Brantor of Caspromant, and Gry, daughter of the Brantors of Barre and Rodd, have grown up together, running half-wild across the Uplands. The people there are like their land: harsh and fierce and prideful; ever at war with each other. Only the gifts keep the fragile peace. The..

When 'dream husband' Xan Meo is vengefully assaulted in the garden of a London pub, he suffers head-injury, and personality-change. Like a spiritual convert, the familial paragon becomes an anti-husband, an anti-father. He submits to an alien moral system - one among many to be found in these pages...

The midnight hour approaches in an almost empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee and glances up from a book as a young man, a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both have missed the last train home. The musician has plans to rehearse with his jazz band all night, Mari is equally unconcerned an..

Becky's life is blooming! She's working at London's newest fashion store The Look, and she's pregnant! She couldn't be more overjoyed - especially since discovering that shopping cures morning sickness. But when the celebrity obstetrician turns out to be her husband Luke's glamorous, intellectual ex..

Yambo, a sixty-ish rare book dealer who lives in Milan has suffered a loss of memory; not the kind of memory neurologists call 'semantic' (Yambo remembers all about Julius Caesar and can recite every poem he has ever read), but rather his 'autobiographical' memory: he no longer knows his own name, d..

"Big, hilarious, intricate, furious and moving" - "Guardian". Telling the stories of the wealthy Winshaw family, "What a Carve Up!" is a riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes...

In the din and stink that is Cannery Row a colourful blend of misfits - gamblers, whores, drunks, bums, and artists - survive side by side in a jumble of adventure and mischief. Lee Chong, the astute owner of the fantastically well-stocked grocery store, is also the proprietor of the Palace Flophous..

He has never married, never loved and never gone to bed with a woman he didn’t pay. But on finding a young girl naked and asleep on the brothel owner’s bed, a passion is ignited in his heart – and he feels, for the first time, the urgent pangs of love.Each night, exhausted by her factory work, ‘..

A nervous breakdown seems like a great idea: all that lying in bed and watching daytime TV. But who's going to have it?Will it be housewife Clodagh, who spends her days microwaving pasta for her demanding toddlers and waiting for her beautiful husband Dylan to come home? Or Lisa, hard, brittle a..

The laugh-out-loud-funny, life-affirming new novel from the bestselling author of Rachel's Holiday.Tara, Katherine and Fintan have been best friends since they were teenagers in County Clare, in the days of pink stretch jeans and Duran Duran. Now they are in their early thirties only Fintan has ..