Showing results by publisher "Picador" in Genre Fiction

In a small town in 1950s Ireland Eilis Lacey is one among many women of her generation who cannot find work at home. So, when a job is offered in America, she knows she must leave. Arriving, alone, at a noisy boarding house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has left behind. She is far from home - and homesick. And just as she begins to find a new way of living, and the possibility of companionship, Eilis receives tragic news which sends her back to Ireland.

In Colm Tóibín's masterful new novel, we are reunited with Eilis Lacey, the heroine of Brooklyn, twenty years on, in the 1970s, living with her husband, Tony Fiorello, and her children in a house in Long Island, rather too close to her Fiorello in-laws. A shocking piece of news propels Eilis back to Ireland, to a world she thought she had long left behind and to ways of living, and loving, she thought she had lost.

Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in a hyper-masculine world. They are caught between two of Glasgow’s housing estates where young working-class men divide themselves along sectarian lines, and fight territorial battles for the sake of reputation. They should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the doocot that James has built for his prize racing pigeons. As they begin to fall in love, they dream of escaping the grey city.

A cat-and-mouse thriller set in Victorian London, The Burial Plot is the third novel from Sunday Times bestseller Elizabeth Macneal, about murder, manipulation, and a young woman wrestling power from the hands of a dangerous man.

The orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, Cyrus never knew his mother. Killed when her plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident, Cyrus has spent his life grappling with the meaningless nature of his mother’s death. Now he is set to learn the truth of her life. When Cyrus’s obsession with the lives of the martyrs – Bobby Sands, Joan of Arc – leads him to a chance encounter with a dying artist, he finds himself drawn towards the mysteries of his past.

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. They’re exhausted, traumatized, desperate now, and this is a forsaken place, but as a refuge it’s the most promising they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they’re not alone . . . So begins a searing, epic journey through a life where the challenge is not only to survive; it’s keeping your humanity if you do.

It is 1938 and for Manod, a young woman living on a remote island off the coast of Wales, the world looks ready to end just as she is trying to imagine a future for herself. The ominous appearance of a beached whale on the island's shore, and rumours of submarines circling beneath the waves, have villagers steeling themselves for what’s to come. Empty houses remind them of the men taken by the Great War, and of the difficulty of building a life in the island's harsh, salt-stung landscape.

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago’s thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.

London, September 1941. Following the departure of the formidable editor, Henrietta Bird, from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the challenge of becoming a young wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend, Bunty, is still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, but bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to make a go of it.

One cool day in 1929, Lee Miller arrives in bohemian Paris to pursue her dream of being an artist, having left behind a successful modelling career at Vogue. Gorgeous and talented, she catches the eye of renowned surrealist artist Man Ray and convinces him to hire her as his assistant. Man is an egotistical, charismatic force, and soon their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined.

1960s Ireland. Nora Webster, a widow from a small town, is trying to piece her life back together while caring for her four children after the death of her husband. In a close community where everyone knows your business, Nora is trying to emerge from her own sorrow in private whilst blind to the suffering of her young sons. And yet there are moments when hope might emerge again. Through music and friendship she might find a path to reinvention.

In an alternate version of 1893 America, The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him - and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances.

In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost. In The Master Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love.

The Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple with artistic ambitions. Their neighbour, Hector, a Puerto Rican gay man who was once a celebrated AIDS activist but is now a lonely addict, becomes connected to Milly's and Jared's lives in ways none of them can anticipate. Meanwhile, the couple's adopted son, Mateo, grows to appreciate the opportunities for both self-realization and oblivion that New York offers.

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about ‘Chinese-y’ things again. When she accidentally stumbles upon a strange and curious note in the Chou archives, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell. But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, one that upends her entire life and the lives of those around her.

From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies comes an exquisitely crafted work of fiction. Jhumpa Lahiri sets her gaze on the eternally beautiful city, illuminating the frailties of the human condition and dissecting lives lived on the margins.

Miren and Bittori have been best friends all their lives, growing up in the same small town in the north of Spain. With limited interest in politics, the terrorist threat posed by ETA seems to affect them little. When Bittori’s husband starts receiving threatening letters from the violent group, however - demanding money, accusing him of being a police informant - she turns to her friend for help. But Miren’s loyalties are torn: her son Joxe Mari has just been recruited to the group as a terrorist, and to denounce them as evil would be to condemn her own flesh and blood.

The lonely life of fifteen-year-old Theron David Alden is transformed when he meets Jake. Older, cooler, more confident and startlingly beautiful, Jake likes the same bands, the same drugs, and has the same drive to oblivion. Over the course of two decades, Theron and Jake get high, drift apart, and are brought hurtling back together, until a final collision tears them apart forever.