Literature & Fiction

The cast and crew of a popular TV crime drama are shooting in the Lake District – but behind the scenes, relationships are as tense as on-screen. The director’s reputation proceeds him, the two lead stars are feuding and rumours swirl. Meanwhile the locals are enjoying the filming. But when on-screen slaughter gets swapped for real-life murder at the concert hall where the TV drama is based, and the genuine police are as baffled as the TV detectives, it falls to the locals to search for the truth.

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 step in the right direction. Theodore ‘Teddy’ Fairfax is a loose cannon. A disgraced distant relative of the royal family, he’s tall, dark and now (begrudgingly) helping with the Tower of London’s summer programme – and there’s nowhere he’d like to be less. When Teddy’s oath to be an obstruction almost gets Daisy fired, she declares war. But as the two cross swords, they start to discover they both need a little rescuing.

When her nest is destroyed and her forever mate slaughtered, Zephyr Ignitus, the last of an ancient breed of fire-breathing dragon, gathers together a team of saber-toothed panthers, woolly mammoths, and a crew of howler monkeys brandishing swords and weapons stolen from the ships of men, all to hunt down and scorch the evil beast-killing wizard that did her wrong.

Everyone who's anyone wants to be seen at one of Emory Jackman's legendary parties, from royalty to politicians, tech billionaires to Instagram models. But something sinister is happening on Little Pearl. Journalist Sven Olsen has heard rumors about the Jackmans trafficking young girls, and a secret auction joined by the rich and famous. He's been invited under the pretense of writing a profile about Emory and his mysterious wife, Tess, and will do just about anything to get the scoop.

In the fading days of summer 2011, self-taught astrophysicist Petra has calculated that the atmosphere will collapse in a few weeks’ time—on September 21, at approximately 9:20 p.m.—ending the world as we know it. But the distraught Petra will not have to carry the burden of this terrible news alone for long. Fate intervenes, bringing her into the orbit of a pair of unlikely companions: Johan, a man whose intellectual prowess is remarkably overshadowed by his culinary skills, and Agnes, a seventy-five-year-old widow who has made a fortune posing as a young influencer on social media.

Twenty years after Ocean Views went off the air, the beloved TV show about teenage romance and angst is back. No one is more surprised than its former star, Agnes “Ness” Larkin, that she’s agreed to step back into the role of Aubrey Grant. After her father/manager took off with her earnings, Ness ran away from the spotlight in shame. But maybe it’s time to stare her past, and her castmates, in their discreetly Botoxed faces.

Everything is a Little Broken invites listeners to both laugh and cry at some of the painful, heart-wrenching, and absurd moments Mira Cayne and her father, Matt Frank, experience as age and infirmity begin to take their toll. Their story will be instantly recognizable to the 41 million Americans caring for older adults in their lives.

For the staff of the library at the center of The Widening Stain, it's easy enough to dismiss the death of a woman who fell from a rolling ladder as nothing more than an unfortunate accident. It's more difficult, however, to explain away the strangled corpse of a man found inside a locked room, surrounded by rare and obscure erotica.

As the 2020s dawn, Keith Diamond, the self-styled ‘Diamond Geezer’, works as a shock jock presenter at controversial radio station, ChatFM. When the station comes under new management, Keith finds himself surplus to requirements. His employment prospects look bleak until a stranger gives him a bracelet that catapults him forty years back in time to when he was a young journalist. Soaking up the culture, Keith immerses himself in the music scene, going to see legendary bands like The Clash, Blondie, and The Specials, but soon there are more important tasks at hand.

Eighteen years have elapsed since Jason Apsley grabbed his second chance after time traveling forty-two years into the past. It's now 1994, and those time-travelling calamitous years of the late 70s and 80s are now a distant memory. Life is perfect or is it? Jason's worst nightmare becomes a reality when a mysterious letter appears, suggesting his immediate future may not be as rosy as expected. As the chaos ensues, an inquisitive journalist and DCI French close in on the truth about his past. Will time repeat itself, or can Jason, once again, alter the future?

After being laid off from his executive job with a California high-tech company, a man and his wife decide to leave the “rat race” and move to a tropical island on the coast of North Carolina. The culture of the island and its people are completely different from this cosmopolitan couple, who struggle to adapt to the island’s Southern, down-home, Redneck residents.

After David’s bizarre fall from grace, he has absolutely no idea what to do. No one in known history had ever been sent back to mortality as punishment before, and it’s no surprise when David falls into a deep depression. How could a mortal fulfill the duties of a guardian angel? And how could he ever live down the shame? With no other choice, David is forced to push onward with faith, just like any other mortal, and find new purpose in life.

Dive into the hilariously cunning world of "How to Get a Promotion Without Deserving One," a must-listen satire by Tom Baker & Paul Evans. This witty exploration of office politics through the eyes of the unforgettable "Chad" will have you laughing, cringing, and nodding in recognition.

Set in Depression-era Savannah, Georgia, THE FRENCH STRANGER tells the story of Fred Dumas—a woman's pleasure specialist—who unknowingly kills Bunny Meyers, and is being hunted by two hit men set on him by her husband, a wealthy man who is running for mayor. This culminates into a cascade of dizzying absurdities that touch on a wide range of topics including: quantum and time theory, reincarnation, parallel universes, nirvana, baseball, World War I, chicken boxing, voodoo, Chick-O-Sticks, Ragnarök, and it answers the age-old question: if man made the chicken, did the chicken also make man?

