115 stories
Four Blondes
FOUR BLONDES charts the romantic intrigues, liaisons, betrayals and victories of four modern women: a beautiful B-list model finagles rent-free summerhouses in the Hamptons from her lovers until she discovers she can get a man but can't get what she wants; a high-powered magazine columnist's floundering marriage to a literary journalist is thrown into crisis when her husband's career fails to live up to her expectations; a 'Cinderella' records her descent into paranoia in her journal as she realises she wants anybody's life except her own; an artist and aging 'It girl' - who fears that her time for finding a man has run out - travels to London in search of the kind of love and devotion she can't find in Manhattan... Studded with her trademark wit and stiletto-heel-sharp insight, FOUR BLONDES is dark, true, and compulsively readable.
I Want You To Be Happy
Chuck and Joey meet in a bar. He's in his mid-thirties; she's twelve years younger. He's long abandoned his ambition of becoming a novelist and now works as a copywriter at a big ad agency. 'Lead copywriter,' he corrects himself. Joey lives paycheck to paycheck on her barista wages and privately dreams of making it as a poet. They go back to Chuck's luxury flat-a world away from Joey's cramped house-share, the crumbs in her bed. Soon, Joey's imagining a future between them, and Chuck's moving on from a mistake in his recent past. Amazing, how meeting a new person can make you feel so new.
Love Letters to a Serial Killer
Hannah Wilson can't text her ex again - it's too sad. She can't snap back at the new boss who took her promotion either - she'll be fired. But what she can do is write a series of furious letters to William Thompson, arrested for the murders of multiple women he got close to. You're a monster, I hope you know that. I want you to listen when I tell you that I'll never be able to go on a date again without thinking of you. Every moment I will wonder whether he wants to love me or murder me. Hannah's shocked when William writes back, each response more surprising than the last. And as communication tips from curiosity to obsession, Hannah has to wonder if William might be innocent, and whether she even wants him to be...
Almost Life
Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her Ph.D. at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking far too much, and sleeping with a married woman. The moment the two women meet the spark is undeniable. But their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make. Spanning cities, decades and heartbreaks, fate brings them within touching distance again and again. But will they be brave enough to seize the life they truly want?
Workhorse
An astonishing portrait of a city on the brink of a dizzying new era and a story about a young woman who will do anything to infiltrate the rarefied world of New York's fashion elite. New York City, 2001. Editorial Assistant Clodagh “Clo” Harmon wants nothing more than to rise through the ranks at the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine. But there’s just one problem: she doesn’t have the right pedigree. Clo is a ‘workhorse’ in a world of beautiful, wealthy, impossibly well-connected ‘show horses’ and it seems that her fortunes will never change. That is until Clo meets Harry Wood, a reporter with visions of his own media empire and the person who might be Clo’s ally in gaming the system…or is he the only thing standing between Clo and her rightful place at the top? Clo begins to wade across boundaries, taking ever greater and more dangerous risks to become the Important Person she wants to be. But who is Clo under all the borrowed designer clothes and studied manners? And who are we if we share her desires? As wickedly funny as it is darkly unsettling, Workhorse is an astonishing story of envy and ambition, set against the glamour and privilege of media and high society in New York at its height.
Stoner
Read the greatest rediscovered classic of recent years 'A beautiful, sad, utterly convincing account of an entire life' Ian McEwan William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death, his colleagues remember him rarely. Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value - of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history - and in doing so reclaims the significance of an individual life. 'A brilliant, beautiful, inexorably sad, wise and elegant novel' Nick Hornby 'A terrific novel of echoing sadness' Julian Barnes
The Happy Couple
Meet Celine and Luke--for all intents and purposes the happy couple. Luke (a serial cheater) and Celine (more interested in piano than in domestic life) plan to marry in a year. Archie (the best man) should be moving on from his love for Luke and up the corporate ladder, but he finds himself utterly stuck. Phoebe (the bridesmaid and Celine’s sister) just wants to get to the bottom of Luke’s frequent unexplained disappearances. And Vivian (a wedding guest), as the only one with any emotional distance, observes her friends like ants in a colony. As the wedding approaches and these five lives intersect, each will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after--but does it lie at the end of an aisle?
Victorian Psycho
Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan. Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning. Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho.
Ordinary Time
Ann is a reluctant Vicar's wife. She tries her best but her husband only has eyes for God, her son is asking questions she can't answer, and it is all too easy to displease the congregation. When her brother needs her help, Ann travels from Cornwall up to London. There she meets Jamie, and a new world unexpectedly opens up. Ann knows what the older women of the parish would say - she's made her bed and now she has to lie in it. But once she has been led into temptation, it may prove impossible to resist . . .
