Showing titles in City Life

Isa Epley is 21 years old and wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. In her diary she chronicles her New York City adventure during the sweltering summer of 2013. By day, Isa and her best friend, Gala, sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, and bad-mannered grifters.

In a city graveyard, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet between two graves. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby appears quite suddenly, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. In a snowy valley, a father writes to his five-year-old daughter about the number of people who attended her funeral. And in the Jannat Guest House, two people who've known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another as though they have only just met.

In the fifth book in the sensational Before the Coffee Gets Cold series translated from Japanese, the mysterious café where customers arrive hoping to travel back in time welcomes four new guests. They must follow the café's strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold. Another moving and heartwarming tale from Toshikazu Kawaguchi, in Before we forget kindness our new visitors wish to go back into their past to move on their present, finding closure and comfort so they can embark on a beautiful future.

On the precipice of Y2K, unpaid intern Lily Chen is attempting to live the American dream in New York City. But her scientist parents imagined so much more for her when they fled Mao's cultural revolution, hoping for a better life. Despite the glamour of her media job, Lily can barely make rent - until she falls into the arms of Matthew. This young financier can give her a fairy tale life of luxury, and for the first time her dreams appear within reach.

Set against an eventful decade that included the soap opera of five Prime Ministers plus Brexit and Covid, Consider Yourself Kissed puts the subjects of love and family on a grand stage, showing how the intimate dramas in our homes inescapably compete for energy and attention with the shared public dramas of our times. Told over ten years of one woman’s life, Consider Yourself Kissed is an unforgettable literary love story which effortlessly balances sweetness with bite, the public with the personal, and humour with heart.

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner treats its customers to wonderfully extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason to stop by... The father-daughter duo have started advertising their services as 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are capable of recreating a dish from their customers' pasts – dishes that may well hold the keys to forgotten memories and future happiness.

As war rages and brave soldiers returning home from the frontline need nurses more than ever, fiercely proud redhead Sylvia Roberts is determined to help in any way she can. In spite of her mother’s belief she isn’t good enough, Sylvia believes that becoming a home front nurse is her calling. Together with the two friends she makes on her first day in the job – Freda and Veronica – she knows she can help save lives. And, as the devastation of war shows no signs of ceasing, their work becomes ever more vital.

Shani Akilah's stunning collection brings to life the stories of Black-British Londoners as they explore friendship and romance, community and independence, and navigate their way through the relationships that make them who they are.

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

Piglet is judging the contents of your shopping trolley. She is listening to what you order for lunch and is observing whether the dessert you serve is homemade or snatched from a packet. There isn't another 31-year-old that takes food more seriously. And who could blame her, with a childhood nickname like that? In just over a fortnight, she is marrying Kit. Kit and his tasteful family present an opportunity for reinvention - when she had been growing up in Derby, this life, this man had been beyond her imagination.

Who is Vernon Subutex? An urban legend. A fall from grace. The mirror who reflects us all. Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Bastille. His legend spread throughout Paris. But by the 2000s his shop is struggling. With his savings gone, his unemployment benefit cut and the friend who had been covering his rent suddenly dead, Vernon Subutex finds himself down and out on the Paris streets. He has one final card up his sleeve.

Dora Fairweather wasn’t cut out to be a wife and mother, and as soon as she’s able, she turns her back on her young daughter Lissie. With no parents to protect her, Lissie has no option but the dangerous streets of soot-sodden Bradford or the workhouse orphanage. Life in the orphanage is bleak and Lissie longs for the warm embrace of her beloved father. As the years pass, Lissie learns to enjoy the camaraderie of the other girls in the workhouse, and when she’s taken under the wing of matron Connie Briggs, things begin to look up..

It is 1968, and Frederica Potter is surprised to find herself embarking on a new career in television. While she endeavours to navigate this fast-paced and occasionally bewildering industry, her lover John takes up a post working with a pair of unusual scientists. Yet in Frederica’s home county of Yorkshire, tumultuous events are unfolding. Soon her future, and that of the people closest to her, begins to look rather different.

Situated in a rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, Yeonnam-Dong's Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold. Furnished with a coffee machine, a full bookshelf, and warm lighting, it is a haven from the world for many locals. And when a notebook is left behind there, it becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbours who were once just faces in the crowd. But there is a darker story behind the notebook...

Athena and Dexter live a happy but insular life, bound by routine and the care of their young sons. When Elizabeth, an old friend from Dexter’s university days, turns up with her much younger sister, Vicki, and her lover, Philip, she brings an enticing world to their doorstep. And Athena finds herself straining at the confines of her life.

If there's one thing the characters in Jennifer Makumbi's stories know, it's how to field an uncomfortable question. But perhaps the most difficult question of all is the one they ask themselves: 'You mean this is England?' Told with empathy, humour and compassion, these vibrant, kaleidoscopic stories re-imagine the journey of Ugandans who choose to make England their home. Weaving between Manchester and Kampala, this dazzling collection will captivate anyone who has ever wondered what it means to truly belong.

Lady Georgiana Pendlebury is no stranger to breaking the rules of polite society. But when a so-called ‘friend’ invites her to a clandestine party, Georgiana is shocked to discover the event is more scandalous than even she could have imagined. So when a mysterious stranger offers help, she accepts, not realising their encounter will turn her life upside down.

On an ordinary Saturday morning in 1996, the residents of Nightingale Point wake up to their normal lives and worries. Mary has a secret life that no one knows about, not even Malachi and Tristan, the brothers she vowed to look after. Malachi had to grow up too quickly. Between looking after Tristan and nursing a broken heart, he feels older than his 21 years. Tristan wishes Malachi would stop pining for Pamela. No wonder he's falling in with the wrong crowd, without Malachi to keep him straight.

Maggie Jacobsen has a bright future ahead of her, with a handsome boyfriend and a promising career, until an accident on what should be one of the happiest days of her life takes it all away. Lying in hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Maggie must figure out how to move forward on her own terms while facing family secrets, heartbreak, and the possibility that love might find her in the last place she would ever expect.

El desgarrador viaje vital de una niña atrapada en un cuerpo que no sabe habitar. Una novela deslumbrante que no se parece a nada que hayas leído. Un fenómeno literario internacional antes de su publicación. Narrada desde una singular y desgarradora voz en primera persona, La mala costumbre recorre la adolescencia de una niña atrapada en un cuerpo que no sabe habitar, que intenta comprenderse a sí misma y al mundo en el que vive, desde su infancia en una familia de clase obrera en el barrio de San Blas, arrasado por la heroína en los años ochenta, hasta las noches clandestinas en el centro de Madrid de los noventa.