Secondhand Contemporary Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2731

Secondhand Contemporary Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2731

Twenty-one novels and story collections in near-new condition, nearly all from the last fifteen years: Sarah Moss’s Summerwater, Tan Twan Eng’s Booker-listed Gift of Rain, Derek Owusu’s Desmond Elliott winner, Elin Cullhed’s Plath novel, Stefan Zweig’s stories, a Boris Akunin and two Morris Wests. Mostly literary with a few crime and comfort reads for pace.

1. Paper Cup — Karen Campbell — Kelly has been on the streets of Glasgow for years when a stranger’s kindness and a lost engagement ring send her walking south to the place she grew up. A book about homelessness that gives its heroine wit, rage and a dog.
2. The Italians at Cleat’s Corner Store — Jo Riccioni — Leyton, 1949: a village grocery, a girl called Connie who wants out, and the Italian POW family who stayed on after the war. Australian author, English setting, and the ending earns its sting.
3. Summerwater — Sarah Moss — Twelve families in a Scottish holiday park, one day of unbroken rain, each chapter a different head, and a death at the end none of them see coming. Moss’s tightest novel and her best.
4. Euphoria — Elin Cullhed — Sylvia Plath’s last year in Devon, told in her own voice: the babies, the bees, Hughes leaving, the poems coming faster than she can write them. Won Sweden’s August Prize; the translation is excellent.
5. The Gift of Rain — Tan Twan Eng — Penang, 1939: Philip, half-Chinese and half-English, is taught aikido by a Japanese diplomat, and when the invasion comes his teacher is on the other side. Booker longlist; the moral problem is the whole book.
6. Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963 — Melanie Klein — The late papers: envy as the earliest emotion, the depressive position, the roots of adult love. For anyone who’s read Winnicott and wants the source. Vintage.
7. Losing the Plot — Derek Owusu — A Ghanaian woman comes to London in the 1980s, and her son tells her life in fragments with his own footnotes arguing back. Desmond Elliott Prize winner; strange, short and unlike anything else.
8. Tess of the D’Urbervilles — Thomas Hardy — Tess is sent to claim kin from the rich D’Urbervilles, and Alec takes what he wants. Hardy’s angriest novel, and Angel Clare is the real villain. BBC tie-in Penguin.
9. The Bellarmine Jug — Nicholas Hasluck — A Dutch jug found on the Western Australian coast, a 1629 wreck, and a law student in Holland uncovering what the archives hid. The Batavia mutiny as a thriller. Age Book of the Year.
10. La’s Orchestra Saves the World — Alexander McCall Smith — A widow in a Suffolk village during the war starts an amateur orchestra to keep the place sane. McCall Smith’s gentlest, and his best-loved standalone.
11. Remember My Name — Sam Blake — Cressida finds out her husband has a mistress and a daughter, and then the mistress is murdered. Irish number-one bestseller, with a last-page turn.
12. Special Assignments — Boris Akunin — Two Erast Fandorin novellas: a con man called the Jack of Spades swindling Moscow, and a Jack the Ripper copycat in the slums. The second one is as dark as Akunin gets.
13. Selected Stories — Stefan Zweig — Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Royal Game, Amok and Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman. The Zweig revival in one volume. Pushkin Press.
14. One Bloody Thing After Another — Jacob F. Field — History’s gruesome bits, one page each: plagues, executions, battles, poisons. Loo-book format, better researched than it needs to be.
15. Out of Breath — Anna Snoekstra — A teenager runs from a trauma into the arms of a commune that seems too kind, and is. Australian psychological thriller from the Only Daughter author.
16. Everyone Is Still Alive — Cathy Rentzenbrink — One London street, one summer, and every marriage on it under strain at once. Kate Mosse called it an utter treat; it’s sharper than that sounds.
17. Is This Love? — C.E. Riley — Two women, one baby, and a relationship coming apart in alternating voices. Debut, Kit de Waal–endorsed, honest about how love curdles.
18. Blank Pages and Other Stories — Bernard MacLaverty — Twelve stories from the Northern Irish master of the small moment: a widower, a girl at a piano, a man hearing about a death. MacLaverty’s first collection in fifteen years.
19. Claudius the God — Robert Graves — Claudius is emperor now, conquering Britain and married to Messalina, who is sleeping with Rome. The sequel to I, Claudius, and the darker book. Penguin.
20. The Second Victory — Morris West — Austria, 1945: a British major takes over a village and finds the war isn’t finished there. Early West, before The Devil’s Advocate.
21. Daughter of Silence — Morris West — A young woman walks into an Italian village and shoots the man who killed her mother. Her defence lawyer has to make a jury see why. Coronet.