Showing titles in City Life

What will be will be. Belinda Marshall’s idyllic teenage life in Brittany, France, fell apart when her parents dramatically separated and her mother took her back to England. Fast forward 35 years when Belinda’s world is once again turned upside down. It’s the week before Christmas and her employer 'surprises’ Belinda by asking for her help to rejuvenate their latest investment, a run-down campsite in Brittany.

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.

No one should have a grudge against a meditation-loving yoga teacher, but my bank-robbing father’s associates seem to believe that I know where he hid his missing fortune... and they’ll do anything to get their hands on it. Gruff giant Kade Campbell is determined to protect me, but I don’t want him in the firing line. The rugged former special forces soldier may be a badass—and able to give me butterflies like nobody’s business—but he isn’t immune to bullets.

Sunning himself in the south of France, Johnny has started to believe that his life is finally on the up. But the arrival of a face from his past drags him back down to earth with a harsh dose of cold reality. Johnny Klein once again finds himself walking the tightrope between redemption and despair. When his daughter is in danger of getting consumed by the sins of Johnny’s own past, and a dark secret threatens to engulf people he holds dear, light at the end of the tunnel feels further away than ever.

Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. She’s living her best life! Or is she? The debris of years of dysphoria and failed relationships rattle around in her head. When she tumbles down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party and wakes up in hospital alone, she decides to make some changes. First things first: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Enter Vincent, corporate lawyer and hobby baker. His trad friendship group may as well speak a different language to Max, and his Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman.

It’s been twelve years since June Broaden has seen her high school enemy (and secret crush), Ryan Henderson. That’s a long time to hold a grudge over some petty feud, but the sharp memory of him dangling a kiss at graduation, then pulling away at the last second, has fueled many angry fantasies since. Now’s her chance to get even. Ryan, along with most of her high school class, is back in town for her best friend’s wedding, and June is eager to show the former bully exactly what he missed out on.

In the late 1960s, Leo Gazzara left his family in Milan and moved to Rome for work. Soon unemployed, he has spent his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between hotels, bars, romantic entanglements and the homes of his rich and well-educated friends. Rome is indifferent. Leo drifts, aimless and alone. On the evening of his thirtieth birthday, he meets Arianna, a young woman who is both fragile and seductive. All night they drive the city in Leo’s run-down Alfa Romeo, talking and talking. They eat brioche for breakfast, drink through the dawn, drive to the sea and back.

Present-day. American movie star Patrick and British bookseller Will’s worlds collide when Patrick comes to the UK to shoot a blockbuster superhero movie, in which he plays the starring role. Patrick’s life as a Hollywood celebrity may be glamorous, but it’s all an act: his contract obliges him into play up to his status as a public sex symbol, which means he can’t let anyone find out that he’s gay.

Ivy Edwards is 31 years old, funny, shameless and a bit of a romantic. She's also currently trying not to cry in the office toilet. Partly because she's just run out of money for fags. A bit because her mum continues to annoy her. Definitely not because she's just been dumped by her fiancé. With her London life in shambles and her family miles away in the Welsh valleys, Ivy doesn't actually feel like she belongs anywhere.

Lila Metcalfe is a trainee journalist in Derby and she's very used to being given the stories that no one else wants. So, when her editor tells her that the city's Cossington Park development is being held up by a solitary resident on Hope Street who is refusing to leave, she knows she is going to be the one sent to find out more. Twenty-something Connor is the sole resident of Hope Street and he is not at all what Lila is expecting. And he has a very clear reason not to move: he is waiting for his mum to come home.

When her husband suggests a romantic break, Claire feels obliged to say yes but immediately regrets it. After all that they've been through, how can one weekend in Paris save their marriage? Claire and Ronan aren't the only people on a make-or-break visit to the City of Love. There is a big-shot movie producer from Hollywood, full of regret for a life ill-lived; a student from Boston, torn between love and duty; a Ukrainian refugee struggling to protect her little sister; and an old woman from Dijon, hoping to be braver than she has ever had to be before.

Christmas is around the corner, and Alfie and George can’t wait. This year, the residents of Edgar road have come together to put on a festive show and raise money for a local homeless shelter. As December approaches, plans are in full swing: auditions are being held, props are being built, Alfie and George are rehearsing daily and everyone is having a very merry time.

Linda makes $20 an hour as a content moderator, flagging comments that violate a tech conglomerate's terms and conditions. Each night, she returns to the windowless room in a garage that she rents from a family who pretend she isn't there. But once a month, she escapes to San Francisco International Airport for clandestine meetings on the cheapest flight out that night. It's not pilots but planes that draw her there, with their intelligent windscreens, comely slats and playful turbulence - a trip on a Boeing 737 makes her feel a way that no man ever could.

Seventeen-year-old Tyler lives in one of Edinburgh’s most deprived areas. Coerced into robbing rich people’s homes by his bullying older siblings, he’s also trying to care for his little sister and his drug-addict mum. On a job, his brother Barry stabs a homeowner and leaves her for dead, but that’s just the beginning of their nightmare, because the woman is the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord, Deke Holt.

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.

1938, England. When Lily Baker's mother finds a way for them to leave their run down part of town, and finally esape her aggressive father, Lily is feeling positive about a fresh start at a new life. While her mother will be a housekeeper, Lily has a chance to work in a factory, though she has even bigger dreams - and the tenacity to achieve them. But Lily’s father isn’t going to let go that easily, and she lives in fear of him ruining everything – the life she is building for herself. Will Lily and her mother find the strength to begin all over again?

Meet five bachelor brothers and the women who bring them to their knees in this USA Today best-selling series! When Cole North volunteers to be his boss Sierra’s fake date, nothing goes as expected. Can the lifelong loner evolve from her right-hand man at work to the right man for her forever? Carefree Drake North is fully aware his best friend’s little sister is off-limits, but when she sets her sights on him, he can’t get her off his mind. Can he give up his noncommittal ways and become the caring man she deserves?

When 23-year-old Meggie meets distant and enigmatic Sabine, she recognises in her the person she would like to be. Giving up her daytime existence, her reliable boyfriend and the trappings of a normal life in favour of working the same nightshifts as Sabine could be the perfect escape for Meggie. She finds a liberating sense of freedom in indulging her growing preoccupation with Sabine and plunges herself into another existence, gradually immersing herself in the transient and uncertain world of the nightshift worker.

I’d given up everything to fight for the Resistance. But nothing prepared me for discovering my sister was a traitor. Kept by a Nazi SS officer, outwardly she barely resembles my beloved Justine anymore. But I guessed her secret. About her beautiful, fragile little child. The baby she’ll do anything to protect. And I believe that deep down she still knows what is right. As the Nazis threaten everything we ever held dear, I know I have one chance. I must convince her to betray the evil she seems to have chosen. I need her to find her true self once more.

November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge and Walter, following a secret dream they've harbored all their lives, set out for life in the West. Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father's car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations.