Showing titles in City Life

The London Classics Collection: Stories of the City allows you to step into the heart of London with a curated selection of iconic literary works that explore the soul of one of the world's most fascinating cities. From the smoky alleys of Victorian London to the political upheavals of the 20th century, this collection brings together stories that capture the city's rich history, diverse characters, and unflinching reflections on society.

1910, Edinburgh. Young seamstress Maisie McIntyre's world shatters with her mother's death. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty that has defined her life so far, Maisie makes a daring choice: she steals a bolt of peacock-blue silk, a stash of money, and sails for New York City. With nothing but raw talent and fierce determination, Maisie's gift for dressmaking opens doors she never imagined.

LEXI - The plan was simple. Walk in, settle my deadbeat dad's debt, walk out and finally wash my hands of my father once and for all. That was the plan at least. Until it goes all wrong and I'm left playing my cards right in a game of poker to win my freedom.

It all starts on New Year's Eve. A night that has to be a success, whatever the cost. For Joni and her friends, it'll be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour of any other, but by sunrise, they'll be dealing with something darker than the usual post-party comedown. Not that they let this stand in their way. For this is their year to revel in all that the playground of London has to offer: sneaking into places they shouldn't, breaking every rule, falling in love with the wrong people. All the while avoiding one undeniable truth: it's not if the party ends, it's how.

From the highly acclaimed author of Bad Day in Blackrock – inspiration for the 2012 award-winning film What Richard Did, directed by Lenny Abrahamson... ? Shortlisted for the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards Eason Novel of the Year... A darkly funny, gripping and profoundly moving novel about a...

'ANDREW MILLER'S WRITING IS A SOURCE OF WONDER AND DELIGHT' Hilary Mantel 'ONE OF OUR MOST SKILFUL CHRONICLERS OF THE HUMAN HEART AND MIND' Sunday Times 'Cinematic' Times Literary Supplement 'A real achievement' Guardian 'Revelatory' Sunday Times The mesmerising tale of a young man forced to...

This rivalry is setting the literary world on fire – but who will survive the flames? When Selina Chan, New York’s fiercest literary critic, slams Parker Navarro’s latest novel, he is pushed to his breaking point. Once was painful enough. But this time, it’s personal. What begins as a...

Seventeen-year-old Tyler lives in one of Edinburgh’s most deprived areas. Coerced into robbing rich people’s homes by his bullying older siblings, he’s also trying to care for his little sister and his drug-addict mum. On a job, his brother Barry stabs a homeowner and leaves her for dead, but that’s just the beginning of their nightmare, because the woman is the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord, Deke Holt.

Brought to you by Penguin. Years after escaping her unbearable artworld friends in New York for a new life in London, an unnamed writer finds herself back on the Lower East Side attending a dinner party hosted by Eugene and Nicole – an artist-curator couple – and attended by their...

One night in New York City's Chinatown, Lola is at a dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. The next night, she runs into another ex. And then…another. The city has become awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What might have passed for coincidence becomes something far stranger when the recently engaged Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship, but the fact that her best friend and her former boss might have an unhealthy investment in its outcome.

Brought to you by Penguin. A gorgeous novel of music, secrets and self-discovery from the brilliant young author of Braised Pork For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. With her marriage, she gave up on her...

East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city’s rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. At day’s end, six bodies are recovered, but many of the other tenants are missing. In Lazarus Man, Richard Price, one of the greatest chroniclers of life in urban America, creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster.

Dramatisations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most popular works, plus bonus documentary Often described as ‘the laureate of the Jazz Age’, F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the reckless, hedonistic spirit of 1920s America in his classic novels The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned and Tender is...

When Will wakes up after a car accident, he’s lost three years of memory. All he wants is his girlfriend and childhood sweetheart, Gem, beside him. Instead, nothing is as he remembers. Gem has finally moved on from hers and Will’s breakup. With a new life and boyfriend, the last thing she expects is a call to say Will needs her – the man who nearly destroyed her. As Will recovers, he is determined to prove to Gem that he is the man he once was. But by unlocking the secrets of his past, will he be able to piece together what caused him to change so dramatically?

A vivid eulogy for London of the late 1970s and early '80s - the last years prior to the rise of the digital city. An elliptical, wildly atmospheric remembrance of the sites and soundtrack, at once aggressively modern and strangely elegiac, that accompanied the twilight of one era and the dawn of another.  

It is the evening of 16-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress - the very same dress that was sewn for a different wearer, Melody's mother, for a celebration that ultimately never took place. Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents - from the 1921 Tulsa massacre to post-9/11 New York....

WINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations. Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is...

'Killing Eve meets Bridget Jones' Crime Monthly 'This fun, quirky read really hits the mark!' The Sun She always gets her man … but has Maisie Baxter met her match? Maisie Baxter is determined not to let her job as an ethical hitwoman get in the way of her social life, but it’s tough when...

Sophie and Tom first visited Paris together as students. During their weekend away in the world’s most romantic city, falling in love – with the place, and each other – was simply inevitable. They resolved to return every summer and kept their word, until something happened that changed their world forever.

'Will stick with you long after you've left the page. A triumph!' Yomi Adegoke, author of THE LIST 'Combined my favourite things, art and Caribbean food, with beautiful, nuanced characters that I could have spent a lifetime with.' Nathan Bryon, screenwriter of RYE LANE In one tiny Caribbean...