Showing titles in City Life

Ronke, Simi and Boo are three mixed-race friends living in London. Everyday racism has never held them back, but now in their 30s, they question their future. When Isobel, a lethally glamorous friend from their past, arrives in town, she is determined to fix their futures for them. Cracks in their friendship begin to appear, and it is soon obvious Isobel is not sorting but wrecking. When she is driven to a terrible act, the women are forced to reckon with a crime in their past that may just have repeated itself.

Twenty-five-year-old Kat Bennett has never had a place to call home, and when she moves into the crumbling Shelley House, she thinks it will just be temporary. Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling has lived in Shelley House for longer than anyone can remember, and if you believe the other tenants, she's as cantankerous as they come. When the building faces demolition, sworn enemies Kat and Dorothy become unlikely allies in their quest to save their historic home...and even less likely investigators when they suspect that foul play is coming from inside the house.

Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

A propulsive debut of visionary scale, Make Me a City embroiders fact with fiction to tell the story of Chicago's 19th century, tracing its rise from frontier settlement to industrial colossus.

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

England, 1941. Reunited briefly with her husband-to-be before he returns to fighting, Lily Baker now finds her mundane army office work dreary. But when her boss asks her to keep watch on the happenings at the depot, she quickly suspects a new weapons supplier of fraud. As she trains her sharp eye on the potential cheat, she agrees to help an unmarried colleague with an unexpected pregnancy. But when, without evidence, she is accused of being the one with child, she faces hard decisions.

In northern Japan, overlooking the spectacular view Hakodate Port has to offer, Cafe Donna Donna has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than 100 years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. Translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot and featuring signature heart-warming characters and wistful storytelling, in Before Your Memory Fades, Kawaguchi once again invites the listener to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

Every morning, seventeen-year-old Maria Anís Rosario takes the subway an hour from her boisterous and close-knit family in Queens to her private high school on the Upper East Side, where she struggles to fit in as one of the only Latina students - until Rocky welcomes her into this new life. White, rebellious, and ignored by her wealthy parents, Rocky uses her money toward one goal: to get away with anything. To Maria, it’s a dazzling privilege.

In the hood, a snitch is the worst thing a person can possibly be. Rolling over on your best friend, who has been with you through thick and thin, hungry and full, freedom and state bids - that’s “the cruelest lie told in silence”. While Jovan experiences the fruits of the hustle during his partner’s first stint, Bilal humbly does his time like a true soldier, taking a manslaughter charge for his one true friend. When these two are finally reunited on the streets, a chain of events lands them both behind bars facing multiple charges.

Here is the preface to 12 magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

The biggest prank could be falling in love.... In this San Francisco neighborhood, a kiss at sunset means you might find your true love. Two best friends are about to find out if the legend is real. Lt. Firefighter Dylan Reyes believes the sunset kiss legend is nothing more than a tourist attraction. He's a big fan of exit plans, science, and health insurance. But since the last time his best friend Charley was in the city, he hasn't stopped thinking about her naked. One night, and a realistic dream, changed everything.

In the early '90s, Scarlet, a painter and high fashion model, finds herself working in some of the world’s most famous fashion capitals. As her adventure continues, she meets Johnny of The Westies, an up-and-coming band on the cusp of superstardom. What ensues is an unhinged ride of a novel following the audacious lead female protagonist as she navigates her life through fame, addiction, infidelity, and all the ups and downs of dating a legendary musician from one of the biggest rock bands in history.

Eliza Bright is living the dream as an elite video game coder at Fancy Dog Games, the first woman to ascend that high in the ranks — and some people want to make sure she’s the last. To her friends, Eliza Bright is a brilliant, self-taught coder bravely calling out the misogyny that pervades her workplace and industry. To the men who see her very presence as a threat, Eliza Bright is a woman who needs to be destroyed to protect the game they love.

From mingling with tabloid millionaires to trading favours and fortunes with royalty, she will stop at nothing to reach the top of the career ladder at the Mercury newspaper. Landing scoop after scoop, Becky ruthlessly carves a place for herself in a society determined to ignore her. These are the biggest stories and scandals of the decade, and she has something to do with every one of them. But Becky may have more in common with the people she writes about than she thinks – what takes a lifetime to build takes only a moment to destroy...

Jordi Viassolo consigue un trabajo de becario - temporal y mal pagado - en una agencia de detectives de Barcelona. La misión que le encargan es simple: mantener el despacho abierto durante el verano sin meterse en líos. Todo cambia cuando aparece un cliente desesperado asegurando que su mujer ha desaparecido.

Scritto in risposta alla frase pronunciata dal ministro Depretis "bisogna sventrare Napoli!", il romanzo, scritto nel 1884, è molto più di un'inchiesta giornalistica. "Il ventre di Napoli" è un grido accorato di denuncia che conduce il lettore negli splendori e nelle miserie di Napoli, con le sue usanze e le sue tradizioni, laddove il degrado, la miseria e lo scempio non possono che generare rabbia e pietà.

An aspiring artist gets a seven-figure offer that could change her life forever in this provocative and surprising short story of a woman torn between saying yes and saying no. Alicia could do a lot with a million dollars. But what’s she willing to do for it? Her top client, a billionaire hedge fund manager, has made a very intimate business proposal. In the world of finance, it’s just another transaction, right? An efficient supply-demand exchange. At least that’s what Alicia tries to tell herself.

The setting is Seattle's Lake City neighborhood during the 2001 holiday season. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy and at the peak of Seattle's first wave of tech-boom gentrification - a wave that never quite made it to his neighborhood - Lane Bueche schemes how to win back his wife (and her trust fund). In his childhood bedroom in his mother's decrepit old house, the idealistic but self-serving striver Lane licks his wounds and hatches a plot.

Immune to the consequences of immorality, five privileged young men in Bogotá bond over a shared code: worship drugs and drink, exploit women, and scorn the underclass. As males, they declare the right to freedom of pleasure. As friends, only disloyalty to each other is forbidden. When a little girl from the slums disappears, the limits of a perverse and sacred bond will be tested in ways none of them could have imagined.

Since moving to a new city, once-adventurous Steph is doing her best to prove to her friends and family back home that her life is as fulfilling and envy-inducing as ever. The truth? She is broke and has found that making new friends isn't as easy as she expected. Eric has lost his way in life since his breakup with perfect Clarissa. Now that all his friends are buying homes, getting married and starting families, Eric is still living in a house share, feeling left behind. Eric and Steph are strangers, but with one connection - they live on the same street, on either side of number 26.