Good Bad Girl
Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so good people have to do bad things . . . Twenty years after a baby is stolen from her push-chair, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth. Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning up mess and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything. Edith’s own daughter, Clio, won’t speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio’s door . . . and their intentions aren’t good. With every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. If they do, they might just find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her, and the connections that bind them.
As Young As This
DESCRIPTION An irresistible and achingly relatable debut novel for anyone who has ever had to let go of what they thought their life would look like and open themselves up to the dizzying possibilities of chance. Elliot. Joe. Tommy. Nathanael. Wren. Oliver. Malik. Zach. Frank. Patrick. Noah. These are the men Margot has loved, liked, lusted over. Since she was seventeen, she's pictured them like stepping stones - each one bringing her closer to finding someone to share her life with and, eventually, father the children she's always imagined in her future. From her first encounter, to her first love, from grown-up dilemmas to spontaneous thrills, she's soaked up every experience available to her, discovering friendship, joy and despair. Through all of this she's refined her search until she believes she's arrived at 'the ending' to her story. So how did she find herself here, single at thirty-four, and about to make the biggest decision of her life? Tender, devastating and sharply funny, As Young as This is a beautiful depiction of the ways people shape us, the plans we make for our lives, and what it means to let go of them, from an incredible new talent.
Don’t Let Him In
He’s the perfect man. He says he loves you. You think he might even be made for you. Before long he’s moved into your house – and into your heart. And then he leaves for days at a time. You don’t know where he’s gone or who he’s with. And you realise – if you looked back – you’d say to yourself: DON’T LET HIM IN.
Nesting
On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another. What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control – and what will be the cost?
Atmosphere
epic novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists John Griffin and Lydia Danes; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant. Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love – this time among the stars.
Shy Creatures
It all started the weekend the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park . . . Croydon, 1964. Art therapist Helen Hansford is working in a psychiatric hospital, where she has been having passionate but precarious affair with her married colleague, the charismatic Dr Gil Rudden. Helen's structured life is upended when William Tapping - a silent, thirty-seven-year-old man with a beard down to his waist - arrives at the hospital. As Helen helps William express himself through art, she becomes increasingly entangled in his mysterious past. Inspired by a true story, Shy Creatures is a life-affirming exploration of loneliness, love and the quiet forces that shape our lives, reminding us that freedom can come in unexpected forms.
Alperton Angels
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL... True-crime author Amanda Bailey knows all about the notorious Alperton Angels cult. There have been dozens of books and films about the Angels, ever since the night nearly two decades ago, when they attempted to sacrifice a baby they believed to be the Antichrist. With all the cultists now dead - apart from their charismatic leader - it seems like there's nothing new to say about the Angels... until now. The Alperton baby has turned eighteen and can finally be interviewed, and if Amanda can track them down, it will be the scoop of the year. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and is also on the baby's trail. As Amanda and Oliver are forced to collaborate, they realise that what everyone thinks they know about the Angels is wrong. The truth is something much darker and stranger. And the devilish story of the Alperton Angels is far from over... From the bestselling author of The Appeal and The Twyford Code comes a stunning new mystery for fans of Richard Osman and S.J. Bennett, that shot straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list in January 2023. The devil is in the detail...
James
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town. So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all . . .
Fundamentally
Nadia is an academic who's been disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, Rosy. She decides to make a getaway, accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues. Sara is a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen. Nadia is struck by how similar they are: both feisty and opinionated, from a Muslim background, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines. A powerful friendship forms between the two women, until a secret confession from Sara threatens everything Nadia has been working for.
The Coast Road
It's 1994 in County Donegal, Ireland, and everyone is talking about Colette Crowley: the writer, the bohemian, the woman who left her family to be with a married man in Dublin. Returning to pick up the pieces of her old life, Colette finds that nothing - and everything - has changed. When the man to whom she is still married denies her access to their children, Colette enlists the help of Izzy, a housewife and mother of two, and the women forge a friendship that will send them on a spiralling journey - one towards a path of self-discovery, and the other towards tragedy.
Deep Cuts
The first time Joe plays Percy one of his songs in his college room in 2000, she instantly realises three things: One, she is watching a star in the making. Two, she can shape his music into something extraordinary. Three, she will always be on the sidelines. She swallows her jealousy and throws herself into collaboration, transforming Joe’s songs into indie hits with her blistering critiques. But there’s an undercurrent to the music they’re making – something undeniably electric, hurtling towards love. And then, almost inevitably, towards heartbreak. As Joe steps into the spotlight, can Percy bear to watch on in silence? And can he exist there without her?
