Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Don’t Make Me Laugh

Don’t Make Me Laugh

Julia Raeside

Don’t Make Me Laugh deftly balances anger and humor in a story of power, control, and manipulation. It explores gender roles in work and life, the competition imposed on women, and, ultimately, the triumph of fighting back.

The Ancients

The Ancients

John Larison

A richly imagined, sweeping novel set in the climate-changed world of our own descendants, by the acclaimed author of WHISKEY WHEN WE’RE DRY

The Missing and the Dead (DI Thomas Maitland 1) : A missing teacher, a disgraced detective, and a deadly obsession—where guilt and revenge collide.

The Missing and the Dead (DI Thomas Maitland 1) : A missing teacher, a disgraced detective, and a deadly obsession—where guilt and revenge collide.

E.M. Scott

In the hazy heat of a Dorset summer, retired DI Thomas Maitland faces an unlaid ghost of the past wreaking retribution in the present.

Sipsworth

Sipsworth

Simon Van Booy

Over the course of a single week, a woman who is ready to die finds an unexpected reason to live

Out on a Limb

Out on a Limb

Hannah Bonam-Young

‘Warm, sexy, and vulnerable… Hannah Bonam-Young needs to be on your romance radar’ – Hannah Grace

Next of Kin

Next of Kin

Hannah Bonam-Young

Two bickering strangers trying to care for their younger siblings team up to create a stable home, but the chemistry between them threatens to undo their plans – from the viral TikTok author of Next to You and Out on a Limb.

An Honest Living

An Honest Living

Dwyer Murphy

A sharp and stylish debut in which an unwitting private eye gets caught up in a crime of obsession between a reclusive literary superstar and her bookseller husband, paying homage to the noir genre just as smartly as it reinvents it.

Swimming For Beginners

Swimming For Beginners

Nicola Gill

Funny, heart-breaking and life-affirming, Swimming for Beginners will show you how a child can open your heart even if you aren’t a mother.

Our American Friend

Our American Friend

Anna Pitoniak

‘Emily in Paris meets Scandal’ (New York Times) in this propulsive Cold War-era political thriller as one intrepid journalist writes the official biography of the mysterious First Lady – uncovering secrets that could destroy them both….

Salvage This World

Salvage This World

Michael Farris Smith

A young woman returns home with her child, to her ghost-haunted father, while a religious extremist hunts the storm-ridden territory to find the girl who may hold the key to the region’s apocalyptic future. At once elegiac and profound, Salvage This World asks how we keep going – what do we hold onto – in a land where God has…

This Train

This Train

James Grady

This Train races us through America’s heartland, carrying secrets. There is treasure in the cargo car, along with an invisible puppeteer. There is a coder named Nora, Mugzy, the yippy dog, and Ross, the too-curious poet. On board, it’s a countdown to murder……

Where’s Ma’am?

Where’s Ma’am?

Muick, The Queen's Corgi

Inspired by the 1910 bestseller Where’s Master?

Muick is the Queen’s loyal corgi. Loving, attentive, but with an occasional tendency to nip ankles. But Muick can’t find his Queen.

Muick gives his own account of events and travels through his grief from Scotland to the funeral as he seeks to make sense of his loss and find a future beyond.