Modern & contemporary fiction

Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills...

May 2021. London. Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity intellectual - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of ...

It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or 'externalising' memory. Within...

Becca Ashworth's family is in trouble and with their magical legacy under threat, it puts their small village of Biddicote at risk too. So going against the witching tenets to summon an ancestor for help seems like a small price to pay to fix the problem - at first. Connor Lynch is the Witches Co...

Meet John Cromer - 'one of the most original comic creations in recent fiction' - and discover one of the great overlooked adventures in literature. Plenty can be daunting, but in the spirit of compromise this feast of a novel is served on a succession of small plates, each portion providing an a...

Lily Jones can't forget her incredible time-slip adventure back to the Golden Age of Hollywood and the friends she made there - especially a handsome barman by the name of Louis, with whom she felt such a strong connection. Back in 2020, life isn't going so well for her and Lily is idly googling ...

Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order. Until now. She's just been dumped. She's ...

It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow. Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable trai...

Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars - the controversial entertainment programme inside America's prison system. In packed arenas, livestreamed to millions, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara 'Hurricane Staxxx' Stacker are t...

With a well-placed stitch, button or seam, Cressida can transform any frock and give customers their Cinderella moment. Like her beautifully organised workroom under the eaves, Cress's life away from the shop is just as orderly and mapped out. But when her boyfriend of 15 years drops a bombshell,...