Aiden Aslin is a British-born resident of Ukraine. Living in Mykolaiv with his fiancé, he joined the Ukrainian marines in 2018 and was called to the frontline ahead of the Russian invasion in February 2022. He was one of over a thousand soldiers who surrendered after the month-long siege at the Mariupol steelworks, whereupon he was singled out for his British passport. His surrender, captivity, treatment and subsequent release received global media attention.

Aiden Aslin

Aiko Bethea is the founder of RARE Coaching &amp; Consulting, a leadership development company that helps aspiring leaders successfully navigate the workplace with more impactful approaches to leadership. She has worked with Fortune 100 companies, research &amp; academic institutes, and global non-profit organisations. Bethea is also Senior Leadership Consultant for the Brené Brown Education &amp; Research Group and was named by Forbes as a leading anti-racism educator. Bethea was a contributing writer in the New York Times bestselling anthology You Are Your Best Thing (2021). Anchored, Aligned, Accountable is her first book.

Aiko Bethea

Ailie Busby

Ailsa McFarlane was born in 1997 in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in Snowdonia in the United Kingdom. After leaving school, she studied veterinary science before dropping out to travel the United States and Europe by road. Highway Blue is her first novel.

Ailsa McFarlane

Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, a New York Times bestseller, and An Invisible Sign of My Own; and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures and The Color Master. Her work has been widely anthologised and has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

Aimee Bender

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was a Martinican poet and politician who played a leading role in the struggle to liberate the French colonies of Africa and the Caribbean. Renowned for co-founding the Négritude movement, Césaire was a pioneer in surrealist poetry. His achievements as a writer were recognised worldwide with awards including the International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Laporte Prize, the Viareggio-Versilia Prize for Literature, and the Grand Prix National de Poésie; in 2002, he was made Commander of the Order of Merit of Cote d'Ivoire. His works include the plays A Tempest (1969) and A Season in the Congo (1966), the searing political essay Discourse on Colonialism (1956), and the long poem Return to My Native Land (1950), dubbed "nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time" (Andre Breton).

Aimé Césaire

Aingeala Flannery

Aingelda Ardizzone

Ainsley Harriott is nothing short of a cookery legend; a pioneer in quick and easy home cooking, he has hosted some of the UK's most popular culinary series. His love of food and people, together with his natural curiosity and accessible recipes, make him a much-loved British TV personality. Recent popular ITV shows include Ainsley's Caribbean Kitchen, Ainsley Mediterranean Cookbook, Ainsley's Food We Love and now Ainsley's Good Mood Food.

Ainsley Harriott

Air Fryer UK

Aishling Morgan

Aisling Bea

Aisling Fitzsimons

Aislinn Hunter is the author of a novel, Stay; a collection of stories, What's Left Us; and two collections of poetry, Into the Early Hours and The Possible Past. The World Before Us is her first book of fiction in twelve years. After travelling to London and Edinburgh over the past few years to study for a PhD, Aislinn Hunter now lives and teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Aislinn Hunter

Aiste Gazdar

Ajahn Sumedho

Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. 
 
 
The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures.The Cook (Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective (Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) – is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing), the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.

Ajay Chowdhury

Ajaz Ahmed is the CEO of AKQA, the ideas and innovation company he founded aged 21. AKQA today employs over 1,500 people in 15 offices around the world. In 2014 AKQA won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Innovation. Ajaz co-authored Velocity: The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital. For essays and thoughts visit http://www.akqa.com/ajaz.

Ajaz Ahmed

Akasha Moon is a professional Tarot reader, medium and vocational healer. Under her other pen name Kala Trobe, she has published Invoke the Goddess and Invoke the Gods with Llewellyn. She's passionate about her subject and believes that, although it can bring about some serious benefits, magic can be a lot of fun.

