Showing titles in Friendship

Saffy is waiting to go into an important meeting when she receives a missed call and then a text message from her best friend, Leona: Please help...come now. Of course, she races to her friend’s house. But when she arrives, she notices something strange. This message was deleted. Leona answers the door, and insists everything's fine. She doesn't know anything about the message. Six hours later, Saffy gets a knock on the door. It's the police. They’ve found a body. And Saffy was the last one to see them alive.

Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world—of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over, fades from view. When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love—making games.

Verity Beresford is worried about her husband. Oliver didn’t come home last night so of course Verity goes straight to Judith Potts, Marlow’s resident amateur sleuth, for help. Oliver, founder of the Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society, had hired The Marlow Belle, a private pleasure cruiser, for an exclusive party with the MADS committee but no one remembers seeing him disembark. And then Oliver’s body washes up on the Thames with two bullet holes in him – it’s time for the Marlow Murder Club to leap into action.

Childless couple Robin and Wendy have developed an obsession with Mayfield - the model village they've built in their garage. However, running a model village is slightly more complicated than they expected, especially as they live next-door to Derek, a former superstar salesman who is struggling with the erratic side effects of mental health medication, and Maureen, who is always getting involved in get-rich-quick schemes.

Still fiery and feisty at eighty-seven, Veronica McCreedy, the very first Penguin Ambassador, is determined to prove that nothing is impossible when you put your mind to it. Eileen, Veronica’s ever-patient assistant, is content taking care of other people. But when a new adventure calls, it makes her question everything...

Lily and her ex-husband, Ryle, have just settled into a civil co-parenting rhythm when she suddenly bumps into her first love, Atlas, again. After nearly two years separated, she is elated that for once, time is on their side, and she immediately says yes when Atlas asks her on a date. But her excitement is quickly hampered by the knowledge that, though they are no longer married, Ryle is still very much a part of her life—and Atlas Corrigan is the one man he will hate being in his ex-wife and daughter’s life.

Emma is having a fresh start. After a successful teaching career, an exciting new chapter awaits Emma – helping her fiancé Grayson run one of Beatrix Potter's farms. While imagining days spent supporting Grayson with his dream, working the land and helping with the animals, Emma harvests a dream of her own – to set up an alpaca-walking business around the farm. But working together isn’t as easy as Emma expected. Soon her dreams are in tatters and, broken-hearted, she must start over yet again.

Geoffrey Lushington, Mayor of Marlow, dies suddenly during a Town Council meeting. When traces of aconite – also known as the queen of poisons – are found in his coffee cup, the police realise he was murdered. But who did it? And why? The police bring Judith, Suzie and Becks in to investigate as Civilian Advisors right from the start, so they have free rein to interview suspects and follow the evidence to their heart’s content, which is perfect because Judith has no time for rules and standard procedure. But this case has the Marlow Murder Club stumped.

1970s Yorkshire. Women are being terrorised by the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper, whose attacks are becoming more frequent and arbitrary. Twelve year-old Miv's family, afraid of the Ripper's increasing hatred of women, begins to talk about moving south. Miv, determined for this not to happen, decides to take the matter into her own hands and investigate the attacks alongside her best friend Sharon.

Old friends Renée and Flo couldn’t be more different. Flo wants to be invisible, Renée wants to be a somebody. But old friendships are magnetic. In their early twenties, and on the cusp of the rest of their lives, Renée and Flo both fly home to Guernsey: to the island where it all began. Back in the place of their youth, yet spreading their wings into adulthood, will they flail and fall? Or will growing up be the making of them?

Nisha Cantor and Sam Kemp are two very different women. Nisha, 45, lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband inexplicably cuts her off entirely. She doesn't even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. That's because Sam—47, middle-aged, struggling to keep herself and her family afloat—has accidentally taken Nisha's gym bag. Now Nisha's got nothing. And Sam's walking tall with shoes that catch eyes—and give her a career an unexpected boost. Except Nisha wants her life back—and she'll start with her shoes....

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers.

Carmen is at a loose end. Her gorgeous bookshop is the filming site of a cheesy Christmas movie, she's been ousted from her sister's house, and the love of her life has just flown thousands of miles away. It's threatening to be a very unjolly Christmas indeed! But when the elderly owner of the shop comes to Carmen with a Christmas wish that threatens to never come true, Carmen knows she must buckle down to get the funds to save not only his trip, but the shop itself.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.

Three years after the Essex Dogs battled through the Siege of Calais, the Black Death has torn through Europe. Romford, basking in his new riches, now finds himself living as a knight errant. Loveday, whose businesses have been destroyed by the plague, must return to the life he vowed to abandon: fighting. And Millstone and Thorp enlist themselves on a deadly mission to escort a princess to Castille.

For twenty years, Sciona has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fuelled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry. When Sciona finally achieves her ambition and becomes a Highmage, she finds her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues are determined to make her feel unwelcome – and instead of a qualified lab assistant they give her a janitor. What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was not always a janitor.

Autumn Laine has lost her creative sparkle. After losing her grandad and her job as an illustrator in quick succession, she is at a crossroads in life and needs a break. Spending time with her parents in Paris, even in the artistic community of Montmartre, doesn't appear to be the answer. So when her penpal, Rosie, invites her to stay in the Lake District, Autumn jumps at the chance to get away from the hustle and bustle of Paris. After all, where better to re-discover her creativity than the place which inspired her heroine Beatrix Potter?

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance. When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success and pride.

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.