Fiction & related items

Shakespeare fed us the myth of the Macbeths as murderous conspirators. But now Val McDermid drags the truth out of the shadows, exposing the patriarchal prejudices of history. Expect the unexpected. A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three compan...

Best friends Matilda, Penny, Sofia and Jo are approaching their sixties with flair until, one by one, their bubbles are burst. Matilda, a bestselling novelist, is dropped by her publisher; Penny is cut from her prime-time TV show in favour of her male co-host; Sofia's acting agent can only offer ...

This novel is about a young man, Tunde, whose brother is involved in an accident and stranded just as the Biafran war begins. Tunde spends the novel travelling through a war zone to be reunited with his brother - to bring him home and to ask for forgiveness for the part he played in the accident,...

A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss. And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mo...

Elsie is out of options. She's exhausted from being pushed in and out of social housing, she's deflated by debt and she's disturbed by the dark reality of having bailiffs show up at her door. With nowhere to go, there's only one person left to turn to: her best friend, Juliet. She finds friendshi...

Ezra Friedman can see ghosts - which made growing up in a funeral home a complicated experience. Things might have been easier if his grandfather's ghost didn't spend so much time giving disapproving looks at every choice he makes, from his taste in boyfriends to his HRT-induced second puberty. I...

Jack has returned from the city, still determined to be the opposite of his father. However, Gerry would rather talk to animals than this angry man back under his roof. You wouldn't imagine that neither is quite who the other remembers. That someone irreplaceable is missing. That one conversation...

The one thing that can solve Stephen's problems is dancing. Dancing at church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop, wh...

15-year-old Tyler's teenage angst turns to outright rebellion when his family leave London for a new life in Yorkshire. He's angry with his parents about the upheaval and furious at losing his home. With only the dog to confide in, Tyler has no idea that a chance meeting with a skinny girl called...

When ambitious apprentice chemist and secret alchemist Peter Woulfe is tasked with caring for a mysterious illustrated book, the Mutus Liber, he quickly realises that the grimy underworld of Georgian London is even more dangerous than he first believed. Soon the book is stolen by the light-finger...