Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Urban

Umiko Wada has had enough excitement in life. With an overbearing mother and her husband recently murdered, she just wants to keep her head down. As a secretary to a private detective, her life is pleasantly filled with coffee runs and paperwork. That is, until her boss takes on a new case. A case that is surrounded by shadows. A case that means Wada will have to leave Tokyo and travel to London.

Throughout the Roman Army, the brutal XIIth Legion is notorious for its ill fortune. For one young man, Demalion of Macedon, joining it will be a baptism of fire. And yet, amid all of the violence and savagery of his life as a legionary, he will come to love the Twelfth and the bloody-minded, dark-hearted soldiers he calls his brothers. But during the punishing Judaean campaign, the Hebrew army inflict a catastrophic defeat upon the legion - not only decimating their ranks, but taking away their soul - the eagle.

6.45 a.m. A sweltering London rush hour. And in the last 27 minutes, seven people have been murdered. In a series of coordinated attacks, seven men and women across London have been targeted. For journalist Famie Madden, the horror unfolds as she arrives for the morning shift.

AD 69. The year of the four emperors. Three emperors have ruled in Rome this year and a fourth, Vespasian, has been named in the East. As the legions march toward civil war, Sebastos Pantera, the spy whose name means leopard, returns to Rome intent on bribery, blackmail and persuasion: whatever it takes to bring the commanders and their men to Vespasian's side. But in Rome, as he uses every skill he has ever learned of subterfuge, codes and camouflage, it becomes clear that one of those closest to him is a traitor who will let Rome fall to destroy him.

The emperor: Nero, emperor of Rome and feared by his subjects for his temper and cruelty, is in possession of an ancient document predicting that Rome will burn. The spy: Sebastos Pantera, assassin and spy for the Roman Legions, is ordered to stop the impending cataclysm. He knows that if he doesn't, his life - and that of thousands of others - is in terrible danger. The chariot boy: Math, a young charioteer, subject to the wiles and schemes of the emperor and the spy.

When Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.

Chrissie knows how to steal sweets from the shop without getting caught, the best hiding place for hide-and-seek, the perfect wall for handstands. Now she has a new secret. It gives her a fizzing sherbet feeling in her belly. She doesn't get to feel power like this at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer. Fifteen years later, Julia is working in a fish-and-chip shop and trying to mother her five-year-old daughter, Molly. She is always worried - about affording food and school shoes, about what the other mothers think of her.

Years on from Trainspotting Sick Boy is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London. Having failed spectacularly as a hustler, pimp, husband, father and businessman, Sick Boy taps into an opportunity which to him represents one last throw of the dice. However, to realise his ambitions within the Adult industries, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton.

“This impressively bleak vision of the near future is as grotesquely amusing as it is grim.” ― Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW “A gripping tour-de-force torn from tomorrow’s headlines.” ― David Demchuk, author of Red X and The Bone Mother “A bold dystopian novel that...

The theme that unites these stories in this dazzling first collection by Curtis Sittenfeld is how even the cleverest people tend to misread others and how much we all deceive ourselves. Sharp and tender, funny and wise, this collection shows Sittenfeld’s knack for creating real, believable characters while also skewering contemporary mores with brilliant dry wit. 

When powerful real estate tycoon Nero Golden moves to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking Roman names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Invoking literature, pop culture, and the cinema, Salman Rushdie spins the story of the American zeitgeist over the last eight years, hitting every beat. In a new world order of alternative truths, Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies.

A young man, the son of an influential businessman, is discovered dead in his Central Aberdeen apartment. Hours later, a teenaged girl with no identification is found hanged in a suspected suicide. As DI Eve Hunter and her team investigate the two cases, they find themselves in a tug-of-war between privilege and poverty; between the elite and those on the fringes of society. Then an unexpected breakthrough leads them to the shocking conclusion: that those in power have been at the top for too long - and now, someone is going to desperate lengths to bring them down.

WINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations. Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is...

DCI Harry Virdee has just enough time to get his son and his mother to safety before the bomb blows. But this is merely a stunt; there is worse to come. A new and aggressive nationalist group, the Patriots, have hidden a second device under one of the city’s mosques. In exchange for the safe release of those at Friday prayers, the Patriots want custody of the leaders of radical Islamist group Almukhtareen - the chosen ones. 

Mark Renton is a very sick young man. He's sick of heroin and sick of trying to get off it but, above all, Renton is thoroughly sick of himself. What with vampire ghost babies, exploding siblings and disatorous sexual encounters, it's pain to see why Renton gloomily contends that 'life does not get any easier'.

A masterful, moving novel about age, memory, and family from one of the literary icons of our time. Coming in March 2022 from Apple Plus , a six-part series starring Samuel L. Jackson Ptolemy Grey is ninety-one years old and has been all but forgotten-by his family, his friends, even himself-as...

As a series of rolling blackouts plunge the city into darkness, Detective Aidan Waits sits on an abandoned hospital ward, watching a mass murderer slowly die. Transferred from his usual night shift duties and onto protective custody, he has just one job...to extract the location of Martin Wick’s final victim before the notorious mass murderer passes away. Wick has spent over a decade in prison, in near-total silence, having confessed to an unspeakable crime that shocked the nation and earned him the nickname of The Sleepwalker.

Nina does not have a drinking problem. She likes a drink, sure. But what 17-year-old doesn't? Nina's mum isn't so sure. But she's busy with her new husband and five-year-old Katie. Nina's almost an adult, after all. And if Nina sometimes wakes up with little memory of what happened the night before, then her friends are all too happy to fill in the blanks. Nina's drunken exploits are the stuff of college legend. But then one dark Sunday morning, even her friends can't help piece together Saturday night.

In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present. Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8...

From the beloved author of The Old Place comes a tender, funny, and fresh novel about a gay writer in New York City whose life is irrevocably altered, and then again thirty years later. In 1992, on his thirtieth birthday, Artie Anderson meets the man who will change his life. Artie spends his...