Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Literature & Fiction

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.

'If I've learned one thing,' the late, great Father Fehily used to say, 'it's that life, families and rugby balls don't always behave the way you want them to!' Looking at my life, I'd have to say, the dude wasn't wrong. My old man had been caught rigging a general election. My old dear was about to become a 70-year-old mother of six. And Honor was walking around in a yellow rain mac, telling everyone that the end of the world was coming. It was enough to drive a man to the brink.

Life as a stay-in-bed husband turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected. My wife was pregnant with a baby that possibly wasn't mine. My old man was engaged in a war with the feminist movement that he was never going to win. And my old dear was making a lot of unexplained trips to Russia. Throw into the mix an eldest son with a possible sex addiction and three infant sons who were so thick they made me look like Edward Einstein.

A Week in December is Sebastian Faulks's first wholly contemporary novel. Set in London, it's a brilliant social satire, structured like a thriller, that takes place over the course of a single week at the end of 2007. It brings together an intriguing cast of characters, each apparently in his or her own world but - as gradually becomes clear - ultimately intricately related.

Meet Ingrid. She works on a gargantuan luxury cruise liner, where she spends her days reorganising the merchandise and waiting for long-term guests to drop dead in the changing rooms. On her days off, she disembarks from the ship and gets blind drunk on whatever the local alcohol is. It's not a bad life. And it distracts her from thinking about the other life she left behind five years ago. Until one day, she is selected for the employee mentorship scheme.

In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families - best friends and business partners - have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be - and neither is the relationship between the Goldmans and the Weingolds.

Maren Gelb is on a company-imposed digital detox. She tweeted something terrible about the president's daughter, and as the COO of Richual, "the most inclusive online community platform for women to cultivate the practice of self-care and change the world by changing ourselves", it's a PR nightmare.

When Jennifer Cole is told she has three months left to live, she knows her life is f--ked. With nothing to lose, she decides it's time to admit to everything she's always longed to say but never dared. She writes three letters: one to her overbearing, selfish sister, one to her spineless, cheating ex-husband, the third to her charming but unreliable ex-boyfriend. At first it feels great to have finally found her voice. But as things start to unravel, she discovers that the truth has its own consequences…

This is the story of Lizzie Vogel, a 15 year old girl who finds herself working in a ramshackle old people's home in the English suburbs. It is the late 1970s and the place is in chaos - there's a much swisher old people's home nearer the supermarket with better parking which is taking all the best patients; Matron seems to be utterly without qualifications, and Lizzie has no idea what she's doing.

It all starts with a girl.... (Because yes, there's always a girl.) Jason Priestley (not that one) has just seen her. They shared an incredible, brief, fleeting moment of deep possibility, somewhere halfway down Charlotte Street. And then, just like that, she was gone - accidentally leaving him holding her old-fashioned, disposable camera, chock-full of undeveloped photos.... And now Jason - ex-teacher, ex-boyfriend, part-time writer and reluctant hero - faces a dilemma: Should he try and track The Girl down? What if she's The One?

A work that still poses provocative questions about perception and reality, Flatland is a brilliant parody of Victorian society where all existence is limited to length and breadth - its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. The amiable narrator, A. Square, provides an overview of this fantastic world - its physics and metaphysics, its history, customs and religious beliefs. But when a strange visitor mysteriously appears and transports the incredulous Flatlander to the Land of Three Dimensions, his worldview is forever shattered.

Min works at the BBC as an audio engineer, where she is struggling to replicate the sound of a heartbeat. At home, other matters of the heart are making a mockery of life as Min knows it. Min has found herself the object of her lodger's affection. An internationally renowned opera singer she's nicknamed 'The Bloater', Min is disgusted and attracted to him in equal measure. But with a husband so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off on him even when he's still in the room, Min can't quite bring herself to silence The Bloater's overtures.

A comedy of romance and crossed linesSix friends are selling home appliances to the US from a call centre in India. Each one has an issue with love. Call agent Sam works right beside the girl who’s just dumped him. He’s dating someone he can’t stand, just to get over her.Esha is just short of becoming a model. Two inches, to be precise.Vroom wants to change the world. Radikha’s trying to manage her mother-in-law, and hold down her job.

Willow Havens is 10 years old and obsessed with the fear that her mother will die. Her mother, Polly, is a cantankerous, take-no-prisoners Southern woman who lives to chase varmints, drink margaritas, and antagonize the neighbors - and she sticks out like a sore thumb among the young, modern mothers of their small conventional Texas town. She was in her late 50s when Willow was born, so Willow knows she's here by accident, a late-life afterthought.

Doctor Fischer despises the human race. When the notorious toothpaste millionaire decides to hold the last of his famous parties - his own deadly version of the book of Revelation - Greene opens up a powerful vision of the limitless greed of the rich. Black comedy and painful satire combine in a totally compelling novel.

John Hodgman completes his vision with That Is All, the last book in a trilogy of Complete World Knowledge. Like its predecessors, That Is All compiles incredibly handy made-up facts into brief articles, overlong lists, and beguiling narratives on new and familiar themes. It picks up exactly where More Information left off - specifically, at page 596 - and finally completes Complete World Knowledge, just in time for the return of Quetzalcoatl and the end of human history in 2012.

Meet Cherry, a bandit queen on the run, driving a pink soft-top convertible through the Badlands of Southeast England. She's never felt more Thelma and Louise in her life - except there are three of them in the car and one of them is dead. How did a head nurse and mother of two end up driving a handcuffed policeman and the corpse of a murdered refugee on a journey to find justice? Pursued by a racist, roid-raged, shaven-headed officer of the law - not to mention by her husband and daughter - what else can a woman with a conscience do in modern Britain?

Nicki - 30ish, care worker living in Brighton - is scrolling for her next hook up. A difficult home life, a job that's going nowhere, she seeks solace in random encounters. Amber - 17, college student, lost - desperately needs someone to notice her. She creates 'Kevin', a fake dating profile for a man in his thirties. Neither Nicki nor 'Kevin' has any idea what they're about to get into. They quickly match, and an unlikely friendship develops, giving each other the validation both sorely need. But can you ever truly connect when one of you is a liar?

Nina does not have a drinking problem. She likes a drink, sure. But what 17-year-old doesn't? Nina's mum isn't so sure. But she's busy with her new husband and five-year-old Katie. Nina's almost an adult, after all. And if Nina sometimes wakes up with little memory of what happened the night before, then her friends are all too happy to fill in the blanks. Nina's drunken exploits are the stuff of college legend. But then one dark Sunday morning, even her friends can't help piece together Saturday night.

Card-playing corpses, unfaithful husbands and "flying" ladies - life as an ambulance driver in the 1970s was certainly varied.... At the age of 23, Les Pringle decided to escape from office life, broaden his horizons, and become an ambulance driver. Little did he realize how broad those horizons would turn out to be.... Filled with warmth and humour, Blue Lights and Long Nights takes us back to a time when lonely old ladies could call 999 and have a cup of tea waiting when the drivers turned up for a chat; when learning to drive the ambulance meant going out for one test drive and managing not to hit a pedestrian.