Showing titles in City Life

Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored.

Pericles Drakos has lived in the exquisite Circle Building for all of his seventy-five years. From its lofty windows, he has seen his little corner of Istanbul shift and transform. But as the area has become increasingly gentrified, Pericles has retreated into its shadowy corners. And when the pandemic hits, his isolation deepens.

One wealth-obsessed man – who is also dead. One status-obsessed woman – who is the perfect accessory. Their four inheritance-obsessed children – each with a killer instinct. And a murder-obsessed outsider looking to expose them all. But there’s one thing money can’t buy… and that’s the truth.

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers - they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence; it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.

Avery, a strait-laced lawyer living in London, is the typical eldest daughter, though she’s hiding a secret that could undo her perfect life forever. Bonnie was a boxer but, following a devastating defeat, she's been working as a bouncer in LA, until one reckless night threatens to drive her out of the city. And Lucky, the rebellious youngest, is a model in Paris whose hard-partying ways are finally catching up with her. Then there was Nicky, the beloved fourth sister, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie and Lucky reeling.

Lydia imagines her new job running a Senior Citizen's Social Club three afternoons a week will involve drinking tea while playing gentle games of cards, listening to The Beatles and reminiscing about food rationing and The Blitz. She does not expect to find a failed actor addicted to shoplifting, a woman who's been hiding from a mysterious and very chequered past, and a prolific yarn-bomber. After a tragic accident means the council threatens to sell the community centre, the Social Club, aided by their friends in the nursery next door and a geriatric orphaned mongrel, set out to save it.

In Colm Tóibín's masterful new novel, we are reunited with Eilis Lacey, the heroine of Brooklyn, twenty years on, in the 1970s, living with her husband, Tony Fiorello, and her children in a house in Long Island, rather too close to her Fiorello in-laws. A shocking piece of news propels Eilis back to Ireland, to a world she thought she had long left behind and to ways of living, and loving, she thought she had lost.

Nell Stevens’ life is a mess. When her business goes bust and her fiancé with it, Nell’s happy ever after in California falls apart and she moves back to London to start over. But a lot has changed since she’s been gone. All her single friends are now married with children, sky-high rents force her to rent a room in a stranger’s house and in a world of perfect Instagram lives, she feels like a f--k up.

Coronation Close survives the brutal Bristol Blitz but with rationing, call up papers and new rules and regulations everyone’s lives are changed forever. Resident do-gooder PC Percy Routledge's obsession with rules being upheld finds him spying and reporting fellow neighbours on the slightest infraction whilst his poor brow-beaten wife, Margaret can only watch on in shameful silence. It’s whispered that one day he’ll get his comeuppance…

Renée Ballard and the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet twenty years ago. The arrested man is only twenty-three, so the genetic link must be familial. It is his father who was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the city of angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles.

In The Benefactors we meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh—very different women but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Glamorous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care. Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves the celebrity and prestige this brings her. They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social-standing of their own, they'll leverage all the power of their position.

It’s time for more confessions... As heartfelt and hilarious as the bestselling first novel, Nell discovers that there’s no such thing as having it all figured out.

When all seems lost, hope remains...Val Murray has mislaid her most precious mementoes of the people she’s loved and lost. Can her family, the wonders of technology and a little divine intervention somehow mend her shattered heart? Sophie Smith had to take a rain check on a marriage proposal. Will her bid to turn back the clock lead her to her greatest love or yet another heartbreak?

In a busy maternity ward, first-time father Dan meets Jada, a dad welcoming his fifth — no, sixth? — child into the world. Dan and Jada come from very different places: both called Glasgow. Dan is a successful TV writer with a townhouse in the West End and a shiny Tesla ready to drive his wife and baby home. Jada is a hustling, small-time criminal who is already planning how to separate Dan from some of the luxuries Jada has never been able to enjoy in his tiny flat in a Brutalist sixties council block. Both men find that the birth of their sons has fired their ambitions.

Maggie is 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship.

When seemingly fragile Miss Ivy Cavendale takes the headmistress position in an orphanage, it is her chance to stay anonymous in society. But not all is what it seems with Miss Ivy. When an intruder breaks in one night, she’s quick to draw her weapon, and while fear—her constant companion—has mysteriously disappeared, one thing is very clear: she and her charges are the next target of The Devil’s Sons.

Living in flats in a converted house in North London, a group of middle-aged neighbours navigate their careers, love lives and family dramas in this charming sitcom full of heart.

When high school English teacher Richard Boyle comes face-to-face with an ex-student determined to commit an atrocity, his whole world changes. Thanks to his quick thinking, Richard averts a major tragedy and is hailed as a hero, with his face splashed across the media. But not all the attention coming his way is good…Somewhere out there, a memory is triggered by someone watching the news of the incident. A plan is hatched. When Richard receives the first threat, it’s very clear: it’s time to talk about what you did to me…

As war rages and brave soldiers returning home from the frontline need nurses more than ever, fiercely proud redhead Sylvia Roberts is determined to help in any way she can. In spite of her mother’s belief she isn’t good enough, Sylvia believes that becoming a home front nurse is her calling. Together with the two friends she makes on her first day in the job – Freda and Veronica – she knows she can help save lives. And, as the devastation of war shows no signs of ceasing, their work becomes ever more vital.

Notting Hill, London. Lou Parker's famous mother walks out of their pink front door and doesn't return home by midnight, or the midnight after... Looking after her little brother, trying to piece together where their mother might be, Lou ventures into a different world - far from the fancy terraces - filled with ramshackle antique shops, shadowy figures. A place where time seems to have stopped. And Lou must protect her brother. At all costs. Twenty-one years - 7665 midnights - later. The new owner of a Notting Hill house starts excavating a basement, oblivious to what might lie beneath.