Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks
February/March 2009
The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.
Good to be God, Tibor Fischer. (2008)
"Using the credit card and identity of a handcuffs salesman, professional failure Tyndale Corbett arrives in Miami for a law enforcement conference to discover the joys of luxury hotels and above all the delight of being someone else, someone successful. Feeling his previous lack of success might be due to insufficient ambition, Tyndale decides on a new money-making scheme. He will up the ante substantially, exponentially and pretend to be someone really important and successful: God. His mission is to convince the citizenry of Miami that he is, despite appearances, the Supreme Being. This results in him taking over the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ and his duties there go from involve him in forming a private army to hiring call girls and issuing death threats. All the while he is working on his grand project, the clincher miracle, dying and coming back to life." (Book Cover)
Faker,Katy Gardner. (2008)
"Ed and Sarah meet and fall in love while doing aid work in Bangladesh. They move south to start a community school and quickly become involved in setting up a campaign to prevent an oil giant from buying up local land at cheap rates. However their efforts prove surprisingly unpopular in the village and an atmosphere of growing local mistrust and unease starts to envelop them. Increasingly under pressure, Ed becomes progressively remote from Sarah and the life they have built together. When Ed disappears during a storm, everybody is convinced he is dead, everybody that is apart from Sarah. Grief-stricken and guilt-ridden, she returns to London to make contact with Ed's sister and try to make sense of what has happened only to be forced to confront some uncomfortable and frightening truths about the man she thought she once knew." (Amazon)
Molly Fox's birthday, by Deirdre Madden.(2008)
"Set in Dublin in midsummer. While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly's, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, who she has known since university. But why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How do relationships evolve over the course of many years?." (Book Cover)
Cliffhanger, by T.J. Middleton. (2008)
"Al Greenwood lives in a bungalow by the sea. His passions, in no particular order, are his Vanden Plas motorcar; his well-kept caravan (perfect for assignations); and his two Koi carp. But for now Al has something more pressing on his mind. His wife, Audrey, has got too much, and Al wants her gone. But she is tenacious, despite his best efforts, and Al's nosey neighbours are also beginning to sniff around. There's Mrs. Poke Nose spying from the tree at the bottom of her garden; Kim the fisherman, catcher of the town's oldest lobster and lover of Miranda (also close to Al's heart); and, Detective Inspector Rump, whose instinct for human beings comes a poor second to his instinct for fish. And that's just for starters." (Amazon)
Mister Roberts, by Alexei Sayle. (2008)
"Above a small village in Spain, an English costume designer sees a bright shining star lurch abruptly across the sky. On Christmas Day a strong, silent man with blank eyes enters Bar Noche Azul. Only a thirteen year old boy could have guessed that there was any connection between the two. This is a wonderfully inventive, darkly funny, and thoughtful novel with an unusual take on the corrupting influence of power." (Amazon)
The rise and fall of a domestic diva, Sarah May. (2008)
"On Prendergast Road, deep in Nappy Valley, among olive trees in terracotta, lower fuel emissions, Lithuanian prostitutes, teenage drug dealers, stalkers and soaring house prices, five desperate women wait. The progeny of the IVF generation is ready to start school and only one of them is destined to get a place in Nappy Valley's most oversubscribed cradle of learning. How far will these women go to get that place? Follow Kate Hunter into the depths of her impeccably honed life, as she struggles to maintain the facade of perfection. When exactly did life become a life class? Is happiness overrated? Is it just possible that beneath the flawless sheen of her friends' and neighbours' amazingly trouble-free lives, beneath the freshly-ironed shirts and home-grown vegetables, lie the same half-truths, the same uncertainties and the same desperation to keep up with the Joneses?." (Amazon)
The howling miller, Arto Paasilinna ; translated by Will Hobson from the French of Anne Colin du Terrail (2007)
"Gunnar Huttunen arrives in North Finland after the war and buys a dilapidated mill. Despite being a decent and hard-working Finn, he is also an outsider and an eccentric: prone to mood swings, black depression, high elation and a general lack of decorum. He puts on performances at the mill for local children at which he specialises in imitating animals and making fun of the village notables. Already prejudiced against him by his jibes, the villagers reserve most ire for the howling which Huttunen indulges in at night, which the local dogs join in a delirious chorus. Passionate and outraged by his treatment at the hands of the villagers, it is not long before the accident-prone miller finds that his situation soon spirals out of control." (Amazon)
President down, by Terence Strong. (2008)
"Former intelligence officer and one-time instructor at the British Army School of Sniping, Phil Mason is struggling to make ends meet as a private investigator when he's contacted by his former M15 liaison officer. The overstretched security service needs all the help it can get hunting down members of al-Qaeda terror cells in the UK and Mason needs the cash. But in the murky intelligence world of smoke and mirrors, nothing is what it seems. As a routine surveillance operation escalates into a full-blown international crisis, Mason must come to terms with the unthinkable: there must be a traitor within Britain's security forces." (Amazon)
Land of marvels : a novel, / Barry Unsworth. (2009)
"In 1914, an English archaeologist called Somerville is fulfilling a lifelong dream: to direct an excavation in the desert of Mesopotamia. Yet forces beyond his control threaten his work. The Great War is looming, and various interest groups, Turkish, German, English and American, are vying for control over the land and its strategic and economic prizes. The Germans are securing trade routes with a new railway; a major in the Royal Engineers is working undercover, secretly mapping for the British the areas rich in oil and the Bedouin Jehar takes what he can from his new paymasters. But Somerville is the greatest idealist whose intention is to discover and preserve the land's ancient treasures." (Amazon)
24 for 3, by Jennie Walker. (2008)
"Can a woman have a lover and a husband and still keep her family together? Can the rules be changed? Friday: as a Test match between England and India begins, a woman's attention is torn between a husband who is all too keen to explain the rules, a lover who prefers mystery, and a sixteen-year-old son who hasn't come home. By Tuesday night the match will have been won or lost. Or perhaps it will have reached a draw in which only pride may be salvaged?." (Amazon)
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