Showing titles in City Life

If I Had Your Face plunges us into the mesmerising world of contemporary Seoul - a place where extreme plastic surgery is as routine as getting a haircut, where women compete for spots in secret 'room salons' to entertain wealthy businessmen after hours, where K-Pop stars are the object of all-consuming obsession and ruthless social hierarchies dictate your every move. Navigating this cutthroat city are four young women balancing on the razor edge of survival.

Despite living in an actual castle, happily ever after is evading Margaret ‘Maggie’ Moore. From her bedroom in the Tower of London, twenty-six-year-old Maggie has always dreamed of her own fairy-tale ending. Yet this is twenty-first century London, so instead of knights on white horses, she has catfish on Tinder. And with her last relationship ending in spectacular fashion, she swears off men for good. And then a chance encounter with Royal Guard Freddie forces Maggie to admit that she isn’t ready to give up on love just yet.

Grace has what one might call a 'full and interesting life', which is code for not married and has no kids. Her life is the envy of her straight friends, but all this time she has been waiting in secret for love to hit her so hard that she would run out of breath, like the way a wave in a rough sea bowls you over, slams you into the sand and nearly drowns you.

Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Then Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox-Jewish woman intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam - by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family - and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk and honey.

It was supposed to be a romantic getaway to New York City. Breanna's new boyfriend, Ty, took care of everything – the train tickets, the sightseeing itinerary, the four-story Jersey City rowhouse with the gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline. But then Bree wakes up one morning and discovers recently missing dog-walker Janelle Beckett dead in the foyer. As the police and a social media mob close in, all looking for #Justice4Janelle, Bree realises that the only way she can stay out of jail is if she finds out what really happened that night.

Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south and political protesters flood the streets with song. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past.

Librarian and history enthusiast Jess Yates has hit rock bottom. With her ex behind bars for fraud, Jess needs to lay low – easier said than done with a celebrity sister. But Tavy has her uses. Her latest TV project involves renovating Fortune Hall, and she needs a house sitter while she’s jetting around the world. The opportunity is too good to miss, especially when Jess discovers that Fortune Hall has links to the infamous Nell Gwyn. Slowly the house begins to reveal its mysteries, and secrets that have laid buried for centuries can no longer be ignored.

Tom is a photographer and dreamer, capturing snapshots of the city around him, talking to the people on the fringes of his world, always searching for something he knows is missing but can never quite grasp. He speaks to a beggar. He saves a woman from a gang on a darkened alley. He takes his photos...but only as he develops the negatives does he see the magical, hidden world he has brushed up against in all its beauty, and menace, and danger. And deep in those negatives is the clue he needs to continue his search.

Joe is 17, a gifted artist and a brilliant older brother to 12-year-old Finn. They live with their Ma and Da in a Dublin tower block called Bojaxhiu, or 'the Jax'. It's not an easy place to be a kid, especially when your father, Frank, is the muscle for the notorious gang leader Dessie 'The Badger' Murphy. But whether it's daytrips to the beach or drawing secret sketches, Joe works hard to show Finn life beyond the battered concrete yard below their flat. Joe is determined not to become like his Da. But when Finn falls ill, Joe finds his convictions harder to cling to.

Elsie is out of options. She's exhausted from being pushed in and out of social housing, she's deflated by debt and she's disturbed by the dark reality of having bailiffs show up at her door. With nowhere to go, there's only one person left to turn to: her best friend, Juliet. She finds friendship and safety in Juliet's flat, but when Elsie loses her bar job and all creative inspiration for her poetry dries up, she hits rock bottom.

New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son; Lara, a drug-addled young artist; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life and Jazzlyn, her beautiful daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the skyline of New York.

In a small pocket of the city, between the houses of No.77 and No.79 on Eastbourne Road, there’s a neglected community garden. Once vibrant and welcoming, and a sanctuary for the people when they needed it most, the garden’s gate is firmly closed. But it only takes a small seed of an idea for big changes to happen. And as the neighbours’ need for connection grows, the twilight garden comes out of hibernation.

Grace can’t believe it when her husband of 25 years announces he doesn’t want to join her on their anniversary trip to Paris - instead, he wants a divorce. Reeling from the shock, Grace makes the bold decision to go on this holiday of a lifetime alone. Audrey leaves behind heartache of her own when she arrives in Paris. A job in a bookshop is her ticket to freedom, but with no money and no knowledge of the French language, her summer adventure seems doomed to fail. Until she meets Grace, and everything changes....

Meet Ivy. She's not just a hot mess, she's a walking disaster. The only man in her life is the pizza delivery driver and she puts more effort into binge-watching Netflix than her dead-end job. But that was the old Ivy. Because last night she switched her phone off, peeled the salami from last night's drunken takeaway off the carpet and made a list. A list that changed everything.

When young Bendigo Shafter and a ragtag bunch of travelers settle in the rugged Wyoming mountains, they quickly come to depend on a toughness and wisdom many of them never knew they possessed. Led by the beautiful and resourceful widow Ruth Macken, the settlers battle harsh winters, renegade opportunists, and the destructive lure of gold. Through these brutally demanding experiences, young Bendigo is forged into a man.

In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a social circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection as they try to figure out what they want, and who they are. At the centre of the group are three dancers: Ivan, tall and stoic, who is leaving ballet for a career in finance; Fatima, whose work ethic earns her both admiration and enmity; and Noah, who 'didn't seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.'

Portia Daniels' life is sorted. She has a perfect man (Jason, a hot TV producer from Ireland), a perfect apartment (in lower Manhattan), a perfect job (writing for TV). Best of all for her, unlike the rest of her family, she lives in perfect obscurity. On the other hand, it's all drama with her mother, Dessie, Kerry-born queen bee of hit reality show, Ladies of Los Angeles, and sisters, Vinnie, a supermodel-turned-Insta-guru and Ariel, a Tik-Tok teen sensation. When Jason drops a bombshell that leaves her life in tatters, Portia flees to be with her family.

Ronke, Simi and Boo are three mixed-race friends living in London. Everyday racism has never held them back, but now in their 30s, they question their future. When Isobel, a lethally glamorous friend from their past, arrives in town, she is determined to fix their futures for them. Cracks in their friendship begin to appear, and it is soon obvious Isobel is not sorting but wrecking. When she is driven to a terrible act, the women are forced to reckon with a crime in their past that may just have repeated itself.

When Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.

Lucy is uprooted from her life in New York City and reluctantly goes into lockdown with her ex-husband, William, in a house on the coast of Maine. Strout's new novel is a miraculous work of fiction. A brilliantly sharp evocation of the period we have just lived through, it is a novel that both resonates deeply and consoles us, too.