Showing titles in City Life

It's 1999, and Eira Hart and Ru Tattersall are set up to co-host The Lonely Harts Club, a new late-night radio show to help New Yorkers find love. It's a last chance attempt for both Eira, expert in Celtic mythology and amateur Welsh matchmaker, and Ru, once-hot-shot Aussie DJ, to achieve their New York dreams. The thing is, you either click with a co-host, or you don’t. It’s a bit like falling in love. There’s co-host chemistry, or there isn’t. With the countdown to a new millennium, it feels like the world as they know it is about to end.

Avery, a strait-laced lawyer living in London, is the typical eldest daughter, though she’s hiding a secret that could undo her perfect life forever. Bonnie was a boxer but, following a devastating defeat, she's been working as a bouncer in LA, until one reckless night threatens to drive her out of the city. And Lucky, the rebellious youngest, is a model in Paris whose hard-partying ways are finally catching up with her. Then there was Nicky, the beloved fourth sister, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie and Lucky reeling.

The first novel from the award-winning, best-selling author of Everything I Know About Love. Thirty-two-year-old Nina Dean is a successful food writer with a loyal online following but a life that is falling apart. When she uses dating apps for the first time, she becomes a victim of ghosting and by the most beguiling of men. Her beloved dad is vanishing in slow motion into dementia, and she's starting to think about ageing and the gendered double-standard of the biological clock.

Eve, Justin, Susie and Ed have been friends since they were 18. Now in their 30s, the four are still as close as ever, Thursday pub quiz night is still sacred and Eve is still secretly in love with Ed. Maybe Eve should have moved on by now, but she can’t stop thinking about what could have been. And she knows Ed sometimes thinks about it, too. Then one night, in an instant, all their lives change forever. And, as Eve learns she didn’t know her friends as well as she thought, she also discovers she isn’t the only person keeping secrets.

I used her body like an altar. Now she’s here for confession. I left my past behind. Then she walked into my church. Once, I was Bane Blackwolf—heir to a legacy of blood and sin. A monster in the making. Instead, I chose the cloth over the crown, buried my name, and became Father Blackwood. For years, I was in control of my darker nature. Until her. Moira. The woman with a sinner’s mouth and a body made for worship. The woman who doesn’t know it was me behind the mask that night—me who had her on her knees, begging.

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago’s thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons.

Yeongju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeongju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, divorces her husband, and follows her dream. She opens a bookshop. In a quaint neighbourhood in Seoul, surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge. From the lonely barista to the unhappily married housewife, and the writer who sees something special in Yeongju - they all have disappointments in their past.

Lucy is uprooted from her life in New York City and reluctantly goes into lockdown with her ex-husband, William, in a house on the coast of Maine. Strout's new novel is a miraculous work of fiction. A brilliantly sharp evocation of the period we have just lived through, it is a novel that both resonates deeply and consoles us, too.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down. Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period.

Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. Every day, she sees the same people and makes assumptions about them, even giving them nicknames. But they never speak. Obviously. Then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist-Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Suspiciously-Nice-New Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction. With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don't match reality.

Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

Everything is changing for Gabe. His writing career is seeing some traction, his relationships are blossoming, and the time has come to move to a new, bigger house. Krystal and Liz are ready to commit to a new life living with and dating him. But Gabe was never under the impression that loving five women simultaneously was ever going to be easy.

Poppy's world has tipped sideways: the husband who never wanted children has betrayed her with her broody best friend. At least Annalise is on her side. Poppy's new friend is determined to celebrate their freedom from kids, so together they create a Facebook group to meet up with like-minded women and perhaps vent a little about smug mums and their privileges at work.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of NW, Zadie Smith’s first novel since the bestselling On Beauty. Read by Don Gilet and Karen Bryson. This is the story of a city. The north-west corner of a city. Here you’ll find guests and hosts, those with power and those without it, people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all. And many people in between.

When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen's house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn 80. She'd like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn't offer many eligible gentlemen. Once Leena learns of Eileen's romantic predicament, she proposes a solution: a two-month swap. Eileen can live in London and look for love. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire....

I ran from my Russian father to escape an arranged marriage and ended up handcuffed to an Italian mafia hitman … in his bed. He’s as intensely beautiful as he is ruthless. A dichotomy of callous yet kind that fascinates me, though I know it shouldn’t. The man’s a killer. But more than that, he suffers from compulsions—a need to control every aspect of his life. And now that I’ve entered his world, I’ve become his ultimate fixation.

Ever since the accident that changed Sophie’s life, she sees numbers everywhere. From the leaves on a tree to the volume of a puddle, everything has its number. And every person she meets? Their number is counting down the number of days they have left. Despite being lonely, Sophie has decided she’s not dating anyone with a number smaller than 20,000 days: 55 years together should be plenty. Which is fine, until Adam—her first love and most definitely the one that got away—suddenly reappears. And his number? Just 24 days…

Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down. Exuberant, scandalous and exceptionally discerning, The Bonfire of the Vanities was Tom Wolfe's first venture into fiction and cemented his reputation as the foremost chronicler of his age.