Showing results for "A A Milne" in Genre Fiction

Maeve McKenna is on the verge of a breakdown. Having worked herself into the ground as a sought-after interior designer in London, she’s in desperate need of a vacation. Philomena Duffy is a little lonely. After losing her husband, their crumbling mansion, Willow House, feels awfully empty. With the rugged shores of Ireland calling, Maeve visits her aunt Philomena in Sandy Cove, where she once, as a teenager, kissed a wild, mysterious boy - a kiss she has never been able to forget.

January, 1982. Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor - covert stammerer and reluctant poet - anticipates a stultifying year in his backwater English village. But he hasn't reckoned with bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, a threatened gypsy invasion and those mysterious entities known as girls. Charting 13 months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, this is a captivating novel, wry, painful and vibrant with the stuff of life.

When Casey’s dear friend Rosie passes away, her heart breaks in two; Rosie didn’t even tell her she was sick. And when a mysterious letter arrives from beyond the grave, describing the secluded island where Rosie spent every summer, Casey questions if she really knew her friend at all. With Casey’s hectic job ruling her life, and her marriage crumbling around her, she books a ticket to this beautiful Irish island to feel close to Rosie again, and find out what secrets she has hidden there.

The friendship starts with a letter...from aspiring writer Sarah to blunt but witty journalist Helen, complaining about Helen's most recent book review. And there begins a correspondence that blossoms into a friendship which spans over two decades. As the years pass, the women exchange details of loves lost and found, of family joys and upheavals. Sarah's letters filled with thoughts on her outwardly perfect marriage and her aching desire for children, and Helen's on the struggle of raising her young daughter alone.

Lexi is on top of the world. the podcast she co-hosts with her ride-or-die bestie Amanda is going stratospheric but cracks are appearing. Claire's Whatsapp chat with her school friends is ominously quiet these days, which can only mean one thing: a side group without her. Joanne's just had a baby so she's no longer available for tequila-fuelled nights out - something she has to keep reminding her pals about. Fate brings Claire, Joanne and Lexi together.

Cordelia Mirafiore has never truly felt at home in South Florida. She’s unexpectedly called to the reading of a long-lost relative’s will in Ireland. As soon as Cordelia reaches Sandy Cove, the views of the blue ocean and stunning coastline around her provide a sense of calm she has never felt before. She meets her cousins Maeve and Roisin, who welcome her with open arms, and finds herself drawn to a handsome man who is also an outsider in town. But the rest of the McKenna family aren’t so willing to accept Cordelia.

Each morning, I arrive at the luxury Cedarwood Manor hotel, put on my crisp maid’s uniform and clean the rooms. I take great care in my work as I slip from one floor to the other. Most guests barely know my name. I’m invisible to them. That’s ok. I prefer people didn’t know my secrets. But today a woman has been found dead in her room and a ten-year-old little girl has been reported missing from the hotel. Today, someone has left me a note saying they know who I am. But they must be mistaken. I’ll make sure they are.

When ne’er-do-well Robert Ablett is found dead at his brother’s idyllic country house, a crime of passion or an unfortunate accident seem the most obvious explanations. But to dapper would-be sleuth Antony Gillingham, the death – and the baffling disappearance of the man of the house – suggests a far stranger story. Eagerly assisted by his friend Bill Beverley – the Watson to his Holmes – Gillingham sets out to discover the truth.

Since its inception in the 19th Century photography has been a trusted source capturing both truth and reality. It cannot lie. Our eyes may deceive us, but the camera cannot. In this volume whilst our classic authors are at the early edge of photography’s development, they use it in ways that are both innovative and atmospheric as very often the camera and the photographer become a central part in many fascinating stories.

Jenna Walker has suddenly found herself with no job, no boyfriend, nowhere to live—and she's been wondering for a while now if, apart from her beloved cat Bertie, she has anything to live for. She really doesn't want to turn up on her sister's doorstep, but that feels like her only option. Already stretched between her job and the demands of looking after their mother, Rosie is not happy about having yet another person to take care of. If only one thing in her life would work out the way she wants it to.

