Fiction > General Fiction

Reconstructive facial surgery after a car crash so alters Manhattan model Charlotte that, within the fashion world, where one's look is oneself, she is unrecognizable. Seeking a new image, Charlotte engages in an Internet experiment that may both save and damn her.

Marie de Gournay was eighteen when she read, and was overwhelmed by, the essays of the French philosopher Montaigne. She had to be revived with hellebore. When she finally met Montaigne, she stabbed herself with a hairpin until the blood ran in order to show her devotion.He made her his adopted daughter for the two months they knew each other. He died four years later, after which, though scorned by intellectuals, she became his editor. Jenny Diski engages with this passionate and confused relationship between 'father and daughter'... read more

When unworldly student Ana Steele first encountered the driven, damaged young entrepreneur Christian Grey, it sparked a sensual affair that changed both their lives irrevocably.
Now, finally together, they have love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of infinite possibilities. But Ana always knew that loving her Fifty Shades would not be easy and being together poses challenges neither of them ever anticipated. Ana must learn to share Christian's opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own integrity, identity, or indep... read more

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey what words could not, from declarations of admiration to confessions of betrayal. For Victoria Jones, alone after a childhood in foster care, it is her way of expressing a legacy of grief and guilt. Believing she is damaged beyond hope, she trusts nobody, connecting with the world only through message-laden bouquets. But when a mysterious man at the flower market responds in kind, Victoria is caught between fascination and fear, and must decide whether she can open herself to the... read more

Clare Moorhouse is an American in Paris who has been leading a graceful life abroad. There are pleasures to being married to a high-ranking diplomat, but there are also appearances to be upheld and responsibilities to be executed - like tonight's unexpected dinner party, one crucial to her husband's career. As Clare navigates the spring-green streets of Paris, shopping for fresh stalks of asparagus, the right cheese and seasonal flowers for the table, she is haunted by a brief period of violence in her past that threatens to resurf... read more

Romantic, liberating and totally addictive, the Fifty Shades trilogy will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you for ever ...
Daunted by the dark secrets of the tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Ana Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a US publishing house. But desire for Grey still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, she cannot resist.
Soon she is learning more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shade... read more

Violetta has a sixth sense when it comes to love, which is why she is 'spiritual leader' of The Secret League of Widowed Darners, an all-but invisible army of ancient Italian widows who spend their time mending broken hearts in a hilltop town in Tuscany. Then Lily Turner arrives fresh from the boardrooms of Manhattan. She's just found out that her perfect husband has been having the children she could never have right there in Montevedova, with someone else, so she's come to find him and chop him into tiny pieces. With this Viole... read more

One Sunday nine-year-old Jess Hall watches in horror as his autistic brother is smothered during a healing service in the mountains of North Carolina. Wiley Cash uses this haunting image - inspired by a horrific true event - to spin us into a spellbinding, heartbreaking story about cruelty and innocence, and the failure of faith and family to protect a child. This is a novel thick with stories and characters connected by faith, infidelity, and a sense of hope that is both tragic and unforgettable.

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman ... read more

On a summer's day in 1922 Cora Carlisle boards a train from Wichita, Kansas, to New York City, leaving behind a marriage that's not as perfect as it seems and a past that she buried long ago. She is charged with the care of a stunning young girl with a jet-black fringe and eyes wild and wise beyond her fifteen years. This girl is hungry for stardom and Cora for something she doesn't yet know. Cora will be many things in her lifetime - an orphan, a mother, a wife, a mistress - but in New York she is a chaperone and her life is about... read more

When Fan was little, she dreamed of magical countries in the far-away blue hills. As she grew up she dreamed of love, and the boys came after her one by one. Clementine thought her cousin Fan's house in the country had a special smell: of sun and dust and kerosene, and the wild honey they ate for breakfast on their toast. But then there were the feelings: the anger that smelled like iron, and the disappointment that smelled like mud. Still, Fan was strong and beautiful, and Clementine thought she'd always be like that. But Fan... read more

Wendy Everly can barely remember what it was like to feel like a normal girl. She'd wished for her life to be different but everything is so much more complicated than she'd expected. And she certainly hadn't dreamt she'd be getting married at eighteen to a man she didn't love - all for the sake of duty. As the big day approaches, Wendy can't stop thinking about two different men - and neither of them are her husband-to-be. Finn - quiet, strong and determined to do what's right, and Loki - dark and seductive, a sworn enemy who once... read more

'How can you talk about being civil when innocent animals are being tortured to death? Civil? I'll be civil when the killing's done.' The island of Anacapa, off the coast of California, is overrun with black rats which are threatening the ancient population of ground-nesting birds. Alma Boyd Takesue of the National Park Service is the spokesperson for a campaign to exterminate these man-introduced rodents once and for all. Alma, highly self-disciplined with a stubborn streak, speaks as a conservationist, though the fact that her gr... read more

The Mothers' Group tells the story of six very different women who agree to regularly meet soon after the births of their babies. Set during the first crucial year of their babies' lives, The Mothers' Group tracks the women's individual journeys - and the group's collective one - as they navigate birth and motherhood as well as the shifting ground of their relationships with their partners. Each woman strives in her own way to become the mother she wants to be, and finds herself becoming increasingly reliant on the friendship and s... read more

Marcus and Doro were part of a commune from the late 1960s until the early 1990s: lentils, free love, spliffs, radical politics, cheesecloth blouses, sex, housework and cooking rotas, crochet, allotments. Their children have grown up rather different from them: primary school teacher Clara craves order and clean bathrooms, son Serge is pretending to his parents that he is still doing a Maths PhD at Cambridge, while in fact working making loads of money in the City; while third child Oolie Anna, who has Downs Syndrome, is desper... read more

It is 1867 and winter in Ryazan, a city on the banks of the Oka River in Central Russia. Konstantin is ten years old. His days are full of dreams of flight - to Moscow, even to the silent stars. But then, one day, he catches cold in the freezing woods near his home and his own world becomes silent. Left deaf by scarlet fever, his outlook is desperate. Only his fascination with a newly mechanised age and his astonishing visions of humanity's future seem to offer him any sort of hope. "Konstantin", Tom Bullough's brilliant, inspirati... read more