Showing titles in Literature & Fiction

Warning: You may have a huge, invisible spider living in your skull. This is not a metaphor. You will dismiss this as ridiculous fearmongering. Dismissing things as ridiculous fearmongering is, in fact, the first symptom of parasitic spider infection - the creature secretes a chemical into the brain to stimulate skepticism, in order to prevent you from seeking a cure. That’s just as well, since the “cure” involves learning what a chain saw tastes like. You can’t feel the spider, because it controls your nerve endings.

The highly successful Grumpy Old Woman returns - and this time she's even grumpier: "Obviously in a book this size I wouldn't be able to share with you ALL of my grumps. But I've decided to write down some of the secret thoughts that beset a woman of a certain age, some of the wicked things that occur to a woman who takes a lot of things to the dry cleaners, has to have her roots done every four weeks and finds it hard to wear high heels."

A year has passed, and in this third novel of the Pop Larkin series, Pop Larkin is preparing to build the bungalow he promised Charley and Mariette upon their engagement. He buys a country home slated for demolition, intending to convert it for the two, but it is not long before a London couple persuade him to sell it. Pop, ever the trickster, sells it for an extortionate price, as the two social climbers know little about country life.

Tash and Jamie are back, and no one could be less pleased than her. They accidentally went to 1984 and broke it. But together they sorted out their mess. Or so they thought. Now the hapless sister and brother are back, and this time it's a matter of life or death. How far would you go to save a life? How about stealing a million pounds? Sometimes you just have to do the wrong thing. Lose yourself in Saturday Superstore, Paul Daniel's Magic Show, Sports Review of 1984 and the corridors of BBC TV Centre, this is the ultimate warning if you're ever planning a DIY heist.

Coco Pinchard always dreamed of being a successful writer, but then life got in the way. She married young, had a son, and put her dreams on hold. But now she's 40, and her first novel is about to be published! Her husband Daniel has greyed nicely into a silver fox, and her son Rosencrantz is all grown up. Shouldn't it be time to enjoy life? That is, until the annual family Christmas when her hideous in-laws come to stay, and Coco opens her gift from Daniel. It's not the jewelry she chose, but an iPhone.

Winner of an Obie and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and directed by Tony nominee Leigh Silverman, Yellow Face is as timely as ever, wrestling with issues of cultural appropriation, complicity, and artistic freedom. It’s brought to life in this audio-only revival by a stunning all-star cast (many playing themselves) led by Daniel Dae Kim.

The reluctant time travelers are spending one final Christmas together—although only one of them knows it. So, why the hell can’t that be straightforward, either? And do Raymond and Maureen need to be part of every single thing? Could you play cupid to your brother or sister? And how long would you throw at it? Thirty-four years? Grab your passport, this is going to take some time....

Dorothy Graham is dead, which is inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of the truly dreadful people she is related to want to get their hands on her money, they’re going to have to do so via a fiendish difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy’s devising. After all, just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable.

In Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith returns home to Edinburgh and the glorious cast of his own tales of the city, the residents of 44 Scotland Street, with a new set of challenges for each one of them. Bruce, the intolerably vain and perpetually deluded ex-surveyor, is about to embark on a new career as a wine merchant, while his long-suffering flatmate Pat MacGregor, set up by matchmaking Domenica Macdonald, finds herself invited to a nudist picnic in Moray Place in the pursuit of true love.

Evelyn and Muriel Axon, mother and daughter, lead a haunted existence. Objects of horror to their neighbours, they evade or terrorise any social worker who crosses their path. Inside their house, they pursue a covert persecution of each other, shrinking from the unseen occupants of their spare room. But change is in the air… Every Day is Mother's Day is a merciless comedy of colliding lives: of sex, death, madness, adultery and the social services.

Acclaimed sketch duo Two Episodes of Mash (a.k.a. Diane Morgan and Joe Wilkinson) present their surreal sketch show packed full 'low-key, mundane glamour', with support from a cast including David O'Doherty, Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce and Jimmy Carr. Meet the human cannonball, who has been blasted to Ilford from Belgium by mistake. Discover what happens when Rapunzel gets an intercom. Learn how Joe has blown the programme budget on a life-size ice sculpture of Tim Henman. And prepare for a fly-on-the-wall documentary about working behind-the-scenes on a sketch show.