Akasha Moon

Akiyuki Nosaka (1930-2015) was a novelist, singer, lyricist and former member of the House of Councillors in Japan. Born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, his memories of living through the Second World War – including the loss of his adoptive father in the 1945 Kobe bombings – served as the inspiration for his most famous short stories. In 1967, he won the Naoki Prize for Grave of the Fireflies and American Hijiki, both based on the Japanese experience of the War. Nosaka also wrote erotic fiction, including The Pornographers (1963), and in later life he continued his career as a newspaper and TV journalist, as well as a politician and chanson singer.

Akiyuki Nosaka

Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche was an experienced meditation master of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He was co-founder of the Samye Ling Tibetan Centre and supervised many other centres in Europe, Africa and Asia. He formed several humanitarian organisations for the aid of refugees, the distressed and the poor and was advisor to a large number of people, including therapists in the UK and Europe. He died in 2013.

Akong Tulku Rinpoche

Akshi Singh is an associate editor at Parapraxis and deputy editor at Critical Quarterly, and is the editor of a special collection of Critical Quarterly presenting new writing on Marion Milner. She collaborates regularly with the Derek Jarman lab, and writes for the London Review of Books. Singh moved to the UK from India to study for a PhD in psychoanalysis and literature with Jacqueline Rose. She is currently training to be a psychoanalyst at the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research.

Akshi Singh

Al Ewing

Al Franken

Al Gore

Al Holloway

Al Murray is a Perrier Award-winning comic, TV personality and, as 'The Pub Landlord', the author of the bestselling The Pub Landlord's Book of British Common Sense and Think Yourself British. Most recently, he has taken on the leadership of the Free United Kingdom Party (FUKP).

Al Murray

Al Murray's alter ego, The Pub Landlord, is one of the most recognizable and successful comic creations of the past twenty years, and Murray, who has won numerous awards and accolades, continues to fill arenas and theatres around the world. 
 
He is also the author of many successful books including Watching War Films with My Dad and Command, a sharply entertaining analysis of the key allied military leaders in the Second World War. He is well known for co-hosting the hugely popular Second World War history podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk with fellow bestselling military author James Holland. 
 
Arnhem: Black Tuesday is his first history book about a single campaign.

Actor and director Al Pacino is a unique and enduring figure in the world of American stage and film. He grew up in New York City’s South Bronx, attended the School of Performing Art, and studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio with Charles Laughton and the Actors Studio with mentor Lee Strasberg. 
 
 
He has been nominated for the Academy Award nine times, for movies including The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, and The Irishman, and won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1992 for Scent of a Woman. He has been nominated for the Golden Globe Award nineteen times, and won four, and has been nominated for three Tonys and won two. 
 
 
Pacino has been awarded the Kennedy Center Honor, the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, the National Merit of Arts from President Obama, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures.

Al Pacino

Al Pittampalli

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Chetan Bhagat

A comedy of romance and crossed lines 
 
Six friends are selling home appliances to the US from a call centre in India. Each one has an issue with love. Call agent Sam works right beside the girl who's just dumped him. He's dating someone he can't stand, just to get over her. 
 
Esha is just short of becoming a model. Two inches, to be precise. 
 
Vroom wants to change the world. 
 
Radikha's trying to manage her mother-in-law, and hold down her job. 
 
Tonight is Thanksgiving in America, and customers are queueing up to complain about white goods going wrong. On this night of a thousand phone calls, when life couldn't look more dismal, one unique caller gets on the line. And that call is going to change everything ... 
 
A romantic comedy of six friends kicking against the system, against their boss, and against each other. Something's got to give ...

One Night At The Call Centre

Kathleen Grissom

‘You must not become too friendly with them,’ she said. ‘They are not the same as us.’ 
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How are they not the same?’ 
 
When seven-year-old Irish orphan Lavinia is transported to Virginia to work in the kitchen of a wealthy plantation owner, she is absorbed into the life of the kitchen house and becomes part of the family of black slaves whose fates are tied to the plantation. 
 
But Lavinia’s skin will always set her apart, whether she wishes it or not. And as she grows older, she will be torn between the life that awaits her as a white woman and the people she knows as kin… 
 
A compelling, powerful and poignant coming-of-age story about the fragility of family,and where love and loyalty prevail.

