Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Friendship

From their very first date, Jamie and Lucy know they've met the one. They're as different as night and day. Jamie's a home bird, while Lucy's happiest on holiday. He has a place for everything—she can never find her keys. Yet, somehow, they make each other happier than they ever thought possible. So why does their story start with them saying 'goodbye'?

8.45 P.M. Realise there have been so many times in my life when have fantasised about going to a scan with Mark or Daniel: just not both at the same time. Before motherhood before marriage Bridget with biological clock ticking very, very loudly finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at the eleventh hour: a joyful pregnancy which is dominated however by a crucial but terribly awkward question - who is the father?

Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in west Ireland, until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, with her sister, Johanna, and a boy named Michael Ward, a son of itinerant tinsmiths. Despite her family's cynicism, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, earn a living and build a life. She longs to return to show her family what she has made of herself, but at risk of revealing a secret about her past to her children, decides to keep her new life separate, torn from the people she is closest to.

Susan and Norma have been best friends for years, at first thrust together by force of circumstance (a job at The Pin Cushion, a haberdashery shop in 1990s Leicestershire) and then by force of character (neither being particularly inclined to make friends with anyone else). But now, 30 years later, faced with a husband seeking immortality and Norma out of reach on a wave of professional glory, Susan begins to wonder whether she has made the right choices about life, love, work and, most importantly, friendship.

The Emperor of Gladness follows a wayward young man in New England who, out of sheer chance, becomes the caretaker for an 82-year-old widow living with dementia. Hallmarks of Vuong's writing - formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness - are on full display in this masterful story of friendship and how much we’re willing to risk to possess one of life’s most treasured mercies: a second chance.

Joni never thought she would try online dating. She's so nervous that she posts fake photos—but when she starts talking to Ant, who's desperate to meet her, she doesn't dare come clean. Instead, Joni finds a way to meet Ant without revealing her true identity. It's perfect, it works and she's happy—until a few months in, Joni discovers she wasn't the only one being deceitful: on Ant's phone are intimate messages between him and two other women.

Lou Manson is an outsider when she joins the final-year class at Highfield Manor, Dublin’s most exclusive private school. Beyond the granite pillars and the wrought-iron gates is a world of wealth, privilege and potential. But Highfield is also hiding a dark secret – and Lou is here to expose it. When Lou befriends the beautiful and talented Shauna Power, her plans are thrown into turmoil. Speaking out against the school would mean betraying Shauna, and Lou soon discovers that the Highfield elite will go to any lengths to protect their own reputation…even when the consequences are fatal.

After young Jieun accidentally misuses her powers, causing her beloved family to vanish, she lives a million restless lives in search of them. Overnight, in the village of Marigold on top of a hill, she conjures up her Mind Laundry, where she cleanses painful experiences, transferring them into stains on a T-shirt and turning them into dazzling red petals. We meet five souls: a frustrated young filmmaker; a tortured social-media influencer; a distraught mother who has discovered her husband’s other family; a young woman two-timed by her lover; a talented photographer and victim of bullying.

Everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together – everybody but Shiloh and Cary. Slow Dance follows these star-crossed best friends from their inseparable teen years on the wrong side of the tracks to their far-flung adulthoods – through her marriage and motherhood and his time in the Navy – as they try to work out what they’re actually supposed to be to each other.

As young boys both Jacques Rebière and Thomas Midwinter become fascinated with trying to understand the human mind. As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa. As the concerns of the old century fade and the First World War divides Europe, the two men's volatile relationship develops and changes, but is always tempered by one exceptional woman; Thomas's sister Sonia.

In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood…

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent by her mother to live for a year with her aunt and uncle. It is a year which will change her life. The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle's big colonial mansion hides many secrets. It also has an unusual occupant in Pochiko, a Pygmy hippopotamus who is the last survivor from a time when the extensive gardens housed a zoo. But it is Tomoko's growing friendship with her cousin Mina which has the most profound effect on her time with the family.

In 1754, renowned maker of clocks and automata Abel Cloudesley must raise his new-born son Zachary when his wife dies in childbirth. Growing up amongst the cogs and springs of his father's workshop, Zachary is intensely curious, ferociously intelligent, unwittingly funny and always honest—perhaps too honest. But when a fateful accident leaves six-year-old Zachary nearly blinded, Abel is convinced that the safest place for his son is in the care of his eccentric Aunt Frances and her menagerie of weird and wonderful animals.

Hallie Piper is turning over a new leaf. After crawling out of a hotel room (hello, rock bottom), she decides it's time to become a full-on adult. She gets a new apartment, a new haircut, and a new wardrobe. But when she logs into the dating app to look for new love, she finds none other than Jack: the guy whose hotel room she'd snuck out of. After agreeing they are absolutely not interested in each other, Jack and Hallie realise that they're each other's perfect wing-person - and join forces in their searches for The One. They even make a wager to see who can find true love first.

Flo is sick of Tokyo. She is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up, and she's in a relationship that's run its course. That's until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left by a drunken passenger on the Tokyo Subway.

When Edie Budd arrives at a shabby West London boarding house in October 1958, carrying nothing except a broken suitcase and an envelope full of cash, it's clear she's hiding a terrible secret. Tommie, who lives on the second floor, waits on the eccentric Mrs Vee by day. After dark, she harbours an addiction to seedy Soho nightlife - and a man she can't quit. Phyllis, 73 Dove Street's formidable landlady, has set fire to her husband's belongings after discovering a heart-breaking betrayal - yet her fierce bravado hides a past she doesn't want to talk about.

November, 1941. Christmas is coming... and despite the blackout, shortages and a constant threat of air raids, the inhabitants of Kelthorpe on the Yorkshire coast are determined that war won't stop them celebrating. The run-up to Christmas sees sisters Connie and Lizzie and their good friend Pamela busier than ever. Between their jobs, carol-singing rehearsals with the church choir and night shifts doing their bit as Air Raid Wardens and ambulance drivers, it's all go.

Early one morning, at the close of St Colibri’s carnival, a young female steel pan player is found dead beneath a cannonball tree. It is a discovery that will transform the lives of everyone on this small island.

Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been close friends since they first met in their 20s. Thirty years later Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach was the sanest and kindest of them all, the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine.

Isobel and Jen have spent their entire lives following the rules - of their marriages, and their religion. But when Isobel's husband leaves her, and Jen goes through unimaginable trauma, the religion turns its back. Zelda has never done what's expected of her. Living on the outskirts of the community that she, Jen and Isobel were raised in, she's trying to find herself outside of the confines of the world she left behind. As the lives of these women become entangled, they each face an uncertain future.