April hates men. Her dating life is a disaster and she carries the damage of her last relationship with her every day. She's trying so hard to put herself out there, but every time it seems like she's found something real it falls apart. If only April could be more like Gretel. Gretel knows how to behave perfectly in relationships - she's a 'Regular Everyday Manic Pixie Dream Girl Next Door With No Problems'. Gretel is exactly what all men want. The problem is, Gretel isn't real.

The phone hasn't rung for months. Suzy Marshall is discovering that work can be sluggish for an actress over 60 - even for the former star of a 1980s TV series. So when she's offered the plum role of Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich, it seems like a godsend. Until, that is, the play is abruptly cancelled in suspicious circumstances, and Suzy is forced to take a job on a cruise ship to get home.

Private McAuslan, J.—the Dirtiest Soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban)—demonstrates his unfitness for military service in this first volume of stories of life in a Scottish regiment. Unkempt, ungainly and unwashed, civilian listeners may regard him with shocked disbelief. But generations of ex-servicemen have hailed him with delight as a familiar friend—because every old soldier can remember a McAuslan!

Penelope Keith stars in the much-loved sitcom about an aristocrat forced to part with her family home. When her husband's death leaves her financially strapped, Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton has no choice but to sell her beloved Grantleigh Estate. With butler Brabinger in tow, she decamps to the tiny Old Lodge cottage, where she keeps a close - and disapproving - eye on the new squire: the nouveau riche Richard DeVere, a wholesale food magnate of Czech descent.

Glasgow for Bertie is the promised land. The city of pies and Irn Bru, far from his controlling mother, Irene, – his place of escape. But how will he respond to the news of the proposed merging of Edinburgh and Glasgow? A new member of Bertie’s class at school is causing ripples in his social circle. She is called Galactica MacFee and is going to be a match for Olive and her lieutenant, Pansy. And an incredible new discovery: a Pictish stone that is said to have the first-know written poem carved into it is the talk of the town.

May Morrigan is in her bookshop one morning when she—and everyone else in the shop—receives an anonymous text. It contains a reference to a Shakespeare quotation—and seems to be aimed at the vicar and his partner, Juan. The next morning, one of them is dead. Meanwhile, May’s elderly mother Minty is staying with her, her old friend Fletcher, and her two dogs. To her dismay, Minty is quite preoccupied with death. She also keeps reminiscing about her past in ways that make May wonder what secrets she’s hiding.

Mallory Devereaux is known throughout the town of Royal Flush, Louisiana, as a walking disaster, and her luck just got worse. She needs to raise $10,000 in one week to keep the IRS from seizing her adoptive father’s business, where she works as the demolition foreman. When the opportunity to cool cards at her uncle’s casino comes up, Mallory hopes her luck is changing. But when she realizes her uncle has assembled a tournament of criminals, she wonders what she’s stepped in the middle of.

Anthony Trollope's series of witty, gently satirical stories of provincial life are set in the fictional town of Barchester and the surrounding county of Barsetshire. With a focus on the lives, loves and tribulations of the local clergy and rural gentry, the canvas is broad and colourful, with a set of iconic characters in whose lives we become intimately involved as they grow up, grow old, and fall in or out of love and friendship across the years.

"Ich habe ein Konsumproblem. Ich kaufe, um zu vergessen, und dann vergesse ich, dass ich gekauft habe. Wenn ich Dinge nicht sehe, vergesse ich, dass sie existieren. Mein Pürierstab, mein Fahrradhelm, mein Ex-Freund, als er mal für eine Woche nach Dänemark gefahren ist. Ich kann mich plötzlich nicht mehr an sie erinnern und denke: Da könntest du mal einen neuen gebrauchen! Infolgedessen habe ich mehrere Pürierstäbe, Fahrradhelme und Ex-Freunde." Giulia Becker ist die Königin des Grotesken, des Überdrehten. In ihrem neuen, zweiten Buch strickt sie einen ganzen Kosmos aus kleinen Alltagsbeobachtungen.