Item category 1: General Fiction

Fleeing Melbourne for a village in the Yorkshire Dales had felt right. Sanctuary, I'd thought. But nowhere is as straightforward as it first appears. When Giselle flees to the north Yorkshire village of Hollydale, she doesn't give much thought to what she might find there. She's more concerned wi...

A food story to binge. A ghost story to devour. A love story to savour. When dead-end dishwasher Kostya discovers the ability to summon spirits through the food he cooks, he embarks on a journey to open a New York City restaurant that serves closure - something he's craved for as long as he can r...

A contemplative story about one man trying to move forward from the trauma of his youth to become a better father to his son.Being in limbo, 30,000 feet in the air, offers time to reflect and take stock. For Aaron Umber, it's an opportunity to connect with his 14-year-old son as they travel halfw...

Singapore, 1951. When Josephina is a girl, her parents lock her in a room with the father of the boy to whom she's betrothed. What happens next will determine the lives of generations to come. New Zealand, 1984. Josephina and her family leave Sri Lanka for New Zealand. But their new home is not w...

From Russia's Anna Karenina to Vietnam's Lady Trieu, from Cio-Cio-San to Frankenstein's second creature, suffering, madness, or death is the fate of far too many women in classic literature. Anna Karenina Isn't Dead undoes that. In this anthology of literary women, these women live. Do they have ...

Mornington Peninsula, 1999: Wife and now grandmother Joan has checked into the grand old Duchess Hotel to find herself again, having spent thirty-five years being who her husband and family have wanted her to be. Peninsula local and soon-to-be octogenarian Frances is distracting herself from gett...

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She's an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He's attractive, troubling, young - young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this novel two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our underst...

Shifts in tone, setting and narration create a sense of the uncanny in Beam of Light, Kinsella's haunting collection of stories. A man is disturbed by the sight of a familiar dining table and chairs atop an impending bonfire of bulldozed trees, a girl finds a fox skeleton and feels compelled to p...

Sarah Toomey is afraid she's losing her mind. Ever since her mother's death, she's found herself acting upon strange urges, losing track of time, and coming to in odd places. There's a dark force that seems to be haunting her, and leaving death in its wake. Yvonne Howard has reinvented herself. A...

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses...

Elom can't make sense of love. It's like a language he can't speak, though he's heard the words before. He wants to feel understood by his well-meaning yet misapprehending family, his self-assured partner Ben, and his boisterous friends but he never knows the right thing to say. How can you know ...

This is a compelling debut that fearlessly challenges stereotypes surrounding Palestinian culture. With humour and poignancy, this book delves into the intimate lives of three primary Palestinian immigrant families in America - the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars - whose destinies and strug...

Heather Russo is miserable - work is non-stop, and her love life is in tatters. But she's not the only one struggling. Her mother, Sandy, is finally separating from Heather's womanising father, while her grandmother, Bonnie, is grieving her third husband by carrying his urn everywhere she goes......

Penang, 1971. When Suyin Lim is offered the opportunity of a lifetime, a place as a trainee nurse in London's Bethnal Green Hospital, she jumps at the chance to leave her job as a seamstress and unite with her sister, who left for the same path a year before. However, without warning her sister r...

England, 1979. Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents of a secluded New Forest home, part of the government's Sycamore Scheme. Every day, the triplets do their chores, play their games and take their medicine, under the watchful eyes of three mothers: Mother Morning, Mothe...

Dawn thinks she knows everything there is to know about dying. As a death doula she helps her clients fix what is left undone so they can peacefully make the final transition. But when her plane plummets from the sky and she thinks she is experiencing the last moments of her life, she is shocked ...

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath.Death has never been busier, and will become busier By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is...

In a close-knit community on Ireland's west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan Bonnar by Ambrose, the fisherman who adopts him, Brendan will become a source of fascination and hope for a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world. Ambrose, a man more comfortabl...

This multigenerational novel follows the Bright family across four generations as they navigate secrets, addiction, and unexpected reunions. Newlyweds Ryan and Lillian Bright are raising their daughter, Georgette, while each harbors a hidden truth -- Lillian has a son from a previous relationship...

When the shadowy circumstances of a relative's death are brought to light, Jane and Lila are plunged into the recesses of an underground drug operation with links to a burgeoning fascist movement.

Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville's Moby Dick from a feminist perspective, offering an exploration of nature, gender and human purpose. 1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphin...

Josie Young wants a life of her own. It is 2012. She is almost forty, restless, searching, dissatisfied. She has no partner and no passion for her job. Her spare time is dominated by caring for her beloved father and grandmother who are both struggling. While cleaning out her grandmother's house,...

Grandpa used to say it all the time: books have tremendous power. But what is that power really? Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookshop he inherited from his beloved grandfather. Then, a talking cat named Tiger appears with an unusual request. The c...

Nanami sees nothing wrong with a library and cat combination. But a talking cat is a whole other story. Thirteen-year-old Nanami Kosaki loves reading. The local library is a home from home and books have become her best friends. When Nanami notices books disappearing from the library shelves, she...

When Sylvie, a single mother yearning for a creative spark, meets Michael, a renowned painter, she feels something she hasn't felt in years. Impulsively she decides to uproot her life and move to Isaiah, an artists' colony, with her teenage daughter Alice. To Sylvie, Isaiah seems to offer a secon...

Clementine Rose was delivered not in the usual way, at a hospital, but in the back of a mini-van, in a basket of dinner rolls. So begins the story of a lovely little girl who lives in Penberthy Floss in a large ramshackle house with her mother, Lady Clarissa, Digby Pertwhistle the butler and a ve...

The crumbling Victorian had been abandoned long before Jane ever discovered it as a child. It was painted a sweet violet color, and the gingerbread trim was blue and green, but inside was shambles--broken glass, a dollhouse ravaged by mice, bedsheets twisted as though someone had left in a hurry....

A tale of sex, drugs, and power - in heels. Meet Beanie Rosen, the fast-talking and even faster-thinking Valley girl who knows where she wants to go, and doesn't care if she doesn't look the part. Mercedes Baxter, who learned early on how to leverage the monied friends of her monied friends' pare...

New York City, late September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady's father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from an aunt she didn't know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, the name jogs ...

This powerful new novella is a darkly comic portrait of a Jewish family in today's Poland, struggling to express their love for one another in the face of a past that cannot and will not be forgotten. The grandfather is a doctor, a Holocaust survivor who has now vowed to live only for pleasure. H...