Showing results by publisher "Pan Macmillan Publishers Ltd" in Literature & Fiction

It's not easy sharing a flat. Especially when you're 95 years old. Change is afoot at Sunset Grove retirement home, and its residents aren't impressed. Under threat from falling masonry, best friends Irma and Siiri are forced out of their home to negotiate 21st-century living in the centre of Helsinki. Their new surroundings throw up an endless number of daily challenges, from caring for the ailing Anna-Lisa to the mystery of which of the many remotes controls the TV.

A thoughtful collection of soul-soothing writing, O's Little Book of Calm & Comfort is the antidote to life's trying times. Featuring essays and interviews from some of the most celebrated contributors to O, the Oprah Magazine, this heartening collection offers solace, wisdom and connection. Among the highlights: Nora Ephron on the state of rapture that comes from a good book; Maeve Binchy on friends; and a conversation between Oprah and the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron.

Early this morning, several hours before my arrest, I was woken by an earth tremor. I mention the incident not to suggest that there was a connection - that somehow the fault lines in my life came crashing together in a form of a couple of policemen - for in Tokyo we have a quake like this every month. I am simply relating the sequence of events as it happened. It has been an unusual day, and I would hate to forget anything....

April 1943: In the bloody turmoil of war, John Easley, a journalist mourning his lost brother, is driven to expose a hidden and growing conflict: the Japanese invasion and occupation of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. But when his plane is shot down he must either surrender or struggle to survive in a harsh wilderness. Three thousand miles to the south, Helen Easley cannot accept her husband's disappearance - an absence that exposes her sheltered, untested life. Desperate to find and be reunited with him, she sets out on a remarkable journey from the safety of her Seattle home to the war in the north.

As friends, relatives, and foes trickle in to pay their final respects to his mother, Eleanor, Patrick Melrose finds himself questioning whether a life without parents will be the liberation he has so long imagined. Yet as the memorial service ends and the family gathers one last time, amidst the social niceties and the social horrors, the calms and the rapids, Patrick begins to sense a new current: the chance of some form of safety - at last.

Alice Wyndham has been plagued by visions of birds her whole life, and only her best friend Jen understands her terror. So when an accident leaves Jen in a coma, Alice is devastated. Then the mysterious Crowley reveals that Alice is an aviarist: capable of seeing nightjars, magical birds that guard human souls. And Jen’s nightjar has already flown to Death’s aviary, the Black Menagerie. Unless Jen and her soul bird can be reunited, she won’t recover - and only Alice can save her.

1946. The war is over, but a bereft Sheila Hodges is left parentless and alone in London. With nowhere else to go, she heads to Worthing to reconnect with her grandmother and cousin Veronica, known as Ronnie. Ronnie and Sheila are given the opportunity to run their grandfather’s business, a local garage. Ronnie’s ne’er-do-well brother Leslie is furious - as the man of the family, he believes the business is rightfully his. But their grandmother is adamant that Leslie is not to be trusted.

Frank Derrick is 81. And he's just been run over by a milk float. It was tough enough to fill the hours of the day when he was active. But now he's broken his arm and fractured his foot, it looks set to be a very long few weeks ahead. Frank lives with his cat Bill (which made more sense before Ben died) in the typically British town of Fullwind-on-Sea.

1940: As war closes in and the bombs fall, on the Homefront, two sisters must find their place in a new world of ‘men's' work, in which a telegraph can break your heart and nothing in the future is certain. Growing up in Birmingham, Sylvia and Audrey Whitehouse were always like chalk and cheese. As young women, while Sylvia dreams of her forthcoming life married to fiancé Ian. Audrey can't bear the thought of being tied down by marriage and children.

I know what my husband would say: that I have too much time on my hands; that I need to keep myself busy. That I need to take my medication. Empty nest syndrome, he tells his friends at the pub, his mother. He's always said I have a vivid imagination. Marta and Hector have been married for a long time – so long that she finds it difficult to remember her life before him. He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife.