Modern and Contemporary

The Iron Towns. Once the furnace heart of industrial England, now the valley is home only to fading dreams.

Raised by her mother and Maeve on Slanbeg, an island off the west coast of Ireland, Orpen has a childhood of love and stories by the fireside. But the stories grow darker, and the training begins.

The Professor lives in Brooklyn; her partner Nathan left her when she couldn't have a baby. All she has now is her dead-end teaching job, her ramshackle apartment, and Nathan's old moggy, Cat. Who she doesn't even like.

In a fractured dystopic future, the child Rue finds solace in the garden of a mysterious community. Rue has lost identity, family, home and people to war.

For the first nine years of her life, she was held in modern day slavery. She saw violence, she knew cold and hunger, she experienced the death of those close to her. It was no life for a child.

Micka loves drawing and wants a pup, but with older brothers into violence and petty crime, and a mother who can't read the notes his teacher sends home from school, neither he nor the pup stand much of a chance.

Following in the footsteps of The Rotters' Club and The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe's new novel is the novel for our strange new times.

Don Giovanni's ghost haunts a young boy, Fidelio meets Porgy and Bess and two hapless men stage a Mozartian love test. Long-lost loves enter the dating game and undying witches finally get grey hairs.