Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Comedy & Humour

Tragedy struck early in Will's life. Willingly haunted by ghosts of the past and content with his own company, he's an ideal lighthouse keeper. Yet as automated beacons replace men, Will's job on the rugged Cornish coast finally goes. Although sad at the change, Will can now fulfil his dream - to sail solo around the British coast. It's a simple idea, but complications arise.

Sherlock Holmes is an unparalleled genius. Warlock Holmes is an idiot. A font of arcane power, certainly. But he's brilliantly dim. Frankly, he couldn't deduce his way out of a paper bag. The only thing he has really got going for him are the might of a thousand demons and his stalwart companion. Thankfully, Dr. Watson is always there to aid him through the treacherous shoals of Victorian propriety and save him from a gruesome death every now and again.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists....

Everyone in Cape Cod thinks that Mother is a wonderful woman: pious, hardworking, frugal. Everyone except her husband and seven children. To them she is a selfish and petty tyrant, endlessly comparing her many living children to the one who died in childbirth, keeping a viselike hold on her offspring even as they try to escape into adulthood. Welcome to Mother Land: a suffocating kingdom of parental narcissism.

After 10 years together, Charlie Mansell has been dumped by his live-in girlfriend, Sarah. All he wants to do is wallow in misery, but mates Andy and Tom have a better idea: a week of sun, sea, and souvlaki in Malia, party capital of the Greek islands. But Charlie and his mates aren't 18 any more. Or even under 30. And it shows....

Through world wars and civil strife, the Bangor Express has never missed an issue, but now it is losing money, and Rob Cullen has absolutely no idea that he's the man to save it. It's been a long time since Rob had a real story to get his teeth into...just as well then that he can rely on the Express crew to back him up. They're like a family. A dysfunctional, highly unpopular and poverty-stricken family.

Mysteries of love, romance, and truth-telling lie at the heart of Isabel Dalhousie's concerns in Alexander McCall Smith's new Sunday Philosopher's Club novel. Isabel's niece, Cat, is still worshipped by the young musician, Jamie, but Cat has a new and unsuitable love interest. Meanwhile Isabel's Texan cousins have arrived in Edinburgh and are provoking a quite separate set of dilemmas.

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.

Things are looking up for Penny Robinson. She's kicked her gambling addiction and even started her own business: Princess on a Shoestring, an all-inclusive service for brides-to-be. Penny's got it all under control, that is until a rival planner decides to take her down - one hard-won bride at a time. And when a romantic weekend away has some unexpected consequences, Penny's expectations for her career are brought back down to earth with a bump.

It's a week before Christmas, and Hettie and Tilly set out on a very dangerous case for The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency. Lady Eloise Crabstock-Singe has summoned them to Crabstock Manor, hoping they can solve the mystery of Christmas Paws: a servant cat that haunts the manor, intent on killing off all the Crabstocks. Through blizzard and storm, stranded on the notorious Bodkin Moor, will Hettie and Tilly save the day and get home in time for Christmas dinner?

The centre of the world: 1990s Manhattan. Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn’t been and with people he doesn’t know. On the eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York history, he’s living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another. Now it’s time to move to the next stage. But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind.

I almost gave up on love. My ex, who called his private parts ‘Nigel’, was enough to put me off men forever. But then I met Joe. Alice thought she’d found Mr Right. Her blue-eyed boyfriend, Joe, gives her butterflies, makes her bacon sandwiches when she’s hungover and doesn’t have a nickname for any of his body parts. She should have known it was too good to be true. Because one day, Alice and Joe bump into Zoe. According to him, Zoe’s ‘just an old friend’. But Alice saw the way they froze and heard the strange note in Joe’s voice when he said her name.

Hester and Harriet are reluctantly driving to visit relatives on Christmas Day when they come across a young woman hiding with her baby in a bus shelter. Seeing the perfect excuse for returning to their own warm hearth, the sisters insist on bringing Daria and Milo home with them. But with the arrival of a sinister stranger looking for a girl with a baby, Hester and Harriet's carefully crafted peace and quiet quickly begins to fall apart....

Abigail Sorensen has spent her life trying to unwrap the events of 1990. It was the year she started receiving random chapters from a self-help book called The Guidebook in the post. It was also the year Robert, her brother, disappeared on the eve of her 16th birthday. She believes the absurdity of The Guidebook and the mystery of her brother's disappearance must be connected. Now 35, owner of The Happiness Café and mother of four-year-old Oscar, Abigail has been invited to learn the truth behind The Guidebook at an all-expenses-paid retreat.

Matt Beckford's sole ambition is to turn forty with his life sorted. With a Porsche on the drive and a high-flying job, it looks like things are perfect. But when Matt's wife unexpectedly calls time on their marriage, a chain of events is set in motion that very quickly sees him facing forty broke, homeless and completely alone. But all is not lost because Matt has a plan…

Hettie Bagshot and her sidekick, Tilly Jenkins, run the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency from the back room of the Butters' High Street bakery. They are asked by the organisers of the prestigious local literary festival to act as security. But when the body of one of the most popular authors is found in a secluded part of the festival grounds, Hettie and Tilly must turn their attention to investigating the death of Downton Tabby....

Sarah Langan's A Better World is gleefully ruthless in its dissection of wealth, power, and privilege, timely in its depiction of a self-destructing world—and it is a prescient warning to us all.

You'll be wincing in recognition and scratching your head in incredulity, but like Marian herself you won't be able to stop laughing at the sheer delightful absurdity that is modern life - because each and every one of us is clearly making it up as we go along. She has wonderful and tickling words of advice for those fast approaching 50.

Ben Aitken wasn't getting enough. He knew it and so did everyone else. He was grumpy, increasingly boring, mostly joyless. So, he joined a lawn bowls club. A week later, he doubled down on the doldrums by learning to dance like they do in Bollywood. Then—with an almost entirely reformed selfhood winking appealingly just around the corner—he started swimming in cold water and was back to square one. Despite the setbacks, it was becoming clear to him that the very pursuit of fun was a great way of not feeling naff. And so he made a vow to have as much of the f-stuff as he possibly could

Becky thought being married to Luke Brandon would be one big Tiffany box of happiness. But to be honest, it's not quite as dreamy as she'd hoped. The trouble started on honeymoon, when she told Luke the tiniest little fib, about the teeniest little purchase. Now she's on a strict budget, she doesn't have a job — and worst of all her beloved Suze has a new best friend. Then she receives some incredible news. She has a long-lost sister!