Showing titles in World Literature

Opening in the late 1980s as rave culture is born and moving into the 1990s, Men In Love reunites the Trainspotting crew for a riotous new journey. Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie leave heroin behind and seek joy, and the hope of redemption, on the dance floor. Each wants to feel alive in the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain, and they fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead. Taking in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and Paris, the group charges towards an unexpected event: Sick Boy’s wedding day.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

Even before Spain joined the war in early 1762, it was obvious that it wouldn’t have the strategic effect that the cousins, King Louis and King Charles, had hoped. France needed a success to bring Britain to the negotiating table: nothing grand—Louis didn’t have the force for that—but something that would hurt the City of London in its pocket. A raid on the Newfoundland fisheries would have an immediate financial impact. In normal times the dried cod provided an important dietary supplement to the population of the Atlantic basin and a steady stream of gold for the City’s coffers.

After more than twenty years away from the law, Joe Hennessy is forced back into the courtroom. Trying to save his vineyard after years of drought, Hennessy returns to practice in Charleston, South Carolina–the city he walked away from after the murder of his ten-year-old son. When one of South Carolina's most powerful men is charged with possessing stolen artwork, Hennessy steps forward to defend him. But as Hennessy digs into the evidence, as he navigates the truth, he finds that the criminal charges are only the start of their problems…

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.

Meeting by chance at a gambling hall in Europe, the separate lives of Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Harleth are immediately intertwined. Daniel, an Englishman of uncertain parentage, becomes Gwendolyn's redeemer as she finds herself drawn to his spiritual and altruistic nature after a loveless marriage. But Daniel's path was already set when he rescued a young Jewess from suicide.

Anna Walsh had a dream life - according to everybody else. She lived in New York, had a long-term boyfriend, and had The Best Job In The World working as a highly successful beauty PR. So why did she decide to take a flamethrower to the lot? Because now she's back Dublin, living with her parents. She's undeniably forty-eight, with no partner, no job, and no direction. Anna's lost her purpose. She needs a new challenge to help her fall back in love with life again. When an opportunity arises to solve a PR crisis in the tiny town of Maumtully, Anna leaps at the chance.

In postwar Tarabeg, two women are waiting for ambitious Michael Malone to return home. Rosie is the local schoolteacher, and most people think she is promised to him. Just a few have guessed that he has secretly begun to woo Sarah, whose brutal fisherman father would kill her if he knew. Both Rosie and Sarah love Michael, both hope to become his wife and their lives will interweave in a tale of tangled secrets, old promises and new feuds. Michael Malone's choice will have fateful consequences for everyone - especially, in due course, for his young daughter....

A huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London.

Free-spirited and easygoing Taylor Vandenberg left her hometown of Faircombe, Tennessee, as soon as she could, and in the twenty-five years since, she has rarely looked back. She wouldn't change anything about how her life has turned out—having traveled to nearly every country, never staying anywhere long enough to feel stifled. Brooke Watson has known Taylor for her entire life, and lifelong knowledge means that Brooke knows she's trouble: irresponsible, takes nothing seriously, and irritatingly attractive.

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs. Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of 21st-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.

For those looking for the real story behind the fictionalized movie account of the 47 Ronin story, this is the definitive, fascinating account of this unforgettable tale of a band of samurai who defied the Emperor to avenge the disgrace and death of their master, and faced certain death as a result. It led to one of the bloodiest episodes in Japanese history, and in the process, created a new set of heroes in Japan.

Fear stalks familiar ground. Acting DCI Rob Marshall is back in the Borders with a permanent promotion dangled in front of him – but storm clouds are gathering, with his new boss eyeing cutting Marshall’s Major Investigation Team. When a seventeen-year-old boy is found murdered in Hawick, Marshall finds a community on the edge. As his team struggles to connect the dots, what seems like a straightforward case unravels into something far more sinister – the details echo another investigation and Marshall finds himself following a trail of secrets hidden in plain sight.

Doctor Thorne is the third audiobook in Anthony Trollope's series known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire. Long regarded as one of Trollope's greatest works, it is a complex story of love, greed and illegitimacy. Set in fictional Barsetshire, it concerns the romantic challenges facing Doctor Thorne's penniless niece, Mary, and Frank Gresham, the only son of the impoverished squire of Greshambury. Mary falls in love with Frank but he is constrained by the need to marry well to restore the family fortunes.

Sometimes home is where you least expect it… Alex has perfected the art of dodging responsibility during her almost 40 years — until an unexpected letter turns her life upside down. She’s inherited a crumbling sheep farm in deepest, wettest Wales. This was not her life plan. Not at all. Now, her closest companion is a grumpy Welsh terrier, she’s speed-reading An Idiot’s Guide to Farming, and her arrival has set the village gossip mill spinning. With the farm near collapse and its community now relying on her, Alex sets out to uncover the truth behind her mysterious inheritance.

It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel's antithesis: sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn't. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession.

Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the greatest writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.

When Sarah Jepson’s mother Annie dies, Sarah is left with her little brother Tommy to care for. Alone in the world, the two of them must make a life for themselves in the wake of the terrible upbringing they have endured. But when Tommy is struck down by illness, Sarah’s new life collapses. Lost in grief, she turns to the handsome Roger to save her – only to find that he is not who he seems....

Jessica Raine stars in all four BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of John Galsworthy's Forsyte novels. An irresistible family saga of love, money and betrayal, The Forsytes: The Complete Series encompasses four acclaimed BBC Radio 4 productions of Galsworthy's perennially popular epic, spanning 50 years from 1886 to 1936.

Flying instructor Ellie Simpson has grown up a tomboy. She's never had an interest in the latest fashions or finding a husband; her only passion is flying her beloved Tiger Moth. But when war is declared, she is no longer be able to do what she loves most - fly.