Showing results for "Skin" in Family Life

London, 1985. Joe, father to 11-year-old Matty, has disappeared, and nobody will explain where he's gone or why. In the long, hot summer that follows, Matty's hunt for Joe leads to the ponds at Hampstead Heath. Beneath the water, there is a new kind of freedom. Above the water, a welcoming community of men offer refuge from an increasingly rocky home life. Fourteen years later, a new revelation sees Matty set off alone in a campervan, driving westwards through Ireland, swimming its wild loughs and following the scant clues left behind about Joe.

The last time Esther Wilding's beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura's disappearance, Esther's family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister's death, Esther reluctantly travels from Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands. On her journey, Esther is guided by the stories Aura left behind in her treasured journal; seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.

Brought to you by Penguin. SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR CARIBBEAN LITERATURE Pumkin Patterson dreams of a life beyond her Jamaican hometown. But what we dream of and where we belong aren’t always the same thing… Eleven-year-old Pumpin knows a few things: That her mother has...

No-one remembers your past. But you do. ‘Antonia, Antonia. My name is Antonia.’ It’s been her name for many years. But sometimes, like tonight, she forgets. Antonia has a secret. A secret so dark and so deep that she can barely admit it to herself. Instead, she treats herself to Friday...

Inside his home in Derry, Joe Logan's life is ruled by his tormented father; outside, by the tension and violence of the Troubles. Sometimes his father makes him run errands despite the nearby reports of gunfire. Other times his mother, afraid to be alone with her volatile and war-wounded husband, confines Joe to the home. A bright and sensitive young man, Joe finds solace and freedom in writing - a pursuit encouraged by Kathleen Doherty, a young teacher at a nearby school whom he meets and befriends.

A year ago, Kate Mamotte fought back. Her husband died. She lived. Yet escaping isn’t the same as moving on. Desperate for a fresh start, she returns to Perth, where a housesitting gig, a temperamental cat, and a too-helpful neighbor, Ryan, offer a distraction. Then the flowers arrive. From her dead husband. The police think she’s unraveling. But as Kate digs into the past, she uncovers an affair, a child, and a deadly secret worth killing for. The threats escalate. And someone is watching.

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt’s secrets in this “enchanting, memorable” (Bustle) debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. “As beautifully detailed as a piece of Palestinian embroidery, this bold, vivid novel will...

Josh Moore lives with his family on the "wrong side" of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in Southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth, and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind.

On the advice of a five-dollar psychic, Tina Martin, a zany, overworked mother of two, quits her high-powered job and moves her family to Shanghai. Tina yearns for this new setting to bring her the zen-like inner peace she’s always heard about on infomercials. Instead, she becomes a totally exasperated fish out of water. Fish Heads and Duck Skin will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered who they are, why they were put here, and how they ever lived before eating pan-fried pork buns.

Virginia and Joe Thorndike have been married for 22 years, and now she's in love with a surgeon 13 years her junior. She leaves her husband and flies to Miami to start living with Rich Villamano, but there he tells her he has changed his mind and they must go their own ways. She takes off in his car, heading north with no luggage, no hope, no destination. She buys a bottle of gin and drinks it straight. Afraid that she’ll kill herself or someone else on the road, she abandons the car, flies to New York and takes an airport hotel room. She has no home and nowhere to go.

Ruth is a 74-year-old woman. Rowan is a 23-year-old man. They’re in love. And Ruth’s 43-year-old son is freaking the hell out.

We follow the family as Phil begins his private practice, as Velma opens her antiques shop, and as they buy new homes, collect art, go skiing, and have overseas adventures. It seems they've made it in the white world. However, young Maddie, one of the only Black children in town, bears the brunt of the racism and the invisible barriers her family's money, education, and determination can't free her from.