Modern & contemporary fiction

Hana has a perfect job, a perfect home, a perfect marriage. It is her younger sister Mira who is a mess. But Hana wants children and her husband is hesitating, and perhaps her control is slipping. Mira dreams of a creative life but she's stuck working at a local cafe. She hates her flatmate and H...

'The Pole' tells the story of Witold Walczykiewicz, a vigorous, white-haired pianist, who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his Barcelona concert. Although Beatriz, who is married, is initially unimpressed by Wittold, she soon finds herself pu...

Topical and timely, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri's new collection of short stories blur parallel realities and walk the line between darkness and magic.

Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us? What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with...

Two boys set fires while their worlds fall apart. A couple drive out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. A horse crashes a house party. Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh's debut collection of stories draw a complete community of c...

Selfie-sticks with demonic powers. Cold calls from the dead. And that creeping suspicion, as you sit there with your flat white, that none of this is real. John Lanchester's first book of shorter fictions, 'Reality, and Other Stories' is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments, to be r...

A collection of tales told by leading novelists and poets in collaboration with refugees, former immigration detainees and those who work with them. Based on close conversations with the people behind the stories (whose anonymity is preserved for reasons of security), and modelled on the format o...

From the bestselling, award-winning author of 'The Winter Soldier' and 'The Piano Tuner' comes a collection of interlacing tales of men and women as they face the mysteries and magic of the world.

On May 25, 1983, Star Wars cemented its legacy as the greatest movie franchise of all time with the release of Return of the Jedi. In honour of the 40th anniversary, 40 storytellers re-create an iconic scene from Return of the Jedi through the eyes of a supporting character, from heroes and villa...

Seven of the best recent short stories, disassembled by their authors. This innovative anthology reveals the inspiration, the ideals and the work involved in a great short story. 'Reverse Engineering' brings together contemporary classic stories with their authors' discussion of how they wrote it.