Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Literary Fiction

Pearl Street, Liverpool, Christmas 1942. Despite the drama and tragedy of the War, the street’s spirit and friendship in adversity binds them together. Since her husband was injured, Eileen has worried about the growing distance between them. Lena Newton longs for a baby but with her husband posted in the Navy, it's looking unlikely. And Kitty has hidden away since she discovered her lover was married, too ashamed to return in disgrace with her baby.

Like father like son....But heredity seems to have gone a gene too far when Pal Maciver's suicide in a locked room exactly mirrors that of his father 10 years earlier. In each case, accusing fingers point towards Pal's stepmother, the beautiful, enigmatic Kay Kafka. But she turns out to have a formidable champion: Mid-Yorkshire's own super-heavyweight, Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.

Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The book follows them as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions; their voices are interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature.

It's Jake's birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life - his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his early sixties, and he isn't quite the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past, for Jake has Alzheimer's.

Once a week Rosie Tipcott counts her blessings. She goes to sit on her favourite bench on the North Devon cliffs and thanks her lucky stars for her wonderful husband, her mischievous young daughters and her house by the sea. But then her husband unexpectedly leaves her for another woman and takes the children. Now she must ask the question: what is left in her life? Can Rosie find the strength to rebuild herself? More importantly, does she even want to?

In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.

Heather’s beloved daughter, Kayla, is her world. She is 15, a brilliant basketball player and a fierce friend. Heather and Kayla have always had a special relationship. For so many years it was just the two of them, watching Friends, baking cupcakes and laughing together. But now Kayla knows her time is short, and she wants to give something back to the mother she loves more than anyone else in the world. A gift that will change Heather’s life.

For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband, and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies - until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan.

Bo Luxton has it all - a loving family, a beautiful home in the Lake District and a clutch of best-selling books to her name. Enter Alice Dark, an aspiring writer who is drifting through life, with a series of dead-end jobs and a freeloading boyfriend. When they meet at a writers' retreat, the chemistry is instant, and a sinister relationship develops.... Or does it?

The fourth book in Adrian Mole's diaries, where we catch up with a hapless Adrian and his desperate attempts to win back the love of his life.

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, 17 years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.

In this funny, nightmarish masterpiece of imaginative excess, grotesque characters engage in acts of violent one-upmanship, boundless riches mangle a corner of Africa into a Bacchanalian utopia, and technology, flesh, and violence fuse with and undo each other. A fragmentary, freewheeling novel, it sees wild boys engage in vigorous, ritualistic sex and drug taking, as well as prankster-ish guerrilla warfare and open combat with a confused and outmatched army.

Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation's longing for a rail line to reconnect North and South, a magical-realist novel that manages to reflect the lives of modern industrial workers, and a culmination of Hwang's career—a masterpiece thirty years in the making.

Longlisted for the Audiobook Download of the Year, 2007.
Back in Rome after their dramatic adventures in Venice, Detectives Costa, Peroni, and Leo Falcone are rebuilding their lives. But they team up once again when faced with the sudden appearance of fresh bloodstains on a missing young boy's T-shirt in a small museum exhibit displaying supposed evidence of communication from souls in Purgatory. Soon they find themselves embroiled in a mystery involving both the ancient cult of Mithras and the sinister House of Bones.

Dan Starkey is a young journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife, Patricia, a prodigious appetite for drinking and dancing. Then Dan meets a beautiful and apparently impoverished student. And then, terrifyingly, she is murdered. Is it because she was not exactly who she claimed to be? Is it the IRA? A Protestant extremist group? A jealous lover? Before long, Dan is a target himself.…

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2007.
In this novel, set in Scotland in 1863, Bessy Buckley attempts to escape her past by taking a job as a maid in a big house outside of Edinburgh, where she works for the beautiful Arabella. Bessy is intrigued by her new employer, but puzzled by her increasingly strange requests.

Set in Mexico City during the early 50s, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene. As Lee breaks down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges; a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor and the Ugly American at his ugliest. Burroughs' only realist love story, Queer is a haunting tale of possession and exorcism.

When a heart attack kills his father, young architect Nick abandons his safe London life to volunteer in a village on the edge of the Sahara. Redemption awaits there, or so he hopes, a last chance to atone for an old sin. Alone in an unfamiliar world, dangerous currents soon pull him in: a simmering family conflict, hidden corruption and violence. And his host’s lonely wife, Margaret, is drawn to him by secrets of her own. Their attraction blurs the line between right and wrong. But when a killing drought descends, it brings an irrevocable moment of choice. To save those loves, should he take matters into his own hands? His decision has life-changing consequences for them all.

Flying instructor Ellie Simpson has grown up a tomboy. She's never had an interest in the latest fashions or finding a husband; her only passion is flying her beloved Tiger Moth. But when war is declared, she is no longer be able to do what she loves most - fly.

When the body of pregnant 15-year-old Hope Lacey is discovered in a churchyard on Christmas morning, the community is shocked, but unsurprised. For Hope lived in The Home, the residence of three young girls, whose violent and disturbing pasts have seen them cloistered away. As a police investigation gets underway, the lives of Hope, Lara and Annie are examined, and the staff who work at the home are interviewed, leading to shocking and distressing revelations...and clear evidence that someone is seeking revenge.