Modern Fiction

An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.

The Dead Father is a gargantuan half-dead, half-alive, part mechanical, wise, vain, powerful being who still has hopes for himself - even while he is being dragged by means of a cable toward a mysterious goal. In this extraordinary novel, marked by the imaginative use of language that influenced a generation of fiction writers, Donald Barthelme offered a glimpse into his fictional universe.

This program features multicast narration. When Among Crows is swift and striking, drawing from the deep well of Slavic folklore and asking if redemption and atonement can be found in embracing what we most fear. We bear the sword, and we bear the pain of the sword. Pain is Dymitr’s calling...

In a world where magic follows strict natural laws, someone just tore up the rulebook. As a master druid, Colin is the first line of defense against magical disruption. But this time, he's hunting a shadow—an ancient practitioner who's found a way to twist reality itself... I've decided to resurrect a god. Not by necromancy, mind you—I'm not the Dark Druid, after all. But someone's determined to stop me, and they're willing to break the very laws of magic to do it.

With Boston collapsing faster than Alex Fletcher predicted, his personal rescue mission deep into the heart of an increasingly unfamiliar city reaches a critical point. Pursued by a ruthless militia group and forced to navigate a treacherous landscape, he runs a gauntlet of grim decisions and impossible odds to reach perceived safety. Perceived because nothing is safe in the world rapidly emerging after the "event."

Cassie Carl believes she has it all. On the cusp of achieving her professional goals and soon to marry the man of her dreams - the handsome, kind, and loving Stefan Van Allen - it seems she's found the life every woman dreams of. When Cassie's wealthy fiancé brings Peyton in to do a renovation on their home before the big engagement party, sparks fly, leaving both Cassie and Peyton to question everything they thought they already had. What happens when the thin veil of perfection becomes riddled with holes?

When new bride Kaveri Murthy reluctantly agrees to investigate a minor crime during the blood moon eclipse to please her domineering mother-in-law, she doesn't expect to stumble upon a murder - again. With anti-British sentiments on the rise, a charismatic religious leader growing in influence, and the fight for women's suffrage gaining steam, Bangalore is turning out to be a far more dangerous place than Kaveri ever imagined, and everyone's motives are suspect.

In Ben Coes' latest, Eye for an Eye, Dewey Andreas faces the toughest odds of his life as one of China's most powerful men has decided to do whatever he must to take down Dewey—and inflicts a horrifying loss. When Dewey uncovers the identity of a mole embedded at a high level in Israel's...

Lucian is a Dragon Prince of the House of Smoke...and he's dying. He has to spawn a dragonling to uphold the treaty that keeps the mortal world safe from the immortal Dark Fae, but a dragon's mate rarely survives the birth of a young dragon, and he can't face the horror of another woman's death on his hands. When he rescues a beautiful woman from a demon roaming the streets of Seattle, he has to seduce her without losing his heart.

At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV’s Versailles, an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D’Aulnoy herself has christened contes de fées: fairy tales. Recently ousted from court and still raw from the death of his beloved wife, Charles Perrault finds companionship and creative camaraderie at the salon, where he eagerly joins the storytellers. Their hostess is impressive, fiercely intelligent, but somehow unreadable. She is harboring secrets of her own.

“Funny, sharp, sophisticated, this is Elizabeth Day’s writing at its finest.” —Dolly Alderton, New York Times bestselling author of Good Material “The thinking person’s thriller. A Trojan horse of a book—part Highsmith, part Waugh—that hides within its superbly gripping plot a...

She’s a tiny slip of a thing that I can lift one-handed, but my new bride is a spitfire too. From the moment I saw her, I knew I would do anything to protect her. Our marriage has been consummated in body, but I intend to have her heart and soul too. And that means that my sweet bride has to tell me everything. Even her darkest secrets.

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome, but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere—at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely.

A gorgeous collection of twelve “lush and deliciously sinister fairy tales” (Kelly Link) by the New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood and The Night Country! Before The Hazel Wood, there was Althea Proserpine’s Tales from the Hinterland... Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal...

A meditative and inspiring diary of Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness. In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness. Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray, others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness. Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life.

It is the Whitsun weekend of 1931 in the once-fashionable resort of Frencham-on-Sea. A housewarming party at Seaview One, the thoroughly modern home of Sir James and Lady Theodora Phillips, goes horribly wrong when Lady Theodora is found drowned in the swimming pool. Suspicion falls immediately on one of the servants, but the police are unable to make the charge stick. Two of the house guests, Clarice Thompson and Cliff Thorley, begin to notice the undercurrents of tension and rivalry among the guests, and that one person in particular is acting very suspiciously.

Burmese Days describes corruption and imperial bigotry in a society where, 'after all, natives were natives'. When Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Indian Dr Veraswami, he defies this orthodoxy. The doctor is in danger: U Po Kyin, a corrupt magistrate, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save him is membership of the all-white Club, and Flory can help. Flory's life is changed further by the arrival of beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen from Paris, who offers an escape from loneliness and the 'lie' of colonial life.

Her body used to work perfectly. For years, she tallied her orgasms, maintained a Top Humps list, and rated men on whether they excited her more mentally or physically—all with the purpose of finding the ideal love match. Now, as she moves into her thirties and is settled down with Serious Boyfriend Number Three, she’s run into a problem. Sex hurts. She can’t get wet. Her vagina, which has never led her astray before, suddenly seems like it might be broken.

The Reveries of the Solitary Walker was one of the last works written by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and was, in fact, not quite complete. It was published four years after his death and came quickly to be regarded as one of his most poetic works. It consists of 10 Walks (only the final ‘Walk’ was unfinished) during which he muses on a variety of topics including thoughts on issues which featured strongly in his notable life as a philosopher and commentator, including education and political philosophy.

Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist, creates a living creature from body parts, only to be horrified by his monstrous creation. Rejected by society and seeking vengeance, the creature embarks on a path of destruction.