Literature & Fiction

Retired schoolteachers Pat, Liz and Thelma don’t know what to think. The death of Neville Hilton is not a crime. Just your standard, if tragic, heart attack. At least that’s what the autopsy shows. But his ex-wife isn’t convinced. She’s sure his current wife was involved – maybe she wasn’t at some horse event, as she told police. And so the three friends step away from the Melmbury slice to investigate.

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime… In reality it was a business trip, prettied up as a romantic mini break, but the man behind the wheel was meant to be Candice Hart’s boss and (married but separated, I swear!) lover. Not Danny the new guy! Not only is Candice faced with a new driver, but the office’s far too handsome hipster expects her to share the cramped space inside his “fully” restored VW Beetle, aka The Love Bug, and put up with his constant opinions about her life…

Dan has accidentally "Noclipped" into the Backrooms—a bizarro, extra-dimensional Alice-in-Wonderland world, overrun with horrific nightmare creatures known as the Dwellers. No one ever gets out. Hell, forget about leaving, if Dan wants to survive the week, he's going to need to harness the strange game-like magic of the Backrooms, make some very sketchy allies, and carve out a little safe haven to call his own.

After her twin sister, Chiara, goes missing at a mom-fluencer weekend, Adrienne Shaw will find her no matter what it takes. They may have been on the outs, but no one comes for her sister and gets away with it. It’s been a year, the authorities have no answers, and her brother-in-law is useless in the matter. It’s time for Adrienne to take the case into her own hands. Following in Chiara’s last footsteps, Adrienne goes undercover, infiltrating the same influencer retreat as the last thing she wants to be: an Instamommy.

Sophia is determined to grow old disgracefully and refuses to be invisible. She craves fiery passion and steamy romance, not targeted ads for funeral plans. After a heart-shattering breakup, she ditches love to date a new man each week for a year. As she flirts, fumbles and sips fizz through an array of encounters, from an opera buff in a cape to an orgasm whisperer, she discovers it's never too late to rewrite your own love story, even if it's not the one you expected…

George Babbitt has it all: a successful real estate job, a shiny car, a modern house equipped with all the latest technology, and a devoted wife and three children. However, underneath his public persona, he’s beginning to feel that something is missing, and when a tragic incident occurs Babbitt revolts against his hollow life. Can he overthrow everything he values, or will he remain trapped in the machinery of modern life?

All Lady Alice Walpole wants is to be swept off her feet, but she keeps finding herself on one bad date after another. And when she’s caught partying too hard with her latest royal beau, her father banishes her to Balmoral to clean up her act. Fraser Bell just wants to do his job as Piper to the Sovereign at Balmoral. He prefers tartan to tuxedos, and spends his days with horses rather than dealing with people, so when he’s assigned to wake Alice up to the sound of bagpipes every morning, he’s less than pleased.

It begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the Manhattan streets below. Initially, Leo believes the visions are related to his terrible eyesight, something he and his wife, Addie, joke about. Then, he starts to experience occasional, but fleeting, oddities. He's unable to perform simple tasks and he hears things that aren’t real. The doctors have no answers, and his erratic disturbances multiply.

When the surprise holiday Dee thinks her husband has booked for her sixtieth birthday weekend turns out to be yet another solo golfing break – it’s the last straw. Meanwhile her best friend Babs’s other half has decided to move to Spain and is acting like he doesn’t need to consult anyone. Not even Babs! Well, if their husbands think they can do what they want, so can their wives. So, with that thought, the two best friends leap into Dee’s trusty car and head for the seaside, and an adventure they’ll never forget.

In the small town of Beilford, Sue, the Baker's daughter, makes an uncharacteristically impulsive decision to accept a post as housekeeper to Mr and Mrs Darnay, dashing her family's hopes of her marrying a local suitor. And when Mrs Darnay suddenly departs, Sue's position in the house is left open to idle gossip - Mr Darnay is after all an artist, and everybody knows what that means. But it is not until Sue is summoned home that she finally realises the strength of her feelings towards her charming employer. . .

1979. Jackie Chadwick is 17 and living in a supported bedsit. She’s still close to her foster parents and friends with (aka unofficial minder for) Amanda, their irresponsible daughter, but she’s enjoying her independence – until a fire leaves her temporarily homeless. Jackie’s dad, widower and recovering alcoholic Dave, has just been released from prison and sees this as his chance to make amends. He offers her his spare room – but can their relationship survive him going back on the booze, his gin – loving lady friend and her errant son?

