Showing results by publisher "John Murray" in Women's Fiction

Fifteen-year-old Ana Canción never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she must say yes. It doesn't matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year's Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights.

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando.

Other people find Majella odd. She keeps herself to herself, she doesn't like gossip and she isn't interested in knowing her neighbours' business. But suddenly everyone in the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up wants to know all about hers. Since her da disappeared during the Troubles, Majella has tried to live a quiet life with her alcoholic mother.

It is the summer of 1994. In a small town on the Irish border, Maeve and her two friends have just secured summer jobs in the local shirt factory. They plan to make as much money as they can while waiting for their A Level results before getting out of town and away to the UK. As the summer progresses and the marching season begins, tensions in the factory start to rise between the Catholic and Protestant workforce and events escalate putting Maeve's chance of escape in jeopardy.

Joan was only a child the last time she visited Memphis. She doesn't remember the bustle of Beale Street on a summer's night. She doesn't know she's as likely to hear a gunshot ring out as the sound of children playing. How the smell of honeysuckle is almost overwhelming as she climbs the porch steps to the house where her mother grew up. But when the front door opens, she does remember Derek. This house full of history is home to the women of the North family. 

'Smart, brave and often very funny . . . profoundly moving' Sarah Haywood, author of The Cactus This morning Gigi left her husband and children. Now she's watching Real Housewives and drinking wine in a crummy hotel room, trying to work out how she got here. When the Twin Towers collapsed, Gigi...

'An incredible debut from a blazing new voice in Scottish fiction' Image 'Beautifully captures the pain of growing into yourself, and the intensity of all-consuming female friendship' ROSE WILDING 'I inhaled Gender Theory in one intoxicating sitting . . . a powerful and necessary novel' RACHEL...

Like all 20-year-olds, Ryan Cusack is trying to get his head around who he is. This is not a good time for his boss to exploit his dual heritage by opening a new black market route from Italy to Ireland. It is certainly not a good time for his adored girlfriend to decide he's irreparably corrupted. And he really wishes he hadn't accidentally caught the eye of an ornery grandmother who fancies herself his saviour.

An emotionally powerful novel about four women and the incredible strength it takes to live a life made invisible by others. When you can't get out, let kindness in. In a non-descript building in a gentrifying corner of London, Penny is doing daily battle with her mind. She is convinced that the...

'A captivating story of love and adventure, thrumming with secrets' Lucy Steeds, author of The Artist 'Moves elegantly back and forwards in time, and across the world from Paris and London to the Antipodes . . . beautifully written' Sunday Times 'A compelling tale . . . blends historical fiction...

A keenly perceptive coming-of-age novel set at a prestigious New England prep school, as nine young women navigate their ambitions, friendships, and fears against the backdrop of a scandal the administration wants silenced. 'A sincere, poignant and moving story of a group of teenage girls coming...

An unforgettable love story set in Siberia during the Second World War and of living with impossible choices. Lena knows she hasn't got long left. While a nurse administers morphine to ease her pain, she relives her life. Growing up in a small town in Poland, she was an earnest young girl...

It seemed, at times, an act of profound selfishness, to have a child so that I might become a parent; but selfish, too, to have a child and stay the same, or not to have one - unless the only honest choice would have been to try to become this kinder version of myself without the need to bring another into it.

'Did you know in Tudor times all the brothels were south of the river in Southwark and it was only much later that they moved up this way to Soho. Stews, they were called then.' Pungent, steamy, insatiable Soho; the only part of London that truly never sleeps. Tourists dawdling, chancers...

Johnny was my first. I was seventeen and I was only brave enough to talk to him after I'd had three vodkas. He was only brave enough to kiss me when no-one else was around. Dave was different. We didn't go out or see friends. We were each other's world. Dave was all I needed. We were toxic before it became fashionable. Kyle was my best friend. And that was the problem. Or at least that's what he said was the problem.

In 1859, in a small town jail, deep in the forests of Canada, an elderly woman sits behind bars. She came to Dunmore via the Underground Railroad to escape enslavement, but an American bounty hunter tracked her down. Now she's in jail for killing him. Lensinda Martin, a smart young reporter, wants to tell the woman's version of events, hoping that it will lead to her acquittal, but the woman will only tell her story on one condition: she gets one from Lensinda in return. As the women swap stories, it becomes apparent that their histories are interconnected.

Dounia, a young Saudi finds herself alienated and alone as she prepares for motherhood in an air-conditioned mansion in the middle of the desert. After losing her home and baby in a natural disaster, Flora does the unthinkable and leaves her surviving child in the Philippines to become an overseas domestic worker. Pushed by her family to marry a jihadist, Zeinah, a Syrian woman finds herself joining the city's morality police. Justine uproots her progressive New York family to curate an exhibit in Abu Dhabi, where she must reckon with her ethical limitations. 

'IMMERSIVE, AMAZING, REMARKABLE' MARIAN KEYES 'JANET ELLIS WRITES WITH TENDERNESS AND WISDOM' ERIN KELLY 'AN ATMOSPHERIC, CLEVER NOVEL THAT WILL GET UNDER YOUR SKIN' RED Marion Deacon sits by the hospital bed of her dying husband, Michael. Outwardly she is, as she says, an unremarkable old woman...