The Kitchen House

Ben Elton

Berlin 1920 
 
Two babies are born. 
Two brothers. United and indivisible, sharing everything. Twins in all but blood. 
 
As Germany marches into its Nazi Armageddon, the ties of family, friendship and love are tested to the very limits of endurance. And the brothers are faced with an unimaginable choice....Which one of them will survive? 
 
Ben Elton's most personal novel to date,Two Brothers transports the reader to the time of history's darkest hour.

Two Brothers

Louise Douglas

'An edge-of-your-seat read . . . Dark and brooding' The Lady 
'Enthralling and unnervingly absorbing . . . our top holiday recommendation' Heat 
 
__ 
 
 
She thought she'd left the past behind. Now it's coming to find her. 
 
Hannah Brown never thought she'd have a best friend like Ellen Brecht. Ellen is everything she isn't - beautiful, daring, glamorous and fierce. Growing up together in rural Cornwall, life seems perfect. But their idyllic childhood is shattered by obsession, betrayal and, ultimately, tragedy. 
 
Hannah has tried for twenty years to forget what happened during that terrible summer. Then, one ordinary morning at work, she glimpses a woman who is identical to Ellen. Can it really be her? And has Ellen returned to forgive her - or to punish her? 
 
The thrilling novel from the bestselling author of The Secret by the Lake and The House by the Sea, winner of The Jackie Collins Romantic Thriller Award. 
 
__ 
 
 
Readers are captivated by In Her Shadow: 
 
***** 'Full of intrigue and twists. It kept me gripped to the end.' 
***** 'I finished the story feeling a bit breathless and as though I'd lived a whole other life.' 
***** 'Beautifully written . . . wonderfully descriptive, I could actually smell the sea and imagine myself on the beach.'

In Her Shadow

A dark and thrilling read from the Richard & Judy bestseller

R J Palacio

'My name is August. 
I won't describe to you what I look like. 
Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.' 
 
Ten-year-old August Pullman wants to be ordinary. He does ordinary things. He eats ice-cream. He plays on his Xbox. He feels ordinary - inside. 
 
But Auggie is far from ordinary. Born with a terrible facial abnormality, he has been home-schooled by his parents his entire life, in an attempt to protect him from the cruelty of the outside world. Now, Auggie's parents are sending him to a real school. Can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, underneath it all? 
 
Narrated by Auggie and the people around him whose lives he touches, Wonder is a frank, funny, astonishingly moving debut to be read in one sitting, pass on to others, and remember long after the final page.

Wonder

Adult edition

Catherine Ryan Hyde

Fans of Jodi Picoult, Mitch Albom and Alice Sebold will love this truly captivating story, written with such depth of emotion and full of both heartbreak and hope by Richard &amp; Judy bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde. 
 
'A work of art...enchanting' -- San Francisco Chronicle 
'Surprisingly wonderful' -- Mirror 
'Well written and compelling' -- ***** Reader review 
'I could not put it down. Absolutely loved it' -- ***** Reader review 
'Absolutely wonderful' -- ***** Reader review 
'Loved it - and I want more...!' -- ***** Reader review 
*********************************************************************** 
 
ONE SUMMER - ONE LIFE CHANGING JOURNEY... 
 
Carly and her little sister Jen are walking. Something terrible has happened. Something that has left Carly in charge, her faith in humanity shattered. She knows they need help but she is terrified of her sister being taken away from her. All they have is each other. 
 
Carly wants them to find their way back to the last person she knew she could trust - their stepfather. But Jen holds a secret about him which, if she's telling the truth, will put them both at far more risk than they could imagine...

Walk Me Home

a moving, engrossing and ultimately inspiring novel about the search to belong from Richard & Judy bestseller Catherine Ryan Hyde

Sean Moncrieff

Dublin was mucky and vulgar. Like a tourist who gets drunk and wakes up with a huge tattoo. 
 
This is what it's like for you: your name is Simon Dillon. You're 35. You're a failure. Too hungover to go to work, too lazy to get a new job, too keen to blame everyone else: your mad father, your estranged wife, your so-called friends. Blame them. Blame Dublin. 
 
