Showing titles in Genre Fiction

In his Locus review of Two Worlds and in Between - the first volume of The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan - Gary K. Wolfe wrote, “...it makes you wish the second volume were here now.” Well, the long wait is over. This second volume completes this ambitious undertaking, collecting the finest of Kiernan’s stories from 2004 to 2012, selected by the author herself. The book includes 25 short stories and one poem, plus the short novel Black Helicopters - more than 200,000 words of fiction, including the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of 90 Cats”.

For as long as Lucy can remember, she's been caught between loyalty to her rootless, idealistic mother and devotion to her fierce and exacting sister, Bea. From her unsettled childhood to her turbulent teenage years, she's been forced to make a choice. But as the sisters come of age and embark on their own experiments – in love, drugs, work, motherhood – they find their lives, and their relationships, increasingly in turmoil. Can the love they have for each other transcend the damage of the past? Or is the past too dangerous to examine?

'It's like ice cream, Mr Flynn,' Bertie continued. 'When you have ice cream, you need to eat it straight away, otherwise it melts. If there are people who haven't got any, you should share it, if you can.' When despair for the world grows, Bertie's theory of ice cream reminds us that it's the simple pleasures in life that we should hold onto.

It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert's, comes to stay. Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write. The more Lesley's friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is—a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.

Joan Liang's life is a series of surprising developments: she never thought she would leave Taiwan (and for all places, California), nor did she expect her first marriage to implode - especially as quickly and spectacularly as it did. She definitely did not expect to fall in love with an older, wealthy American and become his fourth wife and mother to his youngest children. Through all this she asks herself the question familiar to so many of us: what are we living for? And are we ever truly satisfied?

A bundle of the award-winning Nothing Special series by internationally best-selling author A. E. Via.

Miles Jupp stars as fussy food writer Damien Trench in the complete four series of this much-loved BBC Radio 4 sitcom. Well-known cookery writer Damien Trench is famous for his book A Year in the Kitchen, a diary of everything he cooked and ate over the course of 12 months. Now, for the follow-up volume, In and Out of the Kitchen, Damien undertakes to open up the doors 'not only to my kitchen, but also to my life'. But is Damien’s life as idyllic as his listeners might suppose?

After much searching, Amber and Stevie find the perfect house - a bit shabby but with potential - in Grimaldi Square. Just the two of them; a place where they can start their lives together. Recently married, they want to begin a family (with the help of their gay best friend, Jack). Despite the rundown pub across the way, the overgrown garden and a decidedly nosy neighbour, it's the house of their dreams. But they are not alone in this dream.

Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms - as something like two great waddling shillings. But this, she thought, was what it really meant to have paying guests: this odd, unintimate proximity, this rather peeled-back moment, where the only thing between herself and a naked Mrs Barber was a few feet of kitchen and a thin scullery door. An image sprang into her head: that round flesh, crimsoning in the heat.

Please note: This podcast is intended for adults only.

Two years ago, a human pilot was taken captive by the Alder—a ruthless and savage alien race. Now, it's my team's mission to rescue him. But when I'm saved by one of those "savages" and stranded with him in the jungle, everything I thought I knew starts to unravel. My team is my family, the only home I've ever known. Failing them isn't an option. But how can I resist Kitari, this mysterious and alluring alien who claims that I'm an "omega" and offers me something I've never had—a place to truly belong?

Amanda. Katie. Melanie. Three wildly different women with one big problem – their impossible mother-in-law, Nancy. When an unexpected crisis hits the family business, the sisters-in-law find themselves navigating stormy waters. Amanda is back in town and ready to reclaim her spot at the top. Katie, the feisty outsider, knows she'll never earn Nancy’s approval – and has stopped caring. Melanie, ambitious and savvy, is more than capable of running the business, if only Nancy would loosen her iron grip.

Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, we trace the two versions of a life that follow. In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out from her home. She lands at a queer communal home in Sydney called Uranian House, where she meets the people who will forever become her family.

In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for everyone, but it is on George’s sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact. As the decades pass, Daphne and those around her endure startling changes in fortune and circumstance, and as reputations rise and fall, the events of that long-ago summer become part of a legendary story.

Zofia's son, Janek, has vanished without a trace. Leaving behind her native Warsaw, she arrives in London, determined to uncover the truth - and she's certain that a celebrated writer called Steve holds the key to Janek's disappearance. To fund her DIY investigation, Zofia takes on a string of cleaning jobs - a professional trajectory she finds very much beneath her. Armed with little more than her stubborn resolve and a second-hand detective manual, Zofia gathers evidence.

One winter's afternoon on Hampstead Heath in 1980, Elise Morceau meets Constance Holden and quickly falls under her spell. Connie is bold and alluring, a successful writer whose novel is being turned into a major Hollywood film. Elise follows Connie to LA, a city of strange dreams and swimming pools and late-night gatherings of glamorous people. But whilst Connie thrives on the heat and electricity of this new world where everyone is reaching for the stars and no one is telling the truth, Elise finds herself floundering.

Set in Ireland in the 1990s, Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship tells the story of the Devereux family. Dora Devereux, her daughter Lily and her granddaughter Helen have come together after years of strife and reached an uneasy truce. Helen’s adored brother, Declan, is dying. Two friends join him and the women in a crumbling old house by the sea, where the six of them, from different generations and with different beliefs, must listen to and come to terms with one another.

It's 2067 at Palm Meridian Retirement Resort, Florida, and the last day of Hannah's life. Tomorrow, as the sun burns the dew off the lawns, she'll close her eyes for the very last time. But she won't be going quietly. Tonight, Hannah's throwing an end-of-life party: the drinks are on ice, and the palm trees are strung with lights beneath technicolour skies. And though Hannah has less than twenty-four hours left, she's holding out for one last, impossible thing...

Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in a hyper-masculine world. They are caught between two of Glasgow’s housing estates where young working-class men divide themselves along sectarian lines, and fight territorial battles for the sake of reputation. They should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the doocot that James has built for his prize racing pigeons. As they begin to fall in love, they dream of escaping the grey city.