Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks

September 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.

Haunting Bombay, Shilpa Agarwal. (2009)
Thirteen-year-old Pinky Mittal lives with her obese, matriarchal grandmother, Maji; her alcoholic uncle, Jaginder; bitter aunt Savita; and three teenage male cousins. Taken in as an infant by her grandmother after her mother died, Pinky knows she's Maji's favourite, even if her aunt despises her. Driven by adolescent curiosity, Pinky unlocks a door in her family bungalow that has been bolted her entire life and unleashes the ghost of an infant girl and her midwife, sending her whole family into a tailspin. Surrounded by superstitions and spirituality, Pinky tries to unravel a past rife with pain and deceit as three generations of her formerly stalwart family crumble around her. (Amazon)

The maintenance of headway, Magnus Mills. (2009)
This is the bizarre world of the bus drivers who take us to work, to the supermarket, to the match and home again. It is a strange but all too real universe in which 'the timetable' and 'maintenance of headway' are sacred, but where the routes can change with the click of an inspector's fingers and the helpless passengers are secondary. The journey from the southern outpost to the arch, the circus and the cross will seem as familiar as your regular route, but then this novel shows you the almost religious fervour which lies behind it, and how it is fine to be a little bit late but utterly unforgivable to be a moment early. (Amazon)

City of thieves, by Cyrus Moore. (2009)
Nic Lamparelli works for a leading US investment bank in London. Starting at the bottom, he rises rapidly through the ranks to reach the pinnacle of his profession. Even at the top, he holds true to his principles while those around him abandon theirs. And that's what makes him special. Soon he has it all: a beautiful girlfriend, a high-flying career, an overpaid City job with a reputation as one of the bank's star analysts. Then one day he wakes up to find that things can go wrong - fast. His closest childhood friend Jack, also a star in the City, uncovers a plot to implicate Nic in an insider trading ring. And that is just the start. (Amazon)

Occupied city, David Peace. (2009)
Tokyo, January 26th, 1948. As the third year of the US Occupation of Japan begins, a man enters a downtown bank. He speaks of an outbreak of dysentery and says he is a doctor, sent by the Occupation authorities, to treat anyone who might have been exposed. Clear liquid is poured into sixteen teacups. Sixteen employees of the bank drink this liquid according to strict instructions. Within minutes twelve of them are dead, the other four unconscious. The man disappears along with some, but not all, of the bank's money. And so begins the biggest manhunt in Japanese history. (Amazon)

Dancing backwards, Salley Vickers. (2009)
Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity. Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers travelling with her, who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significantly, she meets Dino, the dance host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady, but who teaches her to ballroom dance, and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past. (Amazon)

The devil's garden, Richard Montanari. (2009)
Michael Roman is finally living the life he always dreamed of, he has a successful career, a beautiful wife and adorable twin daughters. But his idyllic life is about to come crashing down around him because Michael is a man with a past. A rising star in the New York District Attorney's office and on the cusp of enormous success, Michael's perfect life begins to unravel when he finds himself the target of a depraved madman, a man who covets everything Michael has and will stop at nothing to take it all away. In a desperate fight to survive, Michael is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past in order to save his family. (Amazon)

Galileo's dream, Kim Stanley Robinson. (2009)
This is the story of the incredible life and death of Galileo, the First Scientist. Late Renaissance Italy still abounds in alchemy and Aristotle, yet it trembles on the brink of the modern world. Galileo's new telescope encapsulates all the contradictions of this emerging reality. Then one night a stranger presents a different kind of telescope for Galileo to peer through. The blasted wasteland he sees when he points the telescope at Jupiter, of harsh yellows and reds and blacks, looks just like hell as described by the Catholic church, and Galileo is a devout Catholic. But he's also a scientist, perhaps the very first in history. What he's looking at is the future, the world of Jovian humans three thousand years hence. He is looking at Jupiter from the vantage point of one of its moons whose inhabitants maintain that Galileo has to succeed in his own world for their history to come to pass. (Amazon)

In the rooms, by Tom Shone. (2009)
English literary agent Patrick Miller arrived in New York, dreaming of joining the big league, only to find him-self selling celebrity dog books. But when he spots the legendary novelist Douglas Kelsey on the street and follows him into an AA meeting, a world of opportunity beckons. Patrick enters a den of sex addicts, junkies and pill-poppers, all rubbing shoulders with the reclusive Kelsey. Who knew that sobriety offered such networking possibilities? Or that the women would be so attractive? There's only one small problem. Patrick doesn't have a problem, not with alcohol, nor with drugs, just with that little thing called the truth. (Amazon)

The defector, Daniel Silva. (2009)
Spy turned art restorer Gabriel Allon is trying to resume his honeymoon in the secluded hills of Umbria with his new wife, Chiara, when shocking news reaches him from London. The defector and former Russian intelligence officer, who saved Gabriel’s life in Moscow, has vanished without a trace. British intelligence suspect the defector was always a double agent, but Gabriel is convinced otherwise. Gabriel and his team find themselves in a deadly duel of nerve and wits with one of the world’s most ruthless men: the murderous Russian oligarch and arms dealer Ivan Kharkov. (Amazon)

Noah's compass, Anne Tyler. (2009)
A year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his sixty-first year, a classical pedant, he's just been 'let go' from his school teaching job and downsizes to a tiny out-of-town apartment, where he goes to bed early and alone on his first night. Widowed, re-married, divorced and the father of three daughters, Liam is a man who is proud of his recall but has learned to dodge issues and skirt adventure. An unpleasant event occurs, though, to jolt him out of his certainty. Obsessed with a frightening gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened, and finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems. (Amazon)

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