You'd rather do a few lines of coke, but there's a beautiful French woman you can't remember meeting, cops banging on the door asking about a dead woman you don't know, Russian gangsters asking questions you can't answer. Murders all over the city; bombs in O'Connell Street. 
 
And it's got nothing to do with you. Except that it's all your fault. 
 
A needle-sharp, funny and scathing thriller, set in a Dublin most people don't read about - the real one.

Dublin

Tamar Cohen

By the popular author of WHEN SHE WAS BAD and THE BROKEN: At the funeral of your husband of twenty years, you don't expect to meet his other wife. Recommended for fans of LIANE MORIARTY 
 
 
'Dark, clever and utterly addictive' - Lisa Jewell, author of I FOUND YOU 
, 
Imagine: You've been happily married for 28 years. You have three children, a lovely house and a husband who travels a lot. Even after all this time, you still love each other. 
 
One day you get a call that turns your world upside down: your husband is dead. You are devastated. You go to the funeral... And come face to face with his other widow. 
 
Another wife, another family. It can’t be true. You are his only wife. She is just an upstart. She can't be his widow, too. Or can she?

The War of the Wives

Morten Ramsland

Naughty Boys.Dirty Secrets.Mad Dogs. 
In the Eriksson family, childhood is a shocking experience, full of crude and disturbing rites of passage. It all started with Askild 'the Crackpot', chased by bloodhounds on a German plain after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp.His son, Niels 'Jug Ears' Junior, is born in an outhouse, and wins respect by kicking other boys in the balls. 
And his son, Asger 'the Liar', collects stories about his shipwrecked family which are always exciting though not entirely true. He is haunted by the time he spent hidden in the space under the stairs with his fat aunt, aka 'the Little Bitch'. Unable to banish Doghead, a horror from his childhood, to the shadow realm, he reveals the very bad deeds children can do - to push his family story forward, past a point of no return. 
Doghead is a richly imaginative farcical tragedy; a witty saga of three generations of wild Eriksson men. It touches on chilling themes - concentration camps, child abuse, alcoholism, rape - yet warmly celebrates the stories that hold families together.

Doghead

Matt Beaumont

Out of the ashes of doomed ad agency Miller Shanks has risen Meerkat 360, a very 21st century workplace. Staff include David Crutton, an MD with the worst email signature in history; Milton Keane, a definitely-straight PA with a yearning for reality tv fame; Liam O'Keefe, a creative with an online gambling addiction who may be linked with the contents of the stationery cupboard appearing on eBay; and Harvey Harvey, a creative who politely replies to pornographic spam and who might just have met his future wife online - a rich Nigerian princess in deep trouble... 
 
Told entirely via emails, texts, webchat and blogs, the long-awaited follow up to E is a hilariously funny insight into the hearts, minds and inboxes of the world's most engagingly dysfunctional ad agency.

E Squared

Heleen Van Royen

I have a husband, we have two children and we own our house. I am in good health and so are they, our lives are good; we have everything we need. Sometimes I look at them and wait, in vain, to be moved, as a mother should when watching her own family. Why do I no longer feel anything? 
 
Julia is thirty-six years old. At first sight she has it all, but actually she feels miserable. Trapped in the monotony of daily family life and fed up with her passionless marriage, Julia wants out. Escape. For once not to be a good mother, a good wife, a good daughter. For the first time in her life she does something completely irresponsible: she leaves her family behind and heads off into the sun. 
 
When Julia finally meets someone who makes her realize what she's been missing all her life, she is forced to reconcile with her past and confront the crucial question: does she dare to go home?

Escape

Paula Wall

'Some women barter their bodies like whores with wedding bands. Some use sex like a sword. But some women can touch a man and heal like Jesus. The man who sees sunrise from a Belle woman's bed will swear he's been born again.' 
 