When romcom author Allie Edwards crosses paths with bestselling crime novelist – aka publishing dinosaur – Martin Clark at a party, they discover they both have crippling writer’s block, overdue manuscripts and precisely zero words to show to their respective editors. With deadlines looming, Allie and Martin decide to switch plots and tell each other’s stories. In the writing process, Allie not only gains a father-figure in Martin, but also meets gorgeous events caterer Will, the answer to the leading man-shaped hole in her life and her lack of spicy material.

Thomas Mann's vivid, dramatic, and thought-provoking The Magic Mountain is firmly established as one of the classic epic novels of the twentieth century. Part surreal comedy, part grim tragedy, Mann's story depicts a decaying European society on the eve of the First World War.

Manya Miriam Mittelman has an uneasy relationship with her flesh, of which there is a bit too much by the standards of Columbia University circa 1992.

Buitengewoon briljante wezens bevat een van de leukste personages die in lange tijd is bedacht: Marcellus de octopus. Tova Sullivan werkt in de nachtploeg van het Sowell Bay Aquarium, waar ze de prullenbakken leegt en de vloeren dweilt. Haar man is een paar jaar geleden overleden en ruim dertig jaar eerder is hun zoon Erik op mysterieuze wijze verdwenen op een boot. Bezig blijven heeft haar altijd geholpen om met dat verlies om te gaan. Op een avond maakt Tova kennis met Marcellus, een gigantische octopus die in het aquarium leeft. Hij is ongelofelijk slim en erg schuw.

Jack was never “right,” but that’s a lot of what made him magnetic to other people. When he was younger, he was that guy that girls wanted to be around. People were drawn in by him, even later on when there wasn’t much of him left. I never understood that. He never really put a lot of energy into grooming and maintaining relationships with people. I guess when you see someone that is content spending their time alone, it creates a vacuum and people flood in like water choking a storm drain. Even as his deterioration became apparent, people threw him lifelines.

Forbidden from pursuing her calling, Shadow Holmes, the great-granddaughter of Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older—and smarter—brother, works for her father selling real estate in Miami. To compound matters, Shadow has no idea her father is the director of The Bee, a clandestine British spy agency, until she and her parents are poisoned by the bewitching—and decidedly evil— Professor Jane Moriarty.

When the nouveau-riche Peterkins invite an artistic couple to live and work in a disused wing of their country home, they unknowingly craft a cocktail of conflict, tension, and deceit. This delightful social comedy is told from the perspective of Lancaster, the household's rigidly inhibited butler, who is torn between his principles of professional detachment and his love for the Peterkins.

May Night, or the Drowned Maiden, 1831 is the third tale in the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by Nikolai Gogol. It was made into the opera May Night by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1878–79 and also a Ukrainian setting by Mykola Lysenko. This story comes from the unnamed story-teller (who was previously responsible for "The Fair at Sorochyntsi"). In this tale, a young Cossack named Levko, the son of the mayor, is in love with Hanna. He comes to her house to talk about marriage and mentions that his father is not pleased with the idea, though he doesn't say anything directly and merely ignores him.

Jihye is an ordinary woman who has never been extraordinary. In her administrative job at the Academy, she silently tolerates office politics and the absurdities of Korean bureaucracy. Forever only one misplaced email away from career catastrophe, she effectively becomes a master of the silent eye-roll and the tactical coffee run. But all her efforts to endure her superiors and the semi-hostile work environment they create are upended when a new intern, Gyuok Lee, arrives.

Cassie Black works at a funeral home. She's used to all manner of dead bodies. What she's not used to is them waking up. Which they seem to be doing on a disturbingly regular basis lately. Just when Cassie believes she has the problem under control, the recently-deceased Busby Tenpenny insists he's been murdered and claims Cassie might be responsible thanks to a wicked brand of magic she's been exposed to. The only way for Cassie to get her life back to normal is to tame her magic and uncover Mr. Tenpenny's true killer.

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

Barry and Beth, high school sweethearts separated by time and circumstance, find themselves reunited at the Blue Loon Village senior living center in Minneapolis. Now both seventy, they rekindle their relationship only to discover how differently time has shaped them. Beth has blossomed into a free spirit with a goth flair, while Barry has transformed into the curmudgeon he swore in his youth he’d never become.

Father–son relationships are rarely easy and certainly not when the son’s first love is Shakespeare and the father is the kingpin of a drug empire. Esteban Velasquez, however, manages to forge a frosty détente with his father—he studies literature abroad while his father grooms his older brother as the heir.

Du temps pour soi, ou presque... Tout le monde vante les mérites de la retraite spirituelle. Enfin, toutes les influenceuses que suit Lily, 40 ans,...