Showing titles in City Life

Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn’t belong. Not with his mother’s new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father’s wife. Not at school, where he’s an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez?

When Rosie inherits No.13 Arundel Crescent from the birth parents she never knew, the large house in London’s upmarket Notting Hill feels like a dream come true, at first... But dreams can become nightmares. The house is crumbling around her and has conditions attached. She can’t sell it on, and before long, she’s forced to take in lodgers, just to pay the bills.

In a busy maternity ward, first-time father Dan meets Jada, a dad welcoming his fifth – no, sixth? – child into the world. Dan and Jada come from very different places: both called Glasgow. Dan is a successful TV writer with a townhouse in the West End and a shiny Tesla ready to drive his...

Liverpool 1931. In a Liverpool torn by the Depression, Daisy Gallagher grows to womanhood the hard way. She is the mainstay of her poverty-stricken family and the devoted friend of Nellie O’Brian, who is dying for lack of medical attention. Daisy’s desperation for money leads her into the darkened streets and into the arms of drunken sailors willing to pay for their relief. Through her own strength and suffering, Daisy earns enough to pay for her friend’s much needed medical attention.

Callie Renfew didn’t go looking for trouble, but now it’s at her door there’s no way she’s backing down. It’s been a year since Callie last saw her useless husband Gavin and although everyone else thinks he’s dead, Callie has an uneasy feeling that her husband is still alive and waiting to make his final vengeful move… Until then, Callie plans to get on with her life and pushes forward with a new business scheme with her new millionaire business partner, enigmatic Spaniard Carlos Martinez.

Coco is having a hell of a month. She’s lost her boyfriend and her business, been forced to uproot her daughter to move back in with her parents in Paris, and now an infuriatingly handsome stranger is yelling at her for acting like a tourist… Right underneath the Eiffel Tower. Storming away from him – and swearing off men for life – she decides she’s going to take the first job that comes her way. Then, as if fate hears her, later that day she stumbles into a little bookshop – but not any old bookshop.

When Aleisha discovers a crumpled reading list tucked into a tattered library book, it sparks an extraordinary journey. From timeless stories of love and friendship to an epic journey across the Pacific Ocean with a boy and a tiger in a boat, the list opens a gateway to new and wonderful worlds - just when Aleisha needs an escape from her troubles at home. And when widower Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to connect with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha introduces him to the magic of the reading list.

Brought to you by Penguin. London, 1990. Zivoin is newly arrived in a strange country. The dependable oldest son, he works all hours of the day and night, sending every penny he can save back to his family. On the news, he watches his homeland, Yugoslavia, slowly fracturing. Thousands of miles...

My new husband is everything I shouldn't want: dark soul, wicked smile, and a growl that makes me forget my own name. A walking sin in a tailored suit, he's determined to make me pay for my father's betrayal. But the way he claims me like I'm his only redemption tells a different story. Turns out New York's most feared crime lord has a weakness. And apparently, it's me.

South Street is a brilliant, heartfelt portrait of Black urban life and a man grappling with the messy, uncontainable truths of life, love, and survival. Philadelphia’s South Street in the 1970s is a place of sharp contrasts. On one block, working stiffs swap stories with winos at Lightnin’...

Brought to you by Penguin. A brutal murder. A young woman’s body is discovered with horrifying injuries, a recent newspaper cutting pinned to her clothing. A detective with everything to prove. This is her only chance to redeem herself. A serial killer with nothing to lose. He’s waited years...

Brought to you by Penguin. York, 1988. Dr Tom Frith is beginning his first term as a tutor at the University of Eboracum. After teaching primary school children for several years, he's sure shaping the minds of young adults will be a welcome change. But that's before considering the pressures...

What will be will be. Belinda Marshall’s idyllic teenage life in Brittany, France, fell apart when her parents dramatically separated and her mother took her back to England. Fast forward 35 years when Belinda’s world is once again turned upside down. It’s the week before Christmas and her employer 'surprises’ Belinda by asking for her help to rejuvenate their latest investment, a run-down campsite in Brittany.

It all begins on a Monday, when four people board an elevator in a Manhattan office tower. Each presses a button for their floor, but the elevator proceeds, nonstop, to the top. Once there, it stops for a few seconds, and then plummets. Right to the bottom of the shaft. It appears to be a horrific, random tragedy. But then, on Tuesday, it happens again, in a different skyscraper. And when Wednesday brings yet another high-rise catastrophe, one of the most vertical cities in the world - and the nation’s capital of media, finance and entertainment - is plunged into chaos.

‘Addictive writing wrapped up in a compelling page turner that makes you deeply think and feel’ YOMI ADEGOKE 'An incisive new voice in fiction' COCO MELLORS We give celebrities a power they don’t deserve. Power they haven’t earned. What happens when they exploit it? Imagine you’ve just...

Who is Vernon Subutex? An urban legend. A fall from grace. The mirror who reflects us all. Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Bastille. His legend spread throughout Paris. But by the 2000s his shop is struggling. With his savings gone, his unemployment benefit cut and the friend who had been covering his rent suddenly dead, Vernon Subutex finds himself down and out on the Paris streets. He has one final card up his sleeve. 

She’s no damsel in distress, and he’s certainly not wearing shining armour. But one knight can change everything… Daisy Hastings has always thought she was born in the wrong era. So when she bags a summer job at the Tower of London helping to run their Knight school, it feels like a...

Can two friends find hope in hard times? Ruby and Grace have grown up in the poorest slums of Hull. Friends since early childhood, they have supported each other in bad times and good. But their families are bound together by more than friendship, and secrets from the past threaten to make their...

When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms a gunman chasing two frightened homeless men, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind and, within hours, Lucy is a media hero. The solitary eye-witness is the depressed and overweight Lena Sorensen, who...

To the casual observer, the great enlightened city of Edinburgh, home of no-nonsense sermons and cream teas, might appear immune to the rollercoaster of strong emotions. But at 44 Scotland Street, as Matthew and Elspeth embark on the risky enterprise of married love, the raffish portrait painter Angus Lordie has a premonition of disaster. Soon enough Irene Pollock is shocked to learn that her small son Bertie harbours a highly unsuitable ambition; and Angus finds himself facing a large Glaswegian gangster.