So begins Paula Wall's funny, poignant, and sexy novel, THE ROCK ORCHARD. Musette Belle could lay her hand on a baby's heart and see his life as he'd already lived it. Even in death, she continues to shock the good citizens of Leaper's Fork, Tennessee and her descendents are doing their best to carry on her legacy. Angela Belle, a haunting and beautiful siren, lures every man she meets into greatness, while her illegitimate and very independent daughter, Dixie, serves tea and vanilla wafers to the statue of the Confederate soldier she believes is her father. But when Charlotte Belle, a woman who would rather spend a night with Jack Daniels than any man she knows, seduces a stranger in the cemetery, it not only transforms the two people involved, but the entire town. 
 
A truly unique love story, THE ROCK ORCHARD is about the strength of community, the might of God, and the ultimate power of extraordinary women.

The Rock Orchard

John Irving

A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love — tormented, funny, and affecting — and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a ‘sexual suspect’, a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 — in his landmark novel of ‘terminal cases’, The World According to Garp. 
 
His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers — a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself ‘worthwhile’.

In One Person

Khaled Khalifa

1980s Syria, our young narrator is living a secluded life behind the veil in the vast and perfumed house of her grandparents in Aleppo. Her three aunts, Maryam the pious one; Safaa, the liberal; and the free-spirited Marwa, bring her up with the aid of their ever-devoted blind servant. 
 
Soon the high walls of the family home are unable to protect her from the social and political changes outside. Witnessing the crackdowns of the ruling dictatorship against Muslims, she is filled with hatred for her oppressors, and becomes increasingly fundamentalist. In the footsteps of her beloved uncle Bakr, she takes on the party, launching herself into a fight for her religion, her country, and ultimately, her own future. 
 
On a backdrop of real-life events that occurred during the Syrian regime’s ruthless suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s, IN PRAISE OF HATRED is a stirring, sensual story. Its elegant use of traditional, layered storytelling is a powerful echo of the modern-day tragedy that is now taking place in the Middle East.

In Praise of Hatred

Adam Johnson

The award-winning and New York Times bestselling novel: a dark and witty story of the rise of a young orphan in the surreal and tyrannical regime of North Korea. 
 
'You know you are in the hands of someone who can tell a story. Fantastic' ZADIE SMITH 
'A stunning feat of imagination' STEPHEN KING 
 
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 
 
------ 
 
Young Pak Jun Do is convinced he is special. He knows he must be the unique son of the master of the orphanage, and definitely not some kid dumped by his parents. Surely it was obvious from the way his father singled him out for regular beating? 
 
He finds his calling when he is picked as a spy and kidnapper for his nation, the glorious Democratic Republic of North Korea. 
 
He knows he must find his true love, Sun Moon, the greatest opera star who ever lived, before it’s too late. 
 
He knows he’s not like the other prisoners in the camp. 
 
He’s going to get out soon. 
 
Isn't he? 
 
This hilarious, dark literary epic of a young boy's rise in North Korea from orphan to high-ranking officer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. 
Adam Johnson is working on a new work of fiction. 
 
'An addictive novel of daring ingenuity' DAVID MITCHELL 
'Excavates the very meaning of life' NEW YORK TIMES

The Orphan Master's Son

Frank Schaeffer

Calvin Becker's strict fundamentalist upbringing means he's never seen a film, watched television or danced. He even has to hide his five second-hand copies of Mad magazine in the attic. 
Now he and his family - his embarrassingly devout missionary parents and his sisters, the tyrannical 18 year-old Janet and the angelic Rachael - are on their modest annual skiing holiday in Switzerland. For the Beckers, the Hotel Riffelberg had always provided a safe haven from the jazz-loving sinners who congregate further down the mountain in Zermatt, but this is 1966, the year of peace, love and the Beatles, and the world is changing. As is the irrepressible Calvin... 
In his innocent 14 year-old body the hormones are raging, awakening a volcanic sexual 
curiosity and he willingly succumbs to the ample charms of Eva, the young waitress who introduces him to ecstasies beyond his wildest dreams. But then Calvin's mother catches him supposedly in the act and things start to go awry, triggering a climactic end to his childhood (and the family holiday).

