Showing results for "Small World" in Literature & Fiction

Without expensive repairs to the pipes, the water board will cut off Speranza's crumbling Italian village. All 212 inhabitants will be forced to leave. In a desperate bid to find the money to save his hometown, he starts a rumour that Italian heart-throb Dante Rinaldi is coming to town to film his next movie. Soon, the place is teeming with fans and everyone wants to be involved: Speranza's assistant has a screenplay and the butcher will invest—if Speranza can find roles for each of his fifteen enormous sons. Even the priest is on board.

After a political scandal, fledgling lobbyist Dempsey Jo Killebrew is left almost broke, unemployed, and homeless. She reluctantly accepts to refurbish Birdsong, the old family place in Guthrie, Georgia. But, oh, is Dempsey in for a surprise. "Bird Droppings" would more aptly describe the moldering Pepto Bismol - pink dump. There's also a murderously grumpy old lady who has claimed squatter's rights and isn't moving out. Ever.

Chef extraordinaire Gina Foxton doesn't expect anything to be handed to her on a platter. After years of hard work, the former runner-up Miss Teen Vidalia Onion is now the host of her own local Georgia public television show called Fresh Start, and she's dating the show's producer. But when her show gets canceled - and she catches her boyfriend in flagrante delicto with the boss' wife - Gina realizes that she's meant for bigger and better things. Namely, a gig on national television.

Allow me to introduce Bob, the small god of vending machine repair and computers. He may be new at the job, and he is still learning, but he is a very hard worker. Bob goes to work, invisible and inexperienced, silently watching and hoping for people to love him. He learns all about vending machines and then computers, but humans prove much more complicated. As the days pass, his power increases as his unknowing colleagues mutter “oh God” and start to believe, even if only a little. But modern life takes its toll, even on a higher deity.

In Irland ist manches anders, auch das Weihnachtsfest. Der Weihnachtsmann wird auf seiner Runde traditionell mit jeder Menge Whiskey versorgt, und nicht nur er: Ein arbeitsloser Schauspieler im Weihnachtskostüm langt so kräftig zu, dass ihm, dem Whiskey sei Dank, die Vorstellung seines Lebens gelingt. Nach dem Genuss von zu viel Apfelwein begegnet ein Junge in der Weihnachtsnacht der leibhaftigen Totenfee.

Most people think the reason Prudy Millings married the best-looking preacher in the Carolinas—who inexplicably turned psychotic and mowed her down with the church van—is that she was raised all wrong. So not true. Prudy's reclamation of her life begins two years after the crime spree that nearly stopped her heart. She packs up her two precocious children and settles in her parents' South Carolina hometown where she deals with a delightful Proverbs-spewing mama who pretends her grown daughters are virgins.

The "Last Best Class" of Fish River Community School had lost one of its members every year since the second grade. Waffle Houses were popping up throughout small-town Alabama with one corporate rule: "Good Food Fast." Struggling to cope with the tragedy that shadowed him most of his life, Dr. Jimmy Ryan dedicated himself to bringing people back from the brink, driven by his own guiding principle "Ain't Dead Yet." Not until Jimmy's own death did the folks at the Waffle House in Penelope, Alabama, learn the full extent of the secrets buried with the dead.

It's 1988. Harper Richardson's mum and dad are divorced. Her mum got custody of her, the Mini and 500 tins of baked beans. Her dad got a mouldering cottage in a Midlands backwater village and plenty of free time to indulge his WWII obsession. What a Way to Go is a warm, wise and witty tale of one girl's mission to run headfirst into the middle of some of life's big questions - and to come out the other side with some reasonable answers.

Weihnachten in Irland ist anders als im Rest der Welt, denn ohne den irischen Whiskey ist das Fest auf der Grünen Insel nicht vorstellbar. Da kann es schon mal passieren, dass die Weihnachtssänger so berauscht sind, dass sie den Weihnachtstag verschlafen. Oder dass ein knurriger Einzelgänger nach dem ausgiebigen Genuss des Nationalgetränks einem kleinen Weihnachtsengel die Tür öffnet, der ihm den richtigen Weg in die Zukunft weist. Wirklichkeit oder irischer Zauber?