Showing results for "Happy" in Literature & Fiction

Maisie Brennan is standing on a podium on the 20th anniversary of the death of her son, trying to find the first breath that will help her start talking to a room full of strangers. A daunting task at the best of times, but she's also menopausal and one hot flush away from totally losing it. But as Maisie begins her story, she relaxes and, word by word, disappears into her past, back to the day when one mistaken action led to a chain of events that changed her life forever....

Christmas is all about lists. To do lists. Shopping lists. Lists to bloody Santa. And doesn’t Anna Johnson know it. Waking up on Christmas Eve after the annual Johnson party, she's hungover, exhausted and really sick and tired of Christmas already. All she wants is to tick the last things off her endless list and sit down with the world’s biggest glass of wine. ​A mysterious death in her home really is the last thing she has time for right now, but with police officers and a husband and two kids intent on watching Christmas films, it looks like it’s up to her.

Gil (Domingo) is a struggling NYC actor who heads home to Philadelphia after the passing of his mother, Adelaide (Winfrey). The plan is to tidy-up her affairs as quickly and efficiently as possible, until a few unpredictably hilarious detours ensue. With his Aunt Glo (Washington) insisting on a proper burial, but an urn of ashes already in his hand, Gil gets thrown into a car by his best friend (Newell).

Audible presents Happy Endings, an Audible Original.

Fake spirit medium Gretchen Acorn is happy to help when her wealthiest client hires her to look into the unexplained phenomena preventing the sale of her bridge partner's struggling goat farm. Gretchen may be a complete fraud, but she's a beneficent one. So if 'cleansing' the historic property will help a nice old man get on with his retirement and put some much-needed cash in her pockets at the same time, who's she to say no? Of course, it turns out said bridge partner isn't quite who Gretchen imagined - Charlie Waybill is young, hot as hell, and extremely unconvinced by Gretchen.

He doesn't believe in happy endings. She's lost her faith that they exist. But could they find one together? January is a hopeless romantic who likes narrating her life as if she's the heroine in a blockbuster movie. Augustus is a serious literary type who thinks true love is a fairy-tale. January and Augustus are not going to get on.

John Moffatt and Rosemary Leach star in this BBC Radio 4 production of Noël Coward’s patriotic play about the ups and downs of a working-class family between 1919 and 1939. This Happy Breed opens in 1919, when the Gibbons family have just moved to their smart new home in the suburbs of South London. Against a background of social change and national upheaval spanning twenty years, the family celebrate their own triumphs and deal with their personal traumas.

It’s almost Mummy’s 50th birthday. The hot flushes have just started, and nowadays she barely recognises herself. She’s been a wife and mother for so long that she can’t quite remember what life was like pre-moppets (although they’re more like giants now). Speaking of, Jane is constantly partying and naturally more interested in passing her driving test than her A-Levels. In fact, trying to get the kids through their exams at all is almost as excruciating as waiting for their results.

Three letters. Two mistakes. One Last chance. When Jennifer Cole is told she has three months to live she decides to write three letters sharing the desires, fears and frustrations she has always kept to herself. And at first she finds that telling the truth makes her feel free and liberated. But three months later, Jennifer's secrets are alive and out in the world...and so is she. As she discovers, sometimes the truth has a way of surprising you....

Why Mummy Swears is the much anticipated new novel from Gill Sims, author of the hilarious Why Mummy Drinks and online sensation Peter and Jane. It’s every parents’ nightmare - the start of the school holidays - and instead of sitting in the sun, reading a book over a cold, crisp glass of Pinot Grigio, Mummy has two bored moppets to attend to. After frantically booking sports camps, child minder slots, not to mention time off work, Mummy is exhausted. But this is only the beginning....

The world’s sexiest firefighter is about to get a second chance with the virgin next door.... He’s bossy, arrogant, and so ridiculously hot that he should come with a warning label and a pair of flame-retardant coveralls. He’s also the boy who broke my heart when we were in high school. I want to move in next door to Ryan O’Dell the way I want to be the virgin gamer geek suddenly in charge of running my sister’s sex-toy factory. Too bad both are written in my stars.