Written in a hospital tent to the sound of gunfire and shells falling, Cicely Hamilton drew on her experiences working in France during WW1 to tell the story of William Tully and his new bride Griselda, who are wrenched away from their all-consuming interests – socialism and votes for women – and plunged into the almost dream-like horror of war. As brutal tragedy strikes, their attitude to both pacifism and patriotism is altered and their lives are changed forever.

Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts. Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit.

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride is inspired by "The Robber Bridegroom", a wonderfully grisly tale from the Brothers Grimm in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them, one by one. But in her version, Atwood brilliantly recasts the monster as Zenia, a villainess of demonic proportions, and sets her loose in the lives of three friends.

American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.

S'il existe un homme que la vendeuse et photographe amateur, Diane Petit, déteste plus que tout, c'est le grand fabricant de parfums, Sébastien Darcy, qui a non seulement volé l'entreprise du père de Diane, mais également détruit sa santé. Mais l'arrogant salaud ferait mieux de se méfier parce que Diane prépare sa vengeance. Et la vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid. Mon meilleur ennemi est une comédie romantique inspirée de Orgueil et préjugés.

Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention....

In 1920s America, a plague is spreading fast. From New Orleans to Chicago to New York, the "Jes Grew" epidemic makes people desperate to dance, overturning social norms in the process. Anyone is vulnerable and when they catch it, they'll bump and grind into a frenzy. Working to combat the Jes Grew infection are the puritanical Atonists, a group bent on cultivating a "Talking Android", an African American who will infiltrate the unruly black communities and help crush the outbreak.

Harriet is leaving her boyfriend Claude, "the French rat". That at least is how Harriet sees things, even if it’s Claude who has just asked Harriet to leave his Greenwich Village apartment. Well, one way or another she has no intention of leaving. To the contrary, she will stay and exact revenge - or would have if Claude had not had her unceremoniously evicted. Still, though moved out, Harriet is not about to move on. Not in any way. Girlfriends circle around to patronize and advise, but Harriet only takes offense, and it’s easy to understand why.

A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel.    

"Tu fais quoi à Noël ? - Moi je me suicide, et toi ?" Bien sûr, dit comme ça, ça peut paraître sinistre, mais, à quarante-cinq ans, c'est ma meilleure option. Ce n'est pas comme si je faisais des malheureux autour de moi. Comme si j'abandonnais mari et enfants. Je n'ai ni chien ni chat. Même pas un perroquet pour me pleurer. Et puis ça me laisse deux mois pour faire connaissance avec mon vrai moi. Deux mois c'est court. Ou long, ça dépend de ce qui se passe, en fait.

In a famous but declining Hollywood bar works A Barman. Morbidly amused by the decadent decay of his surroundings, he watches the patrons fall into their nightly oblivion, making notes for his novel. In the hope of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with the cast of variously pathological regulars.

LoveStar, the enigmatic and obsessively driven founder of the LoveStar corporation, has unlocked the key to transmitting data via birdwaves, thus freeing mankind from wires and devices, and allowing consumerism, technology, and science to run rampant over all aspects of daily life. Cordless modern men and women are paid to howl advertisements at unsuspecting passers-by, REGRET machines eliminate doubt over roads not taken, soul mates are identified and brought together (while existing, unscientifically validated relationships are driven remorselessly asunder), and rocketing the dead into the sky becomes both a status symbol and a beautiful, cathartic show.

L'été́ de mes dix-huit ans devait être le meilleur de toute ma vie. J'avais réussi à décrocher un job bien payé qui allait me permettre de remplacer ma vieille voiture et de mettre de l'argent de côté avant de rentrer à la fac. Tout était censé bien se passer. J'avais tout calculé. Et puis je l'ai rencontré́, lui. Aleks Pierson. Le fils de mes patrons. Ce qu'il y avait entre nous était beau, fort, absolument bouleversant. Notre idylle aurait pu être mon histoire de cendrillon, celle qui se finit avec un " ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants ".

Looking for a way out of the rat race? Tired of your ho-hum, workaday life? Have an inexplicable love of turning human beings into inanimate objects? Then professional supervillainy might just be for you! With tips from the renowned founder and overlord of the International Society of Supervillains, The Supervillain Handbook is your one-stop-shop for everything evil. Gain invaluable insight on the art of revenge, choosing your evil name, where to find the perfect lair, and much more!

Lucien est mort. "C'est bien triste" se lamentent au bar du coin ses quatre copains. Pire encore : il a été retrouvé froid sur ses toilettes, lui qui ne s'était jamais montré négligé en public ! Martial, Gilbert, Jacques et Armand sont unanimes : pas question de clamser aussi bêtement ! La bande de septuagénaires a alors une idée folle : chacun va planifier sa propre mort. Quand ils veulent, comme ils veulent ! Enfin, ils vont tout oser.

Dans la sombre Édimbourg des années 1990, Renton le malin, Sick Boy l'ambitieux, Franco le sociopathe, Spud l'égaré et Tommy l'innocent partagent tout : les petites combines, l'assurance-chômage et la drogue, sous toutes ses formes. Entre deux pintes, après un fix ou une baston, ils racontent la violence d'un quotidien misérable dominé par la rage. Une rage qui les anime tous. La rage de vivre.