Modern Fiction

Twenty-two-year-old Beth Ann is content with her small-town life. That is, until the day America’s electric grid is destroyed by terrorists. What starts out as an inconvenience quickly becomes a catastrophe - not only do the lights stay off, but cars won’t run and phones are dead. The world screeches to a halt. Without communication and basic supplies like food and water, widespread confusion spirals into deadly chaos within days.

In this captivating dual narrative novel, a modern-day woman finds inspiration in hidden notes left by her home’s previous owner, a quintessential 1950s housewife. As she discovers remarkable parallels between this woman’s life and her own, it causes her to question the foundation of her own relationship with her husband - and what it means to be a wife fighting for her place in a patriarchal society.

Fifteen years ago, in Mitch Albom’s beloved novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the world fell in love with Eddie, a grizzled war veteran turned amusement park mechanic who died saving the life of a young girl named Annie. Eddie’s journey to heaven taught him that every life matters. Now, in this magical sequel, Mitch Albom reveals Annie’s story.

Once upon a time.... There is a girl with skin as fair as ivory and hair as black as night. She was the apple of her father's eye, but now that he has died, someone wants to dip that apple into poison. Advised to flee, Ivory escapes her elite world in New York City and stumbles into a place she didn't know existed. A modern-day princess, afraid and lost on the dark streets, running for her life. Ivory White has no one to call, nowhere to turn. All she has is a random number scrawled on a torn napkin. She calls. He answers.

Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games, and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy, or otherwise dominate the world as we know it. It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide.

Set in the wide-open spaces of the American West, The Power of the Dog is a stunning story of domestic tyranny, brutal masculinity, and thrilling defiance from one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in American literature. The novel tells the story of two brothers—one magnetic but cruel, the other gentle and quiet—and of the mother and son whose arrival on the brothers’ ranch shatters an already tenuous peace.

Savushun chronicles the life of a Persian family during the Allied occupation of Iran during World War II. It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-Islamic monuments, the great poets, the shrines, Sufis, and nomadic tribes within a historical web of the interests, privilege, and influence of foreign powers; corruption, incompetence, and arrogance of persons in authority; the paternalistic landowner-peasant relationship; tribalism; and the fear of famine.

If I’m to restore the druids to their former glory, I’ll need a safe place to train my recruits. Ideally, someplace where they won’t get curb-stomped by the gods. I can’t think of a better place to hide out than an alternate timeline where the gods and fae are too busy fighting a civil war to bother with little old me. So, it’s time to head back, settle old scores, clear the alternate timeline Earth of the undead, and plant some new druid groves.

Get four fast-paced druid urban fantasy novels in a boxed set featuring magic, mystery, Celtic mythology, and non-stop paranormal action! Reluctant druid, and sole apprentice of the last living master druid on Earth. Heir to Fionn MacCumhaill’s legacy. Hunted and feared by the Fae, and cursed with Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad. All he wants is to live in his junkyard in peace...but the gods have other plans for the young druid apprentice!

We may not realize it as we listen to the soundtrack of our lives through tiny earbuds, but music and all that it encompasses is disappearing all around us. In this fable-like story, three musicians from around the world are mysteriously summoned to Nashville, the Music City, to join together with Victor to do battle against the "Phasers", whose blinking "music-cancelling" headphones silence and destroy all musical sound. Only by coming together, connecting, and making the joyful sounds of immediate, "live" music can the world be restored to the power and spirit of music.

In this modern-retelling of "Beauty and the Beast", Savannah Carmichael, betrayed by an unreliable source, returns to her hometown of Danvers, Virginia, with her once-promising journalism career in ruins. Given the opportunity to get back in the game by writing a patriotic human interest piece, Savannah turns her attention to the town hermit, Asher Lee, a wounded veteran who returned to Danvers eight years ago, and hasn't been seen since.

The Ultimate Modern Classics Collection: Volume One is the first instalment in our classics collection focusing on the most important and iconic novels, stories, and poems of the 20th century. Featuring 18 essential modern classics from Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf, and many more, and read by a cast of incredible narrators including Iwan Rheon, Ben Allen, Karen Cass, Nathan Osgood, amongst others, this is an essential addition to your library.

Over 100 years ago, a group of witches made their way from New England to Whitewater, Wisconsin, known as Second Salem. Others also made their way to the city and, through their ignorance, unleashed an evil entity. Three sisters, the Willoughby Witches, created an incantation strong enough to ensnare the demon. Lord Henry McDermott, college professor, anthropologist, and archaeologist, has yearned to learn more about the legend of the Willoughby Witches. Taking the summer off to research the folklore, Henry discovers that there is more waiting for him in Whitewater than just a story.

At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering "the cause of generation and life" and "bestowing animation upon lifeless matter", Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts. However, upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness.

A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death.

At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends with in The Dinner List. When Sabrina arrives at her 30th birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

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.

In Another View, there are only two men in Emma's life - her father, a remote artist in Cornwall who left her in boarding school and saw her every few years, and Christo, who had been her stepbrother for a few months, and now wants to get to know her. But until Emma can understand what she means to them, there will never be room for love.