Minnie and Bert are over the moon to have their three grown-up children home for the first time in a decade. But having Lizzie, Jess, Owen and the grandchildren under one roof isn’t without its dramas. Lizzie is off the alcohol (although emergency gin doesn’t count), Jess is juggling a toddler and a newborn, but it’s Owen who has the power to throw a grenade into everything.

I didn’t mean to kidnap the groom. It was an accident. Mostly.... At least I didn't take much time to plan it. It was more of a spur of the moment kidnapping. Does that count? One minute, the town’s bad boy is standing at the altar about to marry the world’s most evil kindergarten teacher. The next, he’s passed out in my Vespa sidecar with his bride hot on our tail. But I couldn't stand by and watch Jace O’Dell be blackmailed into a loveless marriage. And besides, what’s a little kidnapping between friends? Okay, so maybe we’re not just friends....

Cesare is 77 years old, a widower and cynical troublemaker, a man who has always had trouble caring for others and has given up trying. Aside from an intermittent fling with a mature nurse called Rossana, who moonlights as a sex worker, he prefers to live his own life, avoiding contact with his neighbors and even his own children wherever possible. Until one day, the enigmatic Emma moves into the neighboring flat.

After her former band shot to superstardom without her, Claire reluctantly agrees to a gig as a playgroup musician for wealthy infants on New York's Park Avenue. Claire is surprised to discover that she is smitten with her new employers, a welcoming clique of wellness addicts with impossibly shiny hair, who whirl from juice cleanse to overpriced miracle vitamins to spin class with limitless energy.

Marnie MacGraw and Patrick Delaney have been in love for a few years now, enough to realize that they are imperfectly perfect together. Still, there are some things that maybe need a little attention. Marnie’s ebullient; he’s brooding. She thrives on change; he prefers stability. She sees marriage and parenthood in their future, but he can’t see beyond the shadow of an earlier tragedy. Then an eight-year-old surprise from Patrick’s past shows up on their doorstep, cartwheeling into their lives and spinning things in all directions.

After 15 years of trying to be the perfect wife, maybe Charlotte’s best friends from uni - Freya, Emily and Izzy - can still glimpse the woman she’d once set out to be. Freya is up for it. Could a powwow with her yesteryear besties helps her knock some sense into her useless husband? Emily’s hiding her own crisis from her parents, colleagues and now, her mates.

Lizzie James is happy. She has a steady office job (with a steady stream of tray bakes), has had the same best friend since secondary school, and sees her family every Thursday night for take-away and TV soaps. Granted, some members of her family she'd rather not see, and they definitely don't want to see her after what happened back then...but on the whole she's happy. Or somewhere close to it, anyway. Until a letter arrives one day from her best friend, Roman. A letter dated 12 years ago, the exact day he went missing.

Amy is 34 and has just given up her glittering career in the big (Welsh) city to move back in with her grandfather, returning to work in the small-town Chinese takeaway where she spent her bookish and boring childhood. Why? That's a secret she won't tell. Just like the secret of why her grandfather, Ah Goong, and her father, TC Li, haven't spoken to each other in 30 years. Weirder still, they've lived in the same small flat about the takeaway for the majority of those years, with Amy's mother, Joan, acting as their unfortunate go-between and buffer.

The story of The Happy Prince has three major themes. Firstly it shows that apparent beauty is nothing and the real beauty is to bestow love and sacrifice. Secondly, it discusses that love and sacrifice are two saving forces. Thirdly, it shows that there is a large gap between rich and poor people the rulers and the masses. When the happy prince is alive he lives a happy life without sorrows, he is living a care free life but after his death he sees through a tall Colum that life has another view except happiness and that is helplessness poverty, hypocrisy and corruption of elite and ruling class.