Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Friendship

Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a classic international best seller and an unforgettable portrait of London. One of the most talked about fictional debuts ever, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-listen.

It’s 1945, there’s a brand-new Labour government, and Valentine Vere-Thissett, aged 23, is returning home from an undistinguished war, spent in the ranks. But following the death of his heroic older brother, and to his horror, Valentine is now Sir Valentine, seventh Baronet and extremely reluctant heir to Dimperley Manor, a gigantic liability, devoid of income, sodden with debt and half-filled with stuffed animals and dependent relatives – the latter intent on clinging to an impossibly outdated way of life.

Life is short - no one knows that better than 17-year-old Lenni Petterssen. On the Terminal Ward, the nurses are offering their condolences already, but Lenni still has plenty of living to do. When she meets 83-year-old Margot Macrae, a fellow patient offering new friendship and enviable artistic skills, Lenni's life begins to soar in ways she'd never imagined. As their bond deepens, a world of stories opens up: of wartime love and loss, of misunderstanding and reconciliation, of courage, kindness and joy.

From Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, comes a dazzling collection of fifteen stories. These stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.

One morning in December, Kyungha is called to her friend Inseon’s hospital bedside. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation following a wood-chopping accident, Inseon is bedridden and begs Kyungha to take the first plane to her home on Jeju Island to feed her pet bird, who will quickly die unless it receives food. Unfortunately, as Kyungha arrives a snowstorm hits. Lost in a world of snow, she begins to wonder if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step.

Our protagonist always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. But a couple of years on from earning a fancy PhD, she’s still broke, single and stuck in a job going nowhere. One option remains: marry rich. Her summer becomes a whirlwind of dating: martinis with a lazy heir, board games with a butch producer and a Venmo request from a ‘socialist’ trust-fund babe. However, when some unexpected and tragic news takes her – and her project – to Tehran she is forced to ask and answer some overdue questions about family, connection and, terrifyingly, her own purpose.

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.

Jungmin is down on her luck. She's worked tirelessly as a screenwriter her whole life, and has finally burnt out. But after months of isolation, she realises it's time to make a change, and ventures out into the streets near Seoul. When she stumbles upon a pottery workshop, a new world opens up to her. Leaning into the joys of her craft, Jungmin’s heart is slowly warmed by the kiln’s intense heat. Everyone at the workshop has their own story to tell, and as summer ebbs to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring, wounds begin to heal.

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning 'red pine', and Oumi, 'blue sea', while the girls' names were Shirane, 'white root', and Kurono, 'black field'. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki's friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, ever again. Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone.

In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood…

When Zoey finds out before her wedding that her fiancée cheated again, she desperately employs the mysterious Max to yell 'I object' at the alter. On the day Zoey see's a gorgeous stranger stand up and tell the entire congregation that he knows for a fact that her fiancée is cheating. As Zoey drunkenly invites Max to celebrate with her, they agree to work together as a love cynic duo. They're both hired for a wedding by a groom, who happens to be marrying the woman that broke Max's heart many years ago. And as she sees Max wrestle with his feelings, she's struck by jealousy.

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads. Lampo and Gelon are local potters, men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives. And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry.

Nisha Cantor and Sam Kemp are two very different women. Nisha, 45, lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband inexplicably cuts her off entirely. She doesn't even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. That's because Sam—47, middle-aged, struggling to keep herself and her family afloat—has accidentally taken Nisha's gym bag. Now Nisha's got nothing. And Sam's walking tall with shoes that catch eyes—and give her a career an unexpected boost. Except Nisha wants her life back—and she'll start with her shoes....

'He left you some money.' Mickey felt her mouth drop open. The first half of that sentence had rung clear and true. The second half had not. Her father was one to take, not give. After he left them for his new family, Mickey resolved never to think of her father again. She's fine without him; yes, she drinks, but only sometimes and, really, she can’t not. But with only $181 to her name, she’s not above attending some mandated therapy to access her inheritance. She’ll kneel at the Kleenex alter and soon be bingei

Flo is sick of Tokyo. She is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up, and she's in a relationship that's run its course. That's until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left by a drunken passenger on the Tokyo Subway.

Lydia imagines her new job running a Senior Citizen's Social Club three afternoons a week will involve drinking tea while playing gentle games of cards, listening to The Beatles and reminiscing about food rationing and The Blitz. She does not expect to find a failed actor addicted to shoplifting, a woman who's been hiding from a mysterious and very chequered past, and a prolific yarn-bomber. After a tragic accident means the council threatens to sell the community centre, the Social Club, aided by their friends in the nursery next door and a geriatric orphaned mongrel, set out to save it.

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.

The moment Zoe notices Jack in their Harvard chemistry class, with his scruffy clothes and casual self-assurance, she knows he’s the one to beat. When Zoe starts trying to outsmart Jack in chemistry, he knows she’s the person he’s been looking for. Because Jack has dreams that go far beyond the classroom. And while he and Zoe might be from different worlds, they share the same thirst for knowledge and fierce ambition. When he invites her to partner with him on some research, she puts aside her pride, and joins him.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility. Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed: the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And her seven-year-old son, Jackson, now in the care of Romy’s estranged mother. Inside is a new reality to adapt to: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive.