Showing titles in Literature & Fiction

Miranda Meadowe decides a lonely widowhood in her crumbling country house is not for her. Reviving a university dream, she invites five of her oldest friends to come and join her to live, and to stave off the prospect of old age. All have their own reasons for accepting.To begin with, omens are good. They laugh, dance, drink and behave badly, as they cling to the heritage they thought was theirs for ever: power, health, stability.

Every weekend, in basements and car parks across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on the world.

It’s amazing what the lack of immediate threat to one’s life and wellbeing can do for a person’s disposition. High risk, high reward endeavors suddenly seem far less appealing, month-long delays are no longer a cause for concern, and sleeping in every single day of the week becomes an extremely attractive proposition. Indeed, without a pressing need to aggressively expand its power, Boxxy T. Morningwood is finally able to simply sit back, enjoy life, and watch the world both turn and burn.

Ever since Martin Banks and his fellow computer geeks discovered that reality is just a computer program to be happily hacked, they've been jaunting back and forth through time, posing as medieval wizards and having the epic adventures that other nerds can only dream of having. But even in their wildest fantasies, they never expected to end up at the mercy of the former apprentice whom they sent to prison for gross misuse of magic and all-around evil behavior.

When Jude agrees to lend her vintage chaise longue for the local Amateur Dramatic Society’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, little does she realise she’ll end up in a starring role. It’s an ambitious play, culminating in a dramatic execution scene: a scene that’s played for real when one of the leading actors is found hanging from the specially constructed stage gallows during rehearsals. A tragic accident - or something more sinister?

Lori Belkin has been dumped. By her parents. They moved out while she was away on holiday, and now, at the tender age of 25, she must stand on her own two feet. While she’s getting to grips with basic adulting, Lori magically brings to life the super-sexy man she created from celebrity photos as a teenager. Lori learns very quickly that having your ideal man is not as satisfying as it ought to be and that being an adult is far harder than it looks.

Going back home was not exactly what Tim and the C&C gang expected. Trouble continues to follow them back to Gulf Coast Mississippi. Trouble...and a gnome...and an undead midget.

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.

Welcome to Concrete Cow, the sketch show where anything is possible. Written by James Cary, who won a Silver Sony Award for Think the Unthinkable, this silly, surreal and ingenious comedy stars one half of ‘Mitchell and Webb’, Robert Webb. Also featuring are Oscar-winning actress and comedian Olivia Colman, as well as Sally Hawkins, Chris Pavlo, Beth Chalmers and more.

Rosemary Bell just wants to live a quiet, happy life and raise her daughter as far away from her toxic ex-husband as she can get. But when they move into a decrepit cottage in the woods of Mosswood, Georgia, Rosie realizes her life will never be simple.A gang of meddling neighborhood do-gooders want to run her out of town. The vicious laundromat machines keep eating her spare change. And to top it all off, strange things keep happening around Rosie when she least expects it....

Having been married for over 40 years, 69-year-old Arthur Pepper is mourning the loss of his wife. He finally musters the courage to go through her possessions and happens upon a charm bracelet that he has never seen before. What follows is a surprising adventure that takes Arthur on an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s life - a journey that leads him to find healing, self-discovery, and love in the most unexpected of places.

Billy and Dawnie may be in their seventies, but that won’t stop them taking chances or starting again. Their grown-up children have families and lives of their own, so now it’s Billy and Dawnie’s turn and a life near the sea in Devon beckons. But the residents of Margot Street (or Maggot Street as Dawnie insists on calling it), don’t quite know what to make of their new neighbours.

A chain of events that will change the lives of each and every character will leave some of them wiser, some of them deader, and some of them definitely looking for a new line of work. With a wicked wit, razor-sharp observations, rich characters, and a plot with more twists than the Inland Waterway, Dave Barry makes his debut a complete and utter triumph.

Sitting quietly in his room in an old people's home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn't want to begin: his one-hundredth birthday party. Escaping through his bedroom window, into the flowerbed, Allan makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several deaths, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent but very human police.

Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. He and his academic colleagues, united by pallor, social ineptitude and sexual inexperience, once spent hours discussing their theories, but they somehow never made it into print. Now his unfinished thesis languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him, and romance eludes him. His only outlet is his short stories, scribbled in notebooks and expressing his secret obsessions and frustrations.

In Jim’s absence, Zorlando has been doing a pretty good job keeping Windfall safe. He doesn’t know - and may not be equipped for - what is heading straight toward Noobtown, though. Will Jim beat the Pirates while he is on Glorious Roberts’ ship? Will he make it back to his beloved city before Maggie, the assassin, gets there? Why are there pirates attempting to sack Windfall? Most importantly, will Shart ever be the opposite of inside out again?

In the first series, Lander presents a four-part exposé into irregularities over plans to site a new London airport near Birmingham. Series 2 finds him reopening the investigation into the Archibald Gallery (was the key suspect framed?), reporting on revolutionary methods of baby production, probing MI5 about dirty tricks, purple herrings and mauve sheep and interviewing a double agent in his luxury home in Bulgaria....

The idyll of Blandings Castle is about to be disturbed, for the Hon. Freddie Threepwood is poised to make his debut as a jewel thief. Freddie, however, is not alone: Blandings is simply brimming with criminals and impostors all intent on stealing Aunt Constance's 20,000 pound diamond necklace. It is left to the debonair Psmith, with his usual aplomb, to unscramble the passion, problems, and identities, of one and all.

When Tubby informs his fiancee that her new hat makes her look like a Pekingese, she is naturally incensed. But it is when he questions the validity of the story of her narrow escape from a beastly, hungry shark that the engagement is firmly called off. But love is in the air for Gussie Fink-Nottle. He abandons his beloved newts to court the new object of his affections, the dreamy and romantic Miss Madeline Bassett. He is dressed as Mephistopheles...and it appears that even the Devil can rely on Jeeves.

A unique collection of 12 full-cast BBC Radio productions of plays by Alan Bennett. The titles are: 40 Years On, A Visit from Miss Prothero, Say Something Happened, Kafka's Dick, Two in Torquay, The Madness of George III, The History Boys, An Englishman Abroad, A Question of Attribution, The Lady in the Van, Cocktail Sticks and The Last of the Sun.