Showing results for "hilary" in Comedy & Humour

One of the 21st century's most celebrated authors, Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: for 2009's Wolf Hall, the first in her phenomenally successful Thomas Cromwell trilogy, and its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third novel in the series, 2020's The Mirror and the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This collection includes three of her best works of contemporary fiction, ranging from the Gothic to the blackly comic.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

She is going to be murdered on stage every night. All Ian has to do is make sure she is safe off stage. No one would want to murder the leading lady, would they? Don’t be too sure. After a few days at the Dundas Farm opera camp, Ian is beginning to think that everyone the diva meets would be more than pleased to see the back of her. Two weeks listening to music on a Scottish alpaca farm is twisting and turning in a distinctly sinister direction. And if she continues to treat him like a servant, refusing to tell him anything about her fears, how on earth is Ian going to prevent a tragedy?

Charles O’Brien, Irish bard and giant: The cynical are moved by his flights of romance; the craven stirred by his tales of epic deeds. The Surprising Irish Giant may be the sensation of the season but only his compatriots seem to attend to his mythic powers of invention. John Hunter, celebrated surgeon and anatomist, buys dead men from the gallows and babies’ corpses by the inch. Where is a man as unique as The Giant to hide his bones when he is yet alive?

Hester and Harriet lead comfortable lives in a pretty cottage in an English village. Having opened their minds, home and hearts to Daria, a mysterious migrant, and her baby son, Milo, the widowed sisters decide to further expand their own horizons by venturing forth to Italy for their annual holiday. With a huge secret hanging between the sisters, an unlikely new love on the landscape for Hester and new beginnings also beckoning for Harriet, Italy provides more opportunities for adventure than either of them could ever have imagined.

Fetherhoughton is a dreary town in 1950s northern England. Father Angwin has lost his faith. Sister Philomena strains against convent life. The inhabitants of the town go about their lives in a haze. Then a stranger appears, bringing with him the hint of something new. But who is Fludd? An angel come to shake the dwellers from their stupor, or is he the devil himself, a wanderer of the darkest places in the human heart?

Evelyn and Muriel Axon, mother and daughter, lead a haunted existence. Objects of horror to their neighbours, they evade or terrorise any social worker who crosses their path. Inside their house, they pursue a covert persecution of each other, shrinking from the unseen occupants of their spare room. But change is in the air… Every Day is Mother's Day is a merciless comedy of colliding lives: of sex, death, madness, adultery and the social services.

Hester and Harriet are reluctantly driving to visit relatives on Christmas Day when they come across a young woman hiding with her baby in a bus shelter. Seeing the perfect excuse for returning to their own warm hearth, the sisters insist on bringing Daria and Milo home with them. But with the arrival of a sinister stranger looking for a girl with a baby, Hester and Harriet's carefully crafted peace and quiet quickly begins to fall apart....

From the double Man Booker Prize-winner, a savagely funny tale that revisits the characters from the much-loved Every Day is Mother’s Day. Muriel Axon is about to re-enter the lives of Colin Sidney and Isabel Field. It is ten years since her last tangle with them, but for Muriel this is not time enough. There are still scores to be settled, truths to be faced and vengeance to be wreaked.

Caroline, Fiona and Ruth are lifelong friends, who've grown up together, laughed and cried together, and stood by each other through thick and thin. They may not always see eye to eye, and they might drive each other crazy, but they can't do without each other. But life's got a lot more complicated since they were 22, when the only things they carried around were handbags. Now, in midlife, they've got more baggage than the average airport carousel.

Arty free spirit Trisha returns to her native city of Edinburgh after years of living in London. Although she is coping with the loss of her job and a bruised heart, she arrives at Waverley Station enthusiastic and eager for the next chapter of her life to begin. Meanwhile, Trisha's big sister Clare could not be more different. A non-practising qualified accountant, she has been married for years, has two spoiled teenage children and has probably spent too much time on the school PTA. Together, they decide to open a new café in leafy Bruntsfield

In Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith returns home to Edinburgh and the glorious cast of his own tales of the city, the residents of 44 Scotland Street, with a new set of challenges for each one of them. Bruce, the intolerably vain and perpetually deluded ex-surveyor, is about to embark on a new career as a wine merchant, while his long-suffering flatmate Pat MacGregor, set up by matchmaking Domenica Macdonald, finds herself invited to a nudist picnic in Moray Place in the pursuit of true love.

It's no secret - to survive in a superficial town like Forest River, New York, where perfection is a requirement - a mom must follow the rules. For the past five years, Donna has worked hard to exceed social expectations. She held the prestigious role of PTA treasurer, and her best friend, Jackie, is the most powerful woman at the elementary school.

PTA President Jackie Martin is the envy of the mothers. She has a loyal and handsome husband, she hosts elaborate parties, and her eldest daughter, Hayley, is the most popular child in the fifth grade. Her life appears flawless, but is life ever what it seems to be? After receiving a painful blow, when Hayley was in kindergarten, Jackie clawed her way into PTA power. She lived her life by the adage "Proper planning prevents poor performance". Her attention to detail (okay, fine - her control-freak nature) served her well until she experiences the ultimate betrayal.

Mrs Tim goes to the Highlands of Scotland and is involved in a plot to rescue a naval officer from the toils of a siren; but, alas, the best laid plans "gang aft agley". The characters are skilfully drawn, from the fierce Mrs London, with her heart of gold, to the garrulous Mrs Falconer, whose muddled stories of her girlhood make excruciatingly funny reading.

Hilary and Lacey are a lot of things - sisters, besties, and complete opposites. But most importantly - they're a good time. Join them for a laugh as they talk about everything and anything on Posts with Most: A Sisterly Podcast.

The play is: an evocation of 21st Century Los Angeles. We begin just before dawn and drift across sleeping and dreaming Los Angeles, picking up the dreams and imaginings of its citizens and catching them as they awaken into a new day. From Keith the Homeless to Dr. Filpot, Physicist at UCLA, to a porn queen in the "Valley," we see an original, poetic and somewhat skewered panorama of a place and a time called now.