Showing titles in Literature & Fiction

Molly Gray has risen through the ranks to become Head Maid at the esteemed Regency Grand Hotel. She owes her penchant for polishing to her beloved Gran – a maid who passed on every cleaning tip she knew. But there’s more to Gran’s story than Molly once thought. In the pages of a diary, kept under lock and key, Molly discovers a past blotted with secrets. Why does it feel like something’s hidden in the family history? What happened to make Gran cut ties? Why didn’t Molly have a clue?

When Meddy Chan accidentally kills her blind date, she turns to her aunties for help. Their meddling set her up on the date, so they kind of owe her. Although hiding this goddamn dead body is going to be harder than they thought especially when her family’s wedding business has the biggest wedding of the year happening right now.

Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She’s slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance. Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie’s dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors.

When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early 40s, the town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils.... Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen.

In Everthing Is F*cked, Mark Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us. Drawing from the pool of psychological research on these topics, as well as the timeless wisdom of philosophers such as Plato, Nietzsche, and Tom Waits, he dissects religion and politics and the uncomfortable ways they have come to resemble one another. He looks at our relationships with money, entertainment, and the internet, and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive.

I would have trusted this man with my life. Until a couple of days ago, anyway. You know what they say - hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Max is quite accustomed to everything going wrong. She's St Mary's, after all. Disaster is her default state. But with her family reunited and a jump to Bronze Age Crete in the works, life is getting back to normal. Well, normal for St Mary's. And then, following one fateful night at the Tower of London, everything Max thought she knew comes crashing down around her. Too late for plans. The worst has happened. And who can Max trust now?

The life of 79-year-old pensioner Peggy Smart is as beige as the décor in her retirement village. Her week revolves around aqua aerobics and appointments with her doctor. Following a very minor traffic accident, things have turned frosty with her grown-up children, and she is afraid they are trying to take away her independence. Noticing her memory isn't what it used to be, Peggy is taking ever more inventive steps to cover up her dwindling faculties.

My husband is dead. I attended his funeral. I watched his casket be lowered six feet into the ground. (Actually, it may have been only five feet, but that still seems like more than enough.) And then we ate an array of finger sandwiches and deviled eggs and miniature beef wellingtons that cost more than my first car. My point is, Grant is gone. And so are all his many, many deep, dark secrets which I never really ever bothered to ask him about. He is never coming back.

Penelope Keith stars in the much-loved sitcom about an aristocrat forced to part with her family home. When her husband's death leaves her financially strapped, Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton has no choice but to sell her beloved Grantleigh Estate. With butler Brabinger in tow, she decamps to the tiny Old Lodge cottage, where she keeps a close - and disapproving - eye on the new squire: the nouveau riche Richard DeVere, a wholesale food magnate of Czech descent.

The last time Lauren Green saw Jamie Sultana, they were seventeen and he'd just shredded her heart like a bad first draft. Back then, Lauren was a frizzy-haired bookworm who dreamed of becoming the next Margaret Atwood. Jamie was the impossibly charming boy who thought Margaret Atwood was a type of cheese. Still, they were hopelessly in love. Until, out of nowhere, they weren't. Twenty years later, Lauren is the vice principal of North Caulfield Primary. She's buried her old heartache and big, bold writing dreams under a stack of responsibilities and big, bold colourful dresses.

Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the fictional Val de Follet in the Loire Valley. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the exotic Valérie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance. Richard remains a dazed passenger in the case until things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hen...and you don’t mess with a fellow’s hens!

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Kevin Kwan, best-selling author of Crazy Rich Asians, is back with a wickedly funny new novel of social climbing, secret e-mails, art-world scandal, lovesick billionaires and the outrageous story of what happens when Rachel Chu, engaged to marry Asia's most eligible bachelor, discovers her birth father. On the eve of her wedding to Nicholas Young, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Asia, Rachel should be over the moon.

Ground-breaking, satirical and anarchic, The Young Ones introduced alternative comedy to mainstream TV, and made household names of its writers and performers. It ran for two series on BBC Two between 1982 and 1984, winning a host of devoted fans and a BAFTA Award for its second series. Collected here are all the dysfunctional foursome's manic adventures.

One of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written, Nancy Mitford's classic is now major a BBC and Prime Video series directed by Emily Mortimer and starring Lily James, Andrew Scott and Dominic West. Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover. But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought.

Waking up in a tacky coffin and wearing off-brand shoes, Betsy Taylor can't believe the horrible turn her life has taken; then she discovers she's a vampire. Soon, Betsy becomes a participant in a power struggle between the forces of darkness. With only her friend Jessica and the hunky vampire Sinclair to help her, this new "Queen of Vampires" will have a tough time getting her afterlife straight.

Starting a new job is always stressful (especially when you don't particularly want one), but when Paul Carpenter arrives at the office of J. W. Wells he has no idea what trouble lies in store. Because he is about to discover that the apparently respectable establishment now paying his salary is in fact a front for a deeply sinister organisation that has a mighty peculiar agenda. It seems that half the time his bosses are away with the fairies. But they're not, of course. They're away with the goblins.

While investigating a fairly straightforward case of a shape-shifting interdimensional child predator, Dave, John, and Amy realized there might actually be something weird going on. Together, they navigate a diabolically convoluted maze of illusions, lies, and their own incompetence in an attempt to uncover a terrible truth they - like you - would be better off not knowing.

The art of love is never a science.: Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially inept professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs The Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a 16-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Yet, Rosie Jarman possesses all these qualities and. Don easily disqualifies her as a suitable candidate (even if she is "quite intelligent for a barmaid").

Trapped in rural Steeple Bumpleigh, a man less stalwart than Bertie Wooster would probably have given way at the knees. For among those present were Florence Craye, to who Bertie had once been engaged...and her new fiance 'Stilton' Cheesewright, who regarded Bertie as a snake in the grass...also Zenobia Hopwood and her guardian Lord Worplesdon, whose violent antipathy to 'Boko' Fittleworth amounted to obsession...and that biggest blot on the landscape, Edwin the Boy Scout.