Showing results by publisher "Orion" in Coming of Age

Clayton Stumper is an enigma. He might be twenty-five years old, but he dresses like your grandad and drinks sherry like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by the sharpest minds in the British Isles and finds himself amongst the last survivors of a fading institution. When the esteemed crossword compiler, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle to him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for his future.

Lucy Albright is far from her Long Island upbringing when she arrives on the campus of her small California college and happy to be hundreds of miles from her mother-whom she's never forgiven for an act of betrayal in her early teen years. Quickly grasping at her fresh start, Lucy embraces college life and all it has to offer. And then she meets Stephen DeMarco. Charming. Attractive. Complicated. Devastating.

Everyone has heard of Girls. But what happened to the women they became? At the time of her death, the press wrote many things about Ingrid Olssen: She was a brilliant artist. She was a terrible mother to her girls, Mattie and Nora. And that her legacy would live on forever. Even so, it's unlikely the world will ever see another Ingrid Olssen exhibition - her last request to her daughters was to throw her ashes in the canyon and her paintings in the sea.

On the evening of July 4th, Sylviane Rochas scatters her mother's ashes in New York and lets the changing wind blow her to the French seaside town of Marseille. For the first time in her life, Vianne holds the future in her own hands. Charming her way into a job as a waitress in a local bistrot, she knows that she is not here to stay - by the time her child is born in a few months' time, she must be gone.

Vianne Rocher has settled down. Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, the place that once rejected her, has finally become her home. With Rosette, her 'special' child, she runs her chocolate shop in the square, talks to her friends on the river, is part of the community. Even Reynaud, the priest, has become a friend. But when old Narcisse, the florist, dies, leaving a parcel of land to Rosette and a written confession to Reynaud, the life of the sleepy village is once more thrown into disarray....

At 3.04 p.m. on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she's pregnant. She could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless. She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand. She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks. Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come without conditions. But this isn't a love story.

Theo has been living in his parents' shed, nursing a broken heart and a wounded ego, convinced life can't get any worse. Then he gets evicted on his 30th birthday. Theo thinks he's done with the real world—until it shows up on his doorstep. Joel is a successful TV scriptwriter, still in love with his teenage sweetheart. A proper grown-up—and yet he's falling apart at the seams. He's headed home to reconnect with best friend Theo—except they haven't spoken since the summer they turned 16.

Louis and Louise are separated by a single moment in time, a strike of chance that decided their future. The day they were born is when their story begun. In one, Louis David Alder is born a male. In the other, Louise Dawn Alder is born a female. Louis and Louise are the same in many ways - they have the same best friends, the same parents, the same dream of being a writer and leaving their hometown in Maine as soon as they can. But because of their gender, everything looks different.

Lucy Banbury isn't the sort of person with whom everyone gets along—she's prickly and secretive, and she likes things ordered 'just so'. But things couldn't be going better for her—she swims three times a week, she's on the cusp of a huge promotion at work and she's dating someone perfect on paper. But when she discovers at a family wedding that she's adopted, her whole world is shattered. Those cracks she's taken years to plaster over are beginning to surface, and she's not sure how much longer she can keep all her secrets hidden, all whilst pretending to be someone she's not.

At seventeen years old, James and Amelia can feel the rest of their lives beginning. They have got this summer and this summer alone to experience the extraordinary. But they didn't expect to find it in a house at the bottom of a lake. The house is cold and dark, but it's also their own. Caution be damned, until being carefree becomes dangerous. For the teens must decide: swim deeper into the house-all the while falling deeper in love? Whatever they do, they will never be able to turn their backs on what they discovered together.

What do you get if you cross a dozen drunk hens with one shiny Butler in the Buff? Meet Lilah Fox. She's on the hen do from hell. Then she gets a message (44 of them, actually) from her best friend with big news: she's getting married in six months. Oh, and Lilah's her maid of honour. Which means she just got signed up for a military schedule of wedding fairs and weekly planning meetings, Excel spreadsheets and endless hen emails, and all the enforced, expensive fun you can imagine....

Danny Scudd is absolutely fine. At 27 years old, he's finally moved to London and escaped his parents' tiny fish and chip shop, his beloved collection of house plants are thriving and every Monday evening he has a date night with his boyfriend, Tobbs. But Danny's life is thrown into chaos when he discovers at an STI clinic that Tobbs might be cheating on him. And then he—and his plants—are unceremoniously evicted from his London flat. So, he's forced to move in with his best friend Jacob, a non-binary artiste who Danny's known since childhood.

Le Devin is a small island off the coast of Brittany. For more than a hundred years two communities have fought for control of the Island's one beach against the backdrop of ever-encroaching seas and an unchanging life. For the returning Mado, though, the island's sleepy exterior hides dual threats to her community's survival. Can she overcome the death of her mother, and her family's secrets, to bring hope back to her village?

When Kate's younger daughter Ella goes off to university, she realises her life has become consumed by the minutiae of family life. In her 'empty nest', Kate starts to wonder: what now? Decades after abandoning her university hobby of rowing, Kate gingerly joins a local ladies' rowing team and rediscovers her passion for the pleasing rhythmic sensation of paddle slicing through water. More than anything, though, Kate finds that the team of strong women bring new adventures and unlikely friendships she hadn't even realised she missed having.

A funny, warm debut novel bringing Westernised Indian culture to the fore - perfect for fans of Bridget Jones's Diary and Bend It Like Beckham. Twenty-nine-year-old Raina is still unmarried and battling her family's expectations for her future - they think that by now she should have been married in a dream Indian wedding. The pressure reaches new heights when her grandmother, Nani, decides to play matchmaker in order to find her the perfect arranged marriage.

Robotics scientist Rachel Prosper has created a top-secret humanoid android. When she dies suddenly, her family take the robot, which looks just like Rachel, into their home as part of an experiment. The After Wife is the story of a family ripped apart by grief who are given a second chance to reconnect with the woman they loved and lost.

On the night that Lalloo's brother is murdered, a large yellow moon hangs low in the sky above the family's small hut on the outskirts of Lahore. Abandoned far from home only hours later, seven-year-old Lalloo will not see them again for a very long time. Unable to escape the memory of that night, Lalloo's parents and sisters remain trapped at the brickyard, the kiln chimney churning black smoke into the sky as they slave brick by brick to pay off their debts.

The trip was supposed to be the perfect holiday. Six friends, reuniting after two decades, spending the weekend in a beautiful riad in Marrakesh. Only, these friends are linked by more than their university days. Together, they've kept a dark secret that changed the course of all their lives forever. And as the truth threatens to surface in the stifling Morrocan heat, they all begin to question what really happened that terrible night 20 years ago.

Over the years, Violet and Albert's lives collide again and again and as each decade ends, a new love story begins. But against the shifting times of each era, Violet and Albert must overcome differences in class, gender, privilege and ambition. Each time their lives entwine, it will change everything. As their eyes first meet, for a split-second it's as if the clocks have stopped. Nothing else matters. Yet whichever decade brings them together, Violet and Albert are soon forced to question: what if they met the right person at the wrong time?

Dara Gaffney is fresh out of drama school when she lands the leading role in the revival of Eabha de Lacey's hugely successful yet controversial play. Based on the true story of the death of Cillian Butler, many claim that Eabha had an ulterior motive when she penned it. Cillian's death remains a mystery to this day, and Eabha and her brother, Austin, the only witnesses.