Zermatt

Joanna Trollope

Fans of Erica James, Elizabeth Noble and Amanda Prowse will devour this gripping novel by multi-million copy bestselling author Joanna Trollope which lays bare the snags and frustrations of family life and the dangerous pressure points in relationships. Guaranteed to keep you hooked... 
 
'Written with all Trollope's customary skill and panache, this is an absorbing look at the modern military wife who no longer automatically follows the drum' -- Daily Mail 
'The Soldier's Wife is a cracking read and has clearly been thoroughly researched. All the little details which animate a novel ring true... compassionate, humourous and topical' - Spectator 
'Another great page turner from Joanna Trollope, one of her best' -- ***** Reader review 
'My only criticism - it was too short - I didn't want it to end!' -- ***** Reader review 
'Hard to put down' -- ***** Reader review 
'I couldn't put the book down!' -- ***** Reader review 
 
************************************************************** 
DOES MARRYING A SOLDIER ALWAYS HAVE TO MEAN YOU ARE NOT MARRYING A MAN, BUT A REGIMENT? 
 
The soldiers are coming home - after six months in Afghanistan. Surely being reunited with their wives and girlfriends and families will be heaven, after the hell they have been through. 
 
When Dan Riley returns to his adored wife, Alexa, and their children, his Army life still comes first. Alexa thought she was prepared to help him, and the whole family, to make the transition to normal life again - but no-one had told her how lonely and near impossible the task would be...

The Soldier's Wife

the captivating and heart-wrenching story of a marriage put to the test from one of Britain’s best loved authors, Joanna Trollope

Judy Astley

If you like Carole Matthews and Milly Johnson, you'll love Judy's delightful and funny novel about changing your luck once and for all . . . 
 
Viola hasn't had much luck with men. Her first husband, Marco, companion of her youth and father of her only child, left her when he realised he was gay. Her second, Rhys, ended his high-octane, fame-filled life by driving his Porsche into a wall. No wonder her family always believes she needs Looking After, and her friends think she really shouldn't be allowed out on her own... 
 
Which is why, at the age of thirty-five, she finds herself shamefully back at home, living with Mum. 
 
Viola knows she has to take charge; she needs to get a life, and fast. With a stroppy teenage daughter, a demanding mother, and siblings who want to control her life for her, where is she going to turn? 
 
Readers love Judy Astley: 
"Warm, funny and unerringly true to life" Katie Fforde 
"Irresistible" Daily Mail 
"An enjoyable light read" Sunday Mirror

I Should Be So Lucky

an uplifting and hilarious novel from the ever astute Astley

On a New England campus, Viennese housewife Utchka and her aspiring writer husband live a rather placid life with their two children.Until, that is, they meet Severin Winter, Professor of German and wrestling coach, and his delicate wife Edith at a faculty party. Utchka and Severin are rather taken with one another, and, conveniently, their spouses appear to be similarly smitten.A bizarre ménage a quatre is the result of these convoluted desires, and what starts out as a bit of fun is soon subject to the darker machinations of obsession,..

The 158-Pound Marriage

Fred 'Bogus' Trumper is a wayward knight-errant in the battle of the sexes and the pursuit of happiness. He also happens to have a complaint more serious than Portnoy's. Yet he stubbornly clings to the notion that he'll make something of his life, and is about to commit himself to a second marriage that bears remarkable resemblance to his first. 
 
The Water-Method Man is a work of cosummate artistry and comic invention, bizarre imagery and sharp social and psychological observation.

The Water-Method Man

Laura Esquivel

Don Jubilo entered the world smiling rather than crying like other babies, and his life mission is to bring happiness to everyone's lives. Even as a young boy, acting as interpreter between his warring Mayan grandmother and his Spanish-speaking mother, he mistranslates words of spite into words of respect, so that their mutual hatred turns to love. When he grows up, he puts his gift for hearing what is in people's hearts and interpreting it to others, to good use in his job as the village telegraph operator. But the telegraph now lies abandoned, obsolete as a means of communication in the electronic age, and don Jubilo is on his deathbed, mute and estranged from his beloved wife, Lucha, who refuses to speak to him. What tragic event has come between such two sensuous, giving people to cause this seemingly irreparable rift? What mystery lies behind the death of their son, Ramiro, whom no one ever mentions? Can daughter Lluvia bring reconciliation to their parents by acting as an interpreter between them, just as Jubilo did for his grandmother and mother when he was a boy? 
 
