Showing titles in City Life

Alice Croydon has the perfect life: she has a large, close-knit family who loves her—even if they are sometimes a little too invested in her decisions—and she's about to marry her high school sweetheart Finn. Alice couldn't be happier. Except for the occasional niggle whenever she thinks about her career—or lack thereof. Fashion design has always been her passion, but living in the small north-western New South Wales town of Gunnindi doesn't offer much opportunity to pursue her dream. Until one day the unexpected happens.

Athena and Dexter live a happy but insular life, bound by routine and the care of their young sons. When Elizabeth, an old friend from Dexter’s university days, turns up with her much younger sister, Vicki, and her lover, Philip, she brings an enticing world to their doorstep. And Athena finds herself straining at the confines of her life.

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a charming young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom's awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming's orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he's already mapped out their future together. But, shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.

To his customers and neighbours on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger and bigger all the time.

All around Albuquerque, New Mexico, young women are going missing, seemingly vanished into thin air. With no link between the victims, Detective Alyssa Wyatt is quickly plunged into a horrifying case with no obvious clues. And when Jersey Andrews, the best friend of Alyssa's teenage daughter, Holly, joins the list of vanished girls, the case becomes personal. But this investigation will lead Alyssa and partner Cord into the most sinister depths of humanity; an evil place where life is expendable and where the depraved can fulfill their darkest desires - if they have the money.

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers.

London, 1927. On the morning of Friday 5th February, 1927, Miss Agnes Humphries – the landlady of the attractive, if-slightly shabby, white-fronted townhouse at Number 23 Burlington Square – has a decision to make. The rooms of the second floor lie empty, since poor Mr Blandford’s unfortunate demise, God rest his soul. And Agnes must make up her mind as to who will be her new lodger. Agnes must choose between them. But what will her decision lead to? One of the choices could result in scandal, one in devastation, and one could even lead to happiness. If only she gets it right.

Recently dumped and stuck with the mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi's husband Bryce, trace the Duncan's twenty-five-year marriage. As Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the near-two hundred-boxes of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family - until, mid-project, Naomi dies suspiciously.

Jade isn't even my real name. Jade began as my Starbucks name, because all children of immigrants have a Starbucks name. Jade has done all the right things. She's curated herself to fit right in at her law firm, but tells herself she has no choice. She's with a man who loves her, but isn't always herself around him. She's made her Omma and Baba proud, but resents that they can't properly understand her. Jade is perfectly in control of her life. Until one terrible night unravels Jade's carefully constructed world, leaving her wondering who she truly is.

Agnes Green is not having the summer of her life. Trapped in the suburbs with a strict religious mother, her nights are spent secretly dating Toby—who loves arthouse film, getting stoned, and ignoring her texts—and her days listening to sermons about the sins of the flesh. Then she meets Emily. Beautiful, charismatic and oddly controlling, Emily has a suggestion for Agnes. A life-changing way of making cash and having fun. It might even involve love. And it's easy. All you have to do is put a little black dress on and go to lunch.

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner treats its customers to wonderfully extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason to stop by... The father-daughter duo have started advertising their services as 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are capable of recreating a dish from their customers' pasts – dishes that may well hold the keys to forgotten memories and future happiness.

In a city graveyard, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet between two graves. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby appears quite suddenly, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. In a snowy valley, a father writes to his five-year-old daughter about the number of people who attended her funeral. And in the Jannat Guest House, two people who've known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another as though they have only just met.

Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Then Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox-Jewish woman intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam - by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family - and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk and honey.

New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son; Lara, a drug-addled young artist; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life and Jazzlyn, her beautiful daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the skyline of New York.

Rosie Graham has a problem. A few, actually. She just quit her well paid job to focus on her secret career as a romance writer. She hasn’t told her family and now has terrible writer’s block. Then, the ceiling of her New York apartment literally crumbles on her. Luckily she has her best friend Lina’s spare key while she’s out of town. But Rosie doesn’t know that Lina has already lent her apartment to her cousin Lucas, who Rosie has been stalking—for lack of a better word—on Instagram for the last few months.

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence. 

Elizabeth Gaskell was one of Victorian England's pre-eminent female novelists. Admired by Charles Dickens, who described her as his 'dear Scheherazade', she mingled storytelling and social realism to superb effect in her highly acclaimed fiction. This comprehensive collection comprises dramas and readings of her finest works and some lesser-known pieces.

While the years rewind from 2040 back to 2014, Shanghailanders brings listeners into the shared and separate lives of the Yang family, parent by parent, daughter by daughter, and through the eyes of the people in their orbit-a nanny from the provinces, a private driver with a penchant for danger, and a grandmother whose memories of the past echo the present. As they build their lives in this old, futuristic city, we see Leo, his wife Eko and their daughters Yumi, Yoko and Kiko trip over their own desires in their bids to connect with one another, in their attempts to be a family.

Will is sleepwalking through life - he’s working in a dead-end job and volunteers at a crisis line, hiding behind the phone and helping others to avoid sorting out his own life, which is stuck in a rut. Annie thought she had a five-year plan all figured out with her steady job and even steadier boyfriend. But when everything starts falling apart, she reaches out for help and just needs someone to listen. Will enjoys talking to the woman who calls herself Pia, and together they start to encourage each other to do brave things and rebuild their lives.

Twenty-five years ago, DCI Harry Rhimes arrested Andrew Streeter for the brutal murders of five young people. Streeter’s ‘kill list’ of victims was found in his home, and he was convicted of all five crimes. Now, Streeter’s convictions are being overturned, as new evidence implies the original investigation was corrupt. No one is more shocked that DI Henley. Because this case is personal; Rhimes was her old boss, and he’s no longer alive to defend himself. But when the killings start up again, Henley must face the truth: Rhimes got it wrong twenty-five years ago.