Showing results for "Stories" in Urban

Under the neon hush of a sleepless city, a night-shift tram conductor keeps count of the lights that flicker above his route — lanterns that, according to an old myth, drink sorrow so the streets can sleep. As rain hums against glass and passengers drift in and out like ghosts of their own stories, he carries memories of loss, guilt, and love left unfinished. Each night becomes a quiet confession — a dialogue between man, machine, and the city’s secret pulse.

Devil-Girl is a storyteller smaller than a stain and larger than life, a mythic figure roaming the globe. Born into Brooklyn housing projects and the nightmares of her immigrant family, she becomes a runaway in the human marketplace of the streets of New York. Accompanied by her sense of outrage and sense of humor, ghosts of the ancestors, and her prophetic vision, she moves from silence through rage into deep alliance with the marginalized.

'I implore you to read (or listen to) it' - Marian Keyes, author of Again, Rachel An all-consuming story of loneliness, obsession and how far we go for the ones we love, If I Can't Have You is the debut novel by Charlotte Levin. After fleeing Manchester for London, Constance Little attempts to...

Penny never had a structured life growing up, so she has lived her whole adulthood according to her life goals and plans. She makes decisions based on thought-out reasoning, and she never ventures out of her comfort zone. All of that changes when she meets Jeremy. Jeremy is rebellious and wild but makes her feel free. She begins to fall for him before finding out that he is a billionaire rockstar.

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.

When love leaves 19-year-old Loyalty Wallace with nothing but a pair of bruised ribs, she finds herself with $500,000 in stolen cash from her boyfriend, Whip, and a target on her back. She plans to use that money to escape her toxic relationship, but what she doesn’t know is the money she stole wasn’t his to keep. It was a loan from the Belmonte family, one of the most dangerous families in the heart of the Big Apple.

It's the turn of the millennium and, landing in London with nothing but her CD collection and demo tape, Orla Quinn moves into a squalid Kilburn house with her best mate and a band called Shiva. Orla wants to make music, but juggling two jobs and partying every night isn't helping. Back in Ireland her parents' marriage has crumbled, she's not speaking to her father, and her mother and sister are drinking too much.

An irresistible French sensation - Mr Penumbra's 24- hour Bookstore meets Amélie - The Reader on the 6.27 explores the power of books through the lives of the people they save. It is sure to capture the hearts of book lovers everywhere. Guylain Vignolles leads a dull and solitary life. He hates...

When I discover my boyfriend is cheating on me, I quit my job, and move to take up a role as the PR manager for a hockey team. Only problem? There’s a mix up. Now I’m stuck sharing a flat with the grumpy, hockey captain who's a former marine. Worse? (or is that better?) there’s only one bed! Even worse? My ex too has moved, as the captain of the rival team, ugh! When my enigmatic roomie realizes how much I want revenge he comes up with a plan.

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin draws upon his three-decade career in the criminal justice system with his characteristic wit and his fascination with misfits and malfeasance. A lifetime immersed in New York City feeds short stories that evoke a landscape of characters rife with personal arrogance and misjudgment; and nonfiction essays about toeing the line when the line keeps disappearing.

A collection of stories that trace the threads of loss and displacement running through all our lives, by the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Theory of Light and Matter “What a beautiful book about the profound mystery of ordinary life.” —Alix Ohlin, author of We Want What We Want...

In part two of Homies, Lovers And Friends, Michelle is left with the fact that her life with Tasheem just might have caused her cousin to be murdered. When taking four steps forward, she feels as if she's pushed back fifteen. Just when she thought she had gotten rid of Tasheem and his evil ways, he came back and decided to cause harm to not just her, but Miracle.

With the secrets of Mello’s infidelity, Patsy is left with a baby, drinking problem and decision to make on her marriage. For years Patsy’s life has been about her husband. Will she be willing to work things out with the only man she has loved? Or will she allow her drinking problem get in the way and destroy more than just her life? Michelle and Thor are in a weird place where they love each other, but don’t feel entitled to speak on things in each other’s life.Secrets, love triangles, and tough decisions test relationships in the third of this urban romance series. C

Told with dark humor and unremitting honesty, Linda Yablonsky's riveting first novel explores the New York art and postpunk music world of the early 1980s from deep within. Set in motion by the appearance of a federal agent, the tale follows two women on a dangerous and seductive journey through a bohemia where hard drugs, extreme behavior, intense friendships, and the emergence of AIDS profoundly alter their lives.

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

Reagan is a dedicated nurse who's seen it all, but nothing prepared her for a suffocating co-parenting relationship with a man who symbolizes everything she despises. She finds herself haunted by the consequences of her choices and burdened by the struggles of maintaining a facade of happiness while concealing her inner turmoil. However, a chance encounter with a gunshot victim during her shift opens Reagan's eyes to the possibility of liberation from her oppressive reality.

Lek was born the eldest child of four in a typical rice farming family. She did not expect to do anything any different from the other girls in her class in the northern rice belt of Thailand. Typically that would be: work in the fields for a few years; have a few babies; give them to mum to take care of and get back to work until her kids had their own children, and it would be her turn to stop working to take care of them.

Inequality. Influence. Fraud. Sabotage. These are the themes of great fiction and our modern economy. In this collection of short stories by some of today’s most scintillating writers, the rich get poorer and the poor get richer. Yeah, right! From the heartbreaking to the hilarious, here are eight instantly classic battles over currency, class, privilege - and social distance.

In the collection’s first story, a Japanese woman finds healing in a secret life as a sex advice columnist after being fetishized by her white husband for decades, while in the fourth story, Ronald Reagan is reincarnated as a puppy and must cope with being squeezed, dropped, and controlled by his young, queer owner. And in “Thank You No Thank You” a young woman who grew up in a cloistered religious community and escaped to a liberal law school grapples with the rules she learned in childhood, the rules of her new life, and her actual desires as she vacations with her long-term boyfriend.

Tricey, Vic, and Lyric are three friends from the Southside of Chicago fighting in the tumultuous war to find the one amongst the chaotic sea of Mr. Wrongs. After breaking up with her baby's father, Memphis, Vic is in the arms of one new beau after the next, turning her heartbreak into a life filled with bald-headed h*e shenanigans. Vic's new approach to love terribly clashes with Asa's uncontrollable need to be more than her next sneaky link.