This bittersweet story of the humble telegraph operator with a talent for curing misunderstanding, for hearing sand dunes sing and insects whisper, is based on the story of Laura Esquivel's own father, just as the much-loved LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE was inspired by her mother's family. Romantic, poignant, touched with graphic earthiness and wit, Esquivel shows us how, in our computerised world of excess, keeping secrets will always lead to unhappiness, and how old-fashioned speaking to each other can redress and heal all our wrongs.

Swift As Desire

John O'Farrell

Lots of husbands forget things: they forget that their wife had an important meeting that morning; they forget to pick up the dry cleaning; some of them even forget their wedding anniversary. 
 
But Vaughan has forgotten he even has a wife. Her name, her face, their history together, everything she has ever told him, everything he has said to her - it has all gone, mysteriously wiped in one catastrophic moment of memory loss. And now he has rediscovered her - only to find out that they are getting divorced. 
 
The Man Who Forgot His Wife is the funny, moving and poignant story of a man who has done just that. And who will try anything to turn back the clock and have one last chance to reclaim his life.

The Man Who Forgot His Wife

John Boyne

1936: London is abuzz with gossip about the affair between Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson. But the king is not the only member of the aristocracy with a hard decision to make. Owen Montignac, the handsome and charismatic descendent of a wealthy land-owning family, is anxiously awaiting the reading of his late uncle's will. For Owen has run up huge gambling debts and casino boss Nicholas Delfy has given him a choice: find £50,000 by Christmas - or find yourself six feet under. 
 
So when Owen discovers that he has been cut out of the will in favour of his beautiful cousin Stella, it is time to prove just how cunning he can be... And Owen is nothing if not inventive - even a royal crisis can provide the means for profit. And for murder...

Next of Kin

Tomas Eloy Martinez

Eva Peron entered immortality on 26th July, 1952. The bizarre after-life of her embalmed body - hidden, hijacked, replicated, smuggled abroad, buried, resurrected, repatriated - echoed her equally strange life. From the story of the plain poor-trash girl who reinvented herself to become first the uncrowned queen of Argentina's masses and then their uncanonized saint, Tomas Eloy Martinez has created a mesmerizing, highly readable work of fiction.

Santa Evita

From the pen of international bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde comes a compelling, emotional and genuinely heartfelt novel that fans of Jodi Picoult, Susan Lewis, Mitch Alborn and Alice Sebold will absolutely devour. 
 
'A remarkable story of the magic of love' -- Daily Express 
'A work of art . . . enchanting' -- San Francisco Chronicle 
'Surprisingly wonderful' --Mirror 
'Very moving and sensitive' -- ***** Reader review 
'I couldn't put it down' -- ***** Reader review 
'Beautifully written, a charming and insightful story' -- ***** Reader review 
'I absolutely loved this book' -- ***** Reader review 
'Compelling from start to finish' -- ***** Reader review 
****************************************************************** 
THE QUICKEST DECISION YOU MAKE COULD BE THE ONE THAT SAVES YOUR LIFE... 
 
I was doing my best to get out the door. And then the phone rang. I almost let it go. 
 
 New York, September 11th 2001 
 
 Russell Ammiano is rushing to work when he gets a phone call that saves his life. As the city he loves is hit by unimaginable tragedy, Russell must turn his back and hurry home to Kansas. 
 
 Kansas, September 14th 2001 
 
 Ben Ammiano is mentally disabled, and a creature of habit. Any change to his routine sends him into a spin. But now his estranged brother has reappeared, and Ben's simple, ordered world has turned upside down. 
 
