Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in City Life

Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she's never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America. But when her mother announces her engagement to their wealthy Chinese landlord, Lu Fang, Alva's hopes are dashed, and so she plots for the next best thing: the American School in Shanghai. Upon admission, though, Alva is surprised to discover an institution run by an exclusive community of expats and the ever-wilder thrills of a city where foreigners can ostensibly act as they please.

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away. Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another's sight, always on one another's mind, yet rarely together.

A fatal jump. A missing suffragette. An inexplicable murder. London, 1920. Reporter Iris Woodmore lands a headline story when, for the first time, two women compete against each other in an election to become Britain’s next female MP. But she’s forced to confront her past as the House of Commons is where her mother, Violet, died during a suffragette attack on Parliament in 1914.

Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down. Exuberant, scandalous and exceptionally discerning, The Bonfire of the Vanities was Tom Wolfe's first venture into fiction and cemented his reputation as the foremost chronicler of his age.

Richard has spent his life as a university professor, immersed in the world of books and ideas. Recently retired, he steps into the streets of his city, Berlin, and discovers a new community. A tent city has grown up on Oranienplatz, established by African asylum seekers. Hesitantly getting to know the people there, Richard finds his life changing, as he begins to question his own sense of belonging in a city that once divided its citizens into them and us.

Shani Akilah's stunning collection brings to life the stories of Black-British Londoners as they explore friendship and romance, community and independence, and navigate their way through the relationships that make them who they are.

1715. Jonas Flynt, ex-soldier and reluctant member of the Company of Rogues, a shady intelligence group run by ruthless spymaster Nathaniel Charters, is ordered to recover a missing document. Its contents could prove devastating in the wrong hands. On her deathbed, the late Queen Anne may have promised the nation to her half-brother James, the Old Pretender, rather than the new king, George I. But the will has been lost. It may decide the fate of the nation.

Agnes Green is not having the summer of her life. Trapped in the suburbs with a strict religious mother, her nights are spent secretly dating Toby—who loves arthouse film, getting stoned, and ignoring her texts—and her days listening to sermons about the sins of the flesh. Then she meets Emily. Beautiful, charismatic and oddly controlling, Emily has a suggestion for Agnes. A life-changing way of making cash and having fun. It might even involve love. And it's easy. All you have to do is put a little black dress on and go to lunch.

Known for its luxury and discrete service, the Hotel Louis XVI in Paris has attracted an international clientele of the rich and famous for many decades. Now, after extensive renovation and under new management, an esteemed group of loyal returning guests is set to descend upon the hotel, joined by a group of new faces who have managed to secure coveted reservations. Anxiously awaiting the guests is the new manager, Olivier Bateau, and his assistant, Yvonne Philippe. Both strive to continue the hotel's tradition for excellence.

April, 1945. As the Americans storm the Buchenwald concentration camp, among the survivors are Jakob and Emmanuelle, barely more than teenagers. Each of them has lost everything and everyone in the unspeakable horrors of the war. But when they meet, they find hope and comfort in each other. They marry and build a happy, prosperous life for themselves and their new family, but their pasts cast a long shadow over the present....

Normally little happens in these mixed streets of families, retirees, podcasters and gossips. A little group create a community garden. An ageing journalist writes nature columns. A left-wing Scotsman longs for the glory days when he interviewed Castro. A disabled professor plans a book clearance. Supine Mario takes far too many drugs. And Wilf Kelly decides to get a fox as a pet.

Isa Epley is 21 years old and wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. In her diary she chronicles her New York City adventure during the sweltering summer of 2013. By day, Isa and her best friend, Gala, sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, and bad-mannered grifters. 

Liv Granger has been flailing through life since her teens. When her brother, Joe, announces his engagement to his long-term boyfriend, Liv realizes that she has never been able to commit to anything—a career, a fixed address, a relationship—and she may, in fact, be a massive loser. With the help of Joe and Henry, her oldest friend, Liv comes up with the Loser List: ten tasks to change her life. The most challenging—three dates with the same person. After each increasingly disastrous date, Henry is always there to the rescue.

Private investigator Charles Maddox is surprised when he is approached by Edward Tulkinghorn for help. The feared and shadowy attorney offers Charles a handsome price he can't refuse to do some sleuthing for a client. Charles learns that Sir Julius Cremorne has been receiving threatening letters, and now Tulkinghorn wants him to find and stop whoever is responsible. But what starts as a simple open-and-shut case swiftly escalates into something bigger and much darker. As he cascades toward a collision with powerful forces, Charles will need all the assistance he can get…

Emery is born with a heart condition that means her heart could quite literally stop at any moment. The people around her know what to do—if they act quickly enough there will be no lasting damage, and Emery's heart can be restarted. But when this happens, she is briefly technically dead. Each time Emery's heart stops, she meets Nick. His purpose is to help people adjust to the fact that they are dead, to help them say goodbye, before they move on entirely. He does not usually meet people more than once—but with Emery, he is able to make a connection, and he finds himself drawn to her.

In a condemned tower block in Glasgow, residents slowly trickle away until a young man is left alone with only the angels and devils in his mind for company. Stumbling from one surreal situation to the next, he encounters others on the margins of society, finding friendship and camaraderie wherever it is offered, grappling with who he is and what shape his future might take. The Voids is an unsparing story of modern-day Britain, told with brilliant flashes of humour and humanity.

Breathtakingly tender, Seven Days in Tokyo is an astonishing debut about the intricacies of desire and a search for belonging. It is a lyrical, immersive portrait of how some things, however beautiful and profound, are destined to be as short-lived as the cherry blossoms.

She’s a fearless racer with a point to prove. He’s her number one enemy on the grid. Now their careers depend on convincing the world of their love, but can they put aside their past to save their future?

One queue. 250,000 people. Twenty-four life-changing hours. A young boy wearing a cereal box crown, impatiently dragging his mother behind him. A friendly man in a khaki raincoat, talking about his beloved Leeds United to anyone who will listen. An elderly woman who has lived her life alongside the Queen, and is just hoping she'll make it to the end of the queue to say goodbye. And among them, a British Indian mother and daughter, driven apart by their differences, embarking on a pilgrimage which neither of them yet know will change their lives forever.

Damani is tired. Every day she cares for her mom, drives ride shares to pay the bills and is angry at a world that promised her more before spitting her out. That is until the summer she meets Jolene and life opens up. Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend—attentive, attractive, liberal—and their chemistry feels genuine. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that's holding her back: Jolene is white. But Jolene really doesn't seem like one of the bad ones—she's done the reading, she goes to every protest, she even listens.