Modern fiction

Present day: Applecote Manor captivates Jessie with dreams of hazy summers in the Cotswolds, but the house has an unsettling history and strange rumours surround the estate…The Fifties: When teenage Margot and her three sisters arrive at Applecote during the heatwave of '59, they find their aunt ...

Teenager Vernon Gregory Little's life has been changed by the Columbine-style slaughter of a group of students at his high school. Soon his hole-in-the-wall town is blanketed under a media siege, and Vernon finds himself blamed for the killing. Eulalio Ledesma is his particular nemesis, manipulat...

Eva and Jim are nineteen and students at Cambridge when their paths first cross in 1958. And then there is David, Eva's then-lover, an ambitious actor who loves Eva deeply. The Versions of Us follows the three different courses their lives could take following this first meeting. Lives filled wit...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Vince and Joy by Lisa Jewell, read by Antonia Beamish and Leighton Pugh.'You know that was the best thing that ever happened to me, don't you?'She smiled. 'Me, too.'July, 1986. Vince and Joy have their whole lives ahead of them on the day they meet. Two w...

When a heart attack kills his father, young architect Nick abandons his safe London life to volunteer in a village on the edge of the Sahara. Redemption awaits there, or so he hopes, a last chance to atone for an old sin. Alone in an unfamiliar world, dangerous currents soon pull him in: a simmer...

Rosemary's started college, and she's decided not to tell anyone about her family. Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone - vanished from her life. There was something unique about Rosemary's sister, Fern. You'll h...

Married to a soldier who has returned from Afghanistan injured in body and mind, Stella Carey leaves the house every evening. During her nursing shifts, Stella writes letters for her patients to their loved ones - some full of humour, love and practical advice, others steeped in regret or pain, p...

September, 1937. Kitty Travers enrols at the Conservatoire on the banks of the Seine to pursue her dream of becoming a concert pianist. But then war breaks out and the city of light falls into shadow. Nearly twenty-five years later, Fay Knox, a talented young violinist, visits Paris on tour with ...

Big Billy Brennan has suffered the greatest tragedy a parent can know, he has just lost his son. His marriage is a partnership in name alone and at nearly 30 stone, Billy is also obese. So, Billy decides to take on the two things weighing him down - his grief, and his fat - and in doing so he's g...

Valentino Achak Deng is just a boy when conflict separates him from his family and forces him to leave his small Sudanese village, joining thousands of other orphans on their long, long walk to Ethiopia, where they find safety for a time. Along the way Valentino encounters enemy soldiers, liberat...