As Eiji Miyake's 20th birthday nears, he sets out for the seething metropolis of Tokyo to find the father he has never met. There, he begins a thrilling, whirlwind journey where dreams, memories, and reality collide then diverge as Eiji is caught up in a feverish succession of encounters by turn bizarre, hilarious, and shockingly dangerous. But until Eiji has fallen in love and exorcised his childhood demons, the belonging he craves will remain, tantalizingly, just beyond his grasp.

Everyone knows about the fight between Kathleen Walsh and her sister on the night she disappeared. For six months, no one has heard from Kathleen. Not her bullying husband, not her teenage son, and not her devastated sister Siobhan. But then Kathleen’s purse is found by a walker high up on the rocky Irish sea cliffs. The only thing inside is a torn scrap of paper with the words ‘HELP ME’. For Siobhan, it’s a chance to find her sister and fix the mistake she made six months ago. But not everyone in the tight-knit community welcomes Siobhan’s interest in the disappearance.

You, Me and Other People is the life-affirming, heartbreaking and ultimately stunning debut novel from Fionnuala Kearney. They say every family has skeletons in their closet...but what happens when you open the door and they won't stop tumbling out? For Adam and Beth, the first secret wasn't the last; it was just the beginning. You think you can imagine the worst thing that could happen to your family, but there are some secrets that change everything.

Dr. Christopher Ringle is the last person you'd expect to find moonlighting as Santa Claus at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving. But it is there that he meets a young man named Molar Alan, who desperately needs a new perspective on the underlying value of Christmas. Dr. Ringle recruits Mo and his older brother as volunteers at a nearby children's hospital for the holiday season. At the hospital Mo is tasked to help bring holiday cheer to the young cancer patients on the fifth floor.

In this volume our classic authors conjure up all sorts of damnations and destructions in literary assaults testing our will to survive and our ingenuity to overcome situations where the outlook is bleak at best and the total extinction of us at worse.

Jenny's been married to Shane for fifteen years. They live in one of Dublin's most idyllic neighborhoods and share a seemingly perfect life. But someone wants to destroy them. Returning home one evening, Jenny immediately knows something is wrong. The front door is ajar. Then she hears a loud crash behind the house. She races towards the sound to find Shane's crumpled Land Rover. A masked, lifeless figure is sprawled across the bonnet. Jenny peels away the attacker's balaclava—it's a young woman.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2006. Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, 2006. Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book, 2007. David Mitchell comes home to England, 1982, and the cusp of adolescence. Jason Taylor is 13, doomed to be growing up in the most boring family in the deadest village (Black Swan Green) in the dullest county (Worcestershire) in the most tedious nation (England) on earth. And he stammers.

In this volume our authors, including Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Winifred Holtby, Bernard Capes and many others bring forth creations and contraptions that are both amazing and abstract as well as diabolical and delightful.

The Modern Age is one of information overload. Bombarded, surrounded, and battered by facts, figures, opinions and seemingly whatever else comes out of anyone’s head from all directions at all hours of the day and night. It’s exhausting. In the pens of such luminaries as Henry James, E M Delafield, C E Montague, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and many others we connect with old fashioned media from publishing and advertising to telegrams and radio and everything in between in ways that are surprising, enlightening but always entertaining.

Corporate attorney Duke Melançon wrestles with twin emergencies that threaten his future. His employer, Mandala Worldwide, has unleashed a deepwater spill that could destroy the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, his crime boss mother, Madame Melançon, has disappeared into the syrupy night. These two seemingly unrelated events are somehow quantumly entangled. Moreover, Duke discovers just how entangled they truly are when he comes face-to-face with what his pet-psychic sister calls, "a tear in the brocade of time."