You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
There’s no such thing as a perfect family. A perfect life. A perfect man. Frank is proof of this. He’s everyman and yet as unique as a fingerprint. With a wonderful wife and children who are the loves of his life, he couldn’t ask for anything more. But time and time again he keeps risking it all. In snapshots through time, Only About Love takes a sweeping loop around Frank’s life as he navigates courtship, marriage, fatherhood and illness. Told through the perspectives of Frank and his family, this story is one of intense honesty about the things we do to those closest to us.
'Christian has achieved something very beautiful and funny with this book, weaving ordinary life and every day sadness into something hopeful and profound. I loved it.' Russell Brand As a radio DJ in London, Christian O'Connell appeared to have it all. He held the number one spot nationally, with a faithful audience of millions who'd listened to him for years. Celebrities flocked to come on his show and no other radio DJ had won more awards. But not everything was as it seemed. Minutes before going live one morning, something happened that changed everything and led to a decision of seismic proportions. He quit his job, moved to the other side of the world, where no one knew him, and took on...
In February 1959, Switzerland held a referendum on women’s suffrage. The men voted ‘no’. In this powerful novella, Clare O’Dea explores that day through the eyes of four very different Swiss women. Vreni is a busy farmer’s wife, longing for a break from family life. Her grown-up daughter Margrit is carving out an independent life in Bern, but finds herself trapped in an alarming situation. Esther, a cleaner, is desperate to recover her son who has been taken into care. Beatrice, a hospital administrator, has been throwing herself into the ‘yes’ campaign. The four women’s paths intersect on a day that will leave its mark on all their lives.
Eight-year-old Pepper has always found it hard to figure out when people are lying, but he's certain his mother's alive, and he's going to find her... One day during a school field trip, Pepper is picked up by a strange man and driven off to rural Arkansas. His kidnapper, 'Uncle Dan', claims that Pepper's mother has died and they are to live together from now on - but the boy isn't convinced. A charming and thrilling tale of one special little boy's path back home. 'Pepper proves a tenacious, resourceful hero in his own drama. Immensely readable and sweetly told.' - Marti Leimbach, author of 'Daniel Isn't Talking'
Once there was a street in Paris and it was called the Street of Tailors. This was years back, in the blue mists of memory. Now it’s the 1950s and Henri is the last tailor on the street. With meticulous precision he takes the measurements of men and notes them down in his leather-bound ledger. He draws on the cloth with a blue chalk, cuts the pieces and sews them together. When the suit is done, Henri adds a finishing touch: a blue Tekhelet thread hidden in the trousers somewhere, for luck. One day, the renowned French artist Yves Klein walks into the shop, and orders a suit. Set in Paris, this atmospheric tale delicately intertwines three connected narratives and timelines, interspersed with observations of the colour blue. It is a meditation on truth and lies, memory and time and thought. It is a leap of the imagination, a leap into the void.
Postal worker Jenny’s life is in the doldrums. Her daughter is all grown up and ready to face the world, her marriage is falling apart, and now her best friend and colleague tells her he plans to retire. So, when a postcard from Australia, begging the recipient for forgiveness but marked ‘insufficient address’, lands on her sorting table, she does the unthinkable – she slips it up her sleeve, with the intention of delivering it herself. Jenny sets off on a journey around the Isle of Wight, determined to find the recipient, and with the help of the locals she hopes to reunite the long-lost lovers. Will she be able to give them the happy ending she didn’t allow herself to have? Set against the backdrop of the strikes in the 1980s, Missing Words is a heart-warming story about self-discovery, the power of family ties, and the strength needed to face whatever life throws your way.
Rural Cyprus, 1925. Despo is recently married, heavily pregnant and deeply afraid. The twelve days of Christmas are beginning – the time when, according to local folklore, creatures known as kalikantzari come up from Hell to wreak havoc. Meanwhile, her husband Loukas has troubles of his own. Struggling with dreams and desires he doesn’t understand, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to an Englishman, a newcomer to the island. In a village wreathed in superstition, Despo and Loukas must protect themselves and their unborn child from ominous forces at play.
A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, this bestselling collection from master storyteller Sherman Alexie tackles love, loss, basketball--and everything in between The characters that populate the lyrical and affectionate tales in "Ten Little Indians" battle stereotypes and navigate the crossroads of culture in life off the reservation. Richard, the narrator of "Lawyer's League," grows up in Seattle the son of "an African American giant who played defensive end for the University of Washington Huskies" and "a petite Spokane Indian ballerina." Estelle Walks Above (nEe Estelle Miller), the mother of the narrator in "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above," studies her way off the ...
For the past few years Roddy Doyle has been writing stories for IMetro Eireann/I, a newspaper started by, and aimed at, immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories took a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance and importance in today's Ireland. The stories range from 'Guess Who's Coming to the Dinner', where a father who prides himself on his open-mindedness when his daughters talk about sex, is forced to confront his feelings when one of them brings home a black fella, to a terrifying ghost story, 'The Pram', in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge's older sisters and decides ndash; in a phrase she has learnt ndash; to 'scare them shitless'. ...
"Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion." --New York Times Book Review A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny, What's Left of Me Is Yours charts a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life--and her murder. In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the "wakaresaseya" (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy c...