Showing titles in City Life

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.

At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class South Brooklyn; he comes from the super-rich of upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he’s curious, bold, full of mysteries. She keeps a keen intelligence under wraps; his eccentric brilliance is all but impossible to repress. While Eva welcomes Jamie into her family’s embrace, he avoids going home; with little in common, they are drawn together in a deep friendship. As Eva goes off to an elite college and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out of school and joins the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Cressida Collins is the queen of makeovers. With a well-placed stitch, button or seam, she can transform any frock in The Vintage Dress Shop and give customers their Cinderella moment. Like her beautifully organised workroom under the eaves, Cress's life away from the shop is just as orderly and mapped out. But when her boyfriend of fifteen years drops a bombshell, it explodes all the carefully laid plans Cress had for her future. It's going to take more than needle and thread to put Cress's own life back together. Will she ever be brave enough to say goodbye to her old dreams and start over?

Organised. Neat. Lonely. Kathy Simmonds is alone at Christmas this year, after her beloved husband John passed away a few months ago. She keeps her home spick and span, struggling with her grief for a family she has lost or lost touch with. But a chance phone call from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home opens the door to something new. She meets Scruff, a messy Jack Russell with a heart of gold who has been left for dead on the streets of London.

Known for its luxury and discrete service, the Hotel Louis XVI in Paris has attracted an international clientele of the rich and famous for many decades. Now, after extensive renovation and under new management, an esteemed group of loyal returning guests is set to descend upon the hotel, joined by a group of new faces who have managed to secure coveted reservations. Anxiously awaiting the guests is the new manager, Olivier Bateau, and his assistant, Yvonne Philippe. Both strive to continue the hotel's tradition for excellence.

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.

Life’s beautiful for seventysomething influencer Gloria Rose, in her Upper West Side loft with rooftop garden and scores of Instagram followers - until she gets word that her old flame has been arrested for art theft and forgery, and, knowing her own involvement in his misdeeds decades earlier, decides to flee. But that plan is complicated when the nieces she raised are thrown into crises of their own.

1936, September 17th, 1am… In the middle of Harlem, in the dead of night, a woman falls from a second storey window. In her hand, she holds a passport and the name written on it is Lena Aldridge… Nine days earlier… Lena arrived in Harlem less than two weeks ago, full of hope for her burgeoning romance with Will Goodman, the handsome musician she met on board the Queen Mary. Will has arranged for Lena to stay with friends of his, and this will give her the chance to find out if their relationship is going anywhere. But there is another reason she's in Harlem.

Years after escaping her unbearable artworld friends in New York for a new life in London, an unnamed writer finds herself back on the Lower East Side attending a dinner party hosted by Eugene and Nicole – an artist-curator couple – and attended by their pretentious circle. It’s the evening after the funeral of their mutual friend, a failed actress, and if the narrator once loved and admired Eugene and Nicole and their important friends, she now despises them all.

Maggie, Harley and Róise are friends on the brink: of triumph, catastrophe, or maybe just finally growing up. Their crumbling Belfast houseshare has been witness to their roaring twenties, filled with questionable one-night stands and ruthless hangovers. But now fault-lines are beginning to show. The three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched. Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident. And now they are all beginning to unravel.

In Lahore, Daru Shezad is a junior banker with a hashish habit. When his old friend Ozi moves back to Pakistan, Daru wants to be happy for him. Ozi has everything: a beautiful wife and child, an expensive foreign education - and a corrupt father who bankrolls his lavish lifestyle. As jealousy sets in, Daru's life slowly unravels. He loses his job. Starts lacing his joints with heroin. Becomes involved with a criminally minded rickshaw driver. And falls in love with Ozi's lonely wife. But how low can Daru sink? Is he guilty of the crime he finds himself on trial for?

England, 1941. Reunited briefly with her husband-to-be before he returns to fighting, Lily Baker now finds her mundane army office work dreary. But when her boss asks her to keep watch on the happenings at the depot, she quickly suspects a new weapons supplier of fraud. As she trains her sharp eye on the potential cheat, she agrees to help an unmarried colleague with an unexpected pregnancy. But when, without evidence, she is accused of being the one with child, she faces hard decisions.

Loner Cole North has always been the odd guy out. His IQ is sky-high, but he’s not so bright when it comes to people or relationships. Years ago, he spurned expectations, shunned his family’s business, and embraced a career in construction, instead. Now, he values his job above everything, in part because of his secret feelings for his boss Sierra.

A dazzling novel about one young woman’s summer of infinite possibility . . .

When Luca drops out of his prestigious PhD programme and moves back home to Manchester, he thinks he'll take some time to consider his life choices: the failed love affair that ended in a disastrous holiday and embarrassing exit, the pursuit of an academic life that gave him nothing but a strong sense of failure. In need of money, and still convinced the literary life might be for him, Luca takes on a job as a ghost writer: Andy, who has progressive MS, wants Luca to write his life story.

April, 1945. As the Americans storm the Buchenwald concentration camp, among the survivors are Jakob and Emmanuelle, barely more than teenagers. Each of them has lost everything and everyone in the unspeakable horrors of the war. But when they meet, they find hope and comfort in each other. They marry and build a happy, prosperous life for themselves and their new family, but their pasts cast a long shadow over the present....

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.

It’s 1968 and it’s cold when Felicity arrives in London to stay with her mother, improve her English, do a secretarial course - and meet a suitable man. She is already missing her home in Provence and her father and his new wife and their extended family. But it’s only for a year she tells herself - and then she can go back to France and do what she really wants and become a painter. And then she bumps into Oliver who is quite the most interesting young man she has ever met.

Damani is tired. Every day she cares for her mom, drives ride shares to pay the bills and is angry at a world that promised her more before spitting her out. That is until the summer she meets Jolene and life opens up. Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend—attentive, attractive, liberal—and their chemistry feels genuine. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that's holding her back: Jolene is white. But Jolene really doesn't seem like one of the bad ones—she's done the reading, she goes to every protest, she even listens.

Hugo Hunter was the most celebrated gay novelist of the 20th century. He published two masterpieces, securing his place alongside the dazzling literary greats of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and rubbing shoulders with everyone from Truman Capote to James Baldwin. But after decades of fame and excess, just as New York City enters the 1980s and awakes to the coming horror of AIDS, Hugo finds himself running out of money. Out of nowhere, he receives an extraordinary lifeline: an offer from his longtime publisher. The money will solve all his problems – except for one thing. Hugo Hunter is an imposter.