The woman in the purple skirt seems to live in a world of her own. She appears to glide through crowded streets without acknowledging any reaction her presence elicits. Each afternoon, she sits on the same park bench, eating a pastry and ignoring the local children who make a game of trying to get her attention. She may not know it, but the woman in the purple skirt being watched. Someone is following her, always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes, what she eats, whom she speaks to.

Meet Keiko. Keiko is 36 years old. She's never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years. Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married. But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store.

On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: 30-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter, Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast-enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother’s self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsu’s rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties. 

A ruthless executive. A destitute woman. Both on the way up. Selina Hale is on her way to the top. She's been working towards a boardroom position on the 13th floor for her entire career. And no one is going to get in her way. Not her clueless boss, her soon to be ex-wife, and most certainly not the homeless person who has moved into the car park at work. Kate Morgan fell through the cracks in a broken support system and found herself destitute. Determined and strong-willed, she's not about to accept help from a mean business woman who can't even remember the names of her own nephews.

Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention.... 

In Heaven, a 14-year-old boy is tormented for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, he chooses to suffer in silence. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate, Kojima, who experiences similar treatment at the hands of her bullies. Providing each other with immeasurable consolation at a time in their lives when they need it most, the two young friends grow closer than ever. But what, ultimately, is the nature of a friendship when your shared bond is terror?

The library is a sanctuary for some, a place for warmth for others and, on many occasions, an internet café. It's not always the books that bring us together. That's why you might be surprised to hear that I've been a witness to an attempted murder, a target for a drugs gang and the last hope for people in desperate poverty. The quirks of library life. But what I didn't expect was for a simple part-time job to become a passionate battle for survival, both for me and for the library.

Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her—what to call it?—depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. 

Ms Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely. Ms Kim Jiyoung is depressed. Ms Kim Jiyoung is mad. Ms Kim Jiyoung is her own woman. Ms Kim Jiyoung is every woman. Ms Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the South Korean sensation which has got the whole world talking. The life story of one young woman born halfway across the globe at the end of the 20th century raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression which are relevant to us all.

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort - a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny' and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one.

Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world—of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over, fades from view. When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love—making games.

Casey Han's years at Princeton have given her a refined diction, an enviable golf handicap, a popular white boyfriend and a degree in economics. But no job, and a number of bad habits. As Casey, the daughter of working-class Korean immigrants, navigates an uneven course of small triumphs and spectacular failures, a clash of values, ideals and ambitions plays out against the colourful backdrop of New York society.

Sophie Rivers can't wait to settle into married life now that Mike is back from touring Pakistan and Sri Lanka with the England cricket team. So when she's offered a temporary job at his home ground, archiving a collection of memorabilia that has been left to Warwickshire County Cricket Club, she jumps at the chance, envisaging companionable journeys into work and cosy lunches in the Tom Dollery bar. But the reality is a far cry from her romantic dream.

Listen to Neil Haverson's 50-year ride through the Norfolk and Suffolk newspaper industry, in this audiobook edition read by "Brat Minor", Nick Haverson, and with an introduction to Neil's "greatest hits" from "Brat Major". Enjoy Neil's tales of bachelor life in King's Lynn and sporting prowess on the cricket field and hockey pitch - also find out how he met Mrs H. Neil has witnessed it all in the ever-changing regional media world - from flongs, hot metal, and office cricket to full color printing, digital editions, and the web.

Meet Ned and Alice: internet entrepreneurs with a delightfully demagnetised moral compass. In Berlin, their combined talents have brought social media start-up The Thing Factory, to the verge of lucrative success. But Ned - a businessman with a history of shady dealings - is unhappy at his increasing lack of control in the company. As his anxieties become harder to ignore, Alice's ambitions are meanwhile tempting her to jettison her own principles for a turn at the wheel.