 In a story as heartbreaking as it is uplifting, two brothers must bury their pasts and learn from each other, if they are to survive.

When You Were Older

a powerful, mesmerizing and moving novel from bestselling Richard and Judy Book Club author Catherine Ryan Hyde

Chan Koonchung

TRUTH IS NOT AN OPTION.... 
 Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one can care less. Except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn - not only about their leaders, but also about their own people - stuns them to the core. It is a message that will rock the world... 
 Terrifying methods of cunning, deception and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers in this thriller-expose of the Communist Party's stranglehold on China today.

The Fat Years

The international sensation: A Chinese 1984

Georgia Blain

The story is told through the eyes of Ursula, an out of work actress, who is drifting through life.  She is haunted by her past and, in particular, the fateful summer spent  with her eccentric family as a teenager at a wild and remote farmhouse, Candelo, on the south coast of Australia where she first falls in love.  The holiday ends in disaster: a terrible accident takes place that changes all their lives. Ursula must confront the past and come to terms with truths about herself, and her family, before she can move on and truly exist in the the present.

Snake In The Grass

September 1919: Twenty-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a clutch of letters to Marian Bancroft. Tristan fought alongside Marian's brother Will during the Great War. They trained together. They fought together. 
 
But in 1917, Will laid down his guns on the battlefield and declared himself a conscientious objector, an act which has brought shame and dishonour on the Bancroft family. 
 
The letters, however, are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He holds a secret deep within him. One that he is desperate to unburden himself of to Marian, if he can only find the courage. Whatever happens, this meeting will change his life – forever.

The Absolutist

You think you are rid of me. 
You think you have drawn a line under the whole affair. 
You are so, so wrong. 
 
For five years, Sally and Clive have been lost in a passionate affair. Now he has dumped her, to devote himself to his wife and family, and Sally is left in freefall. 
 
It starts with a casual stroll past his house, and popping into the brasserie where his son works. Then Sally befriends Clive's wife and daughter on Facebook. But that's alright isn't it? I mean they are perfectly normal things to do. Aren't they? 
 
Not since Fatal Attraction has the fallout from an illicit affair been exposed in such a sharp, darkly funny and disturbing way.. After all, who doesn't know a normal, perfectly sane woman who has gone a little crazy when her heart was broken?

The Mistress's Revenge

A Richard and Judy recommendation for the 2012 Summer Book Club, this is a brilliant Gothic novel in the vein of Daphne du Maurier. 
 
A chance encounter: When Sarah meets dark, brooding Alex, she grasps his offer of a new life miles away from her own. They've both recently escaped broken relationships, and need to start again. Why not do it together? 
 
A perfect life: But when Sarah gets to the tiny village of Burrington Stoke, something doesn't add up. Alex's beautiful wife Genevieve was charming, talented, and adored by all who knew her. And apparently, she and Alex had a successful marriage complete with a gorgeous son, Jamie. Why would Genevieve walk out on her perfect life? And why has no one heard from her since she did so? 
 
A web of lies: Genevieve's family and all her friends think that Alex knows more about her disappearance than he's letting on. But Sarah's fallen in love with him and just knows he couldn't have anything to hide. Or could he? 
 
The captivating, page-turning novel from the bestselling author of The Secret by the Lake and The House by the Sea, winner of The Jackie Collins Romantic Thriller Award.

The Secrets Between Us

The gripping and unforgettable historical fiction book from the top 10 bestseller

Detective Kamil Rahman

Detective Konrad

Detective Luc Moncrief Series

Dexter Procter

Diary of a Submissive

The adventures of wise-cracking middle school student Greg Heffley who must somehow survive the scariest time of anyone's life: middle school. The hilarious and internationally bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diddly Squat

Dino Dad

Dino Racers

Dinosaur Train

Discworld Graphic Novel Universe

The Discworld is undoubtedly Sir Terry Pratchett's most famous creation. A universe teeming with dwarves, trolls, witches, and social and cultural issues that parallel those in our own world, all wrapped up in Pratchett's inimitable comic delivery. This iconic series will make you laugh, then make you think.

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