Showing results for "Book Tales" in Literary Fiction

The second book in the multi-million-copy bestselling series about a cosy Japanese cafe that offers its visitors the chance to travel back in time. Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s heartwarming Tales from the Cafe, translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, explores the age-old question: what would...

In this astounding book, David Eagleman entertains forty fictional possibilities of life beyond death. With wit and humanity he asks the key questions about existence, hope, technology and love. These stories are full of big ideas and bold imagination.This audiobook assembles a stellar cast of readers who bring the scenarios of SUM brilliantly alive.

Brought to you by Penguin. The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie's phantasmagoric epic Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers who shared everything. They shared the symptoms of pregnancy, they shared the son that they all claim to have...

The original abridged recordings of the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga, in one collection! For almost four decades Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture—from a groundbreaking newspaper...

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring their unmatched talents to The Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, a collection of thirty of...

** SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 ** Brought to you by Penguin. In this spellbinding new collection, Charlotte Higgins reinterprets some of the most enduring stories of all time. Here are myths of the creation, of Heracles and Theseus and Perseus, the Trojan war and its...

A long time ago, the Vanderchucks fled the growing climate disaster and followed their neighbors into the Underground. Jesse Vanderchuck thought it was the end. Of the world. Of life. Eventually, Jesse's little sister, Olivia, ran away and Jesse started picking through trash heaps in Toronto's abandoned subway tunnels. Day in, day out.

Introducing an instant classic--master storyteller Neil Gaiman presents a dazzling version of the great Norse myths. Neil Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura...

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night.

In this first volume subtitled ‘The Stories of Jacob', Mann begins with a meditative prelude named “Descent into Hell”, which contextualises the story against a variety of historical, mythological, and historical contexts, before moving on to the story of Joseph's father Jacob. The following chapters follow Jacob as we learn of him stealing his brother's birthright, before fleeing to his uncle Laban and his later marriages to Rachel and Leah.

Caecilia, Roman born but Etruscan wed, forsakes Rome to return to her husband, Vel Mastarna, exposing herself to the enmity of his people while knowing the Romans will give her a traitor's death if Veii falls. Semni, a reckless Etruscan servant in the House of Mastarna, embroils herself in schemes that threaten Caecilia's son and Semni's own chance for love. Pinna, a destitute Roman prostitute, uses coercion to gain the attention of Rome's greatest general at the risk of betraying Caecilia's cousin.

At a time when Humans were just starting to venture forth into the Galactic Union as mercenaries, Martin Quincy survived long enough to do something no one else had—he retired. There was only one problem: He got bored. After battling aliens for many years—killing aliens and getting paid—retirement didn’t suit him, and he decided to strap on the combat armor and go back to the stars. Along with his old friend Kal, Martin joined Cartwright’s Cavaliers, humanity’s best merc company. Life was exciting! But he got bored. Again.

Hoffmann, among the greatest and most popular of the German Romantics, is renowned for his humorous and sometimes horrifying tales of supernatural beings. This selection, while stressing the variety of his work, focuses on those stories in which the real and the supernatural are brought into contact and conflict. This new translation includes The Golden Pot, The Sandman, Princess Brambilla, Master Flea, and My Cousin's Corner Window.

A Tortantula and a Flatar. The most enigmatic teaming in the mercenary guild, it’s also a perfect pairing, where one’s strengths cover the other’s weakness. Raised together from birth, their lives are a brutal series of tests. Azah isn’t like most other female Tortantula; she’s much smaller and made fun of. No one expects her to survive, much less succeed, but she’s still given a chance and assigned a Flatar: Sadek. The two quickly bond and find they complement each other. Against all odds, they survive the breeding dome and join the ranks of their races’ mercenaries.

They have absolute power; after all, they are the ones with the weapons. The only other armed agency, the Peacemaker Guild, is far smaller and unable to bend them to their will. But absolute power has the tendency to corrupt absolutely, and this is becoming increasingly apparent as the guild’s members pursue their hidden agendas.

Caecilia has long been torn between her birthplace of Rome and her adopted city of Veii. Yet faced with mounting danger to her husband, children, and Etruscan freedoms, will her call to destroy Rome succeed? Pinna has clawed her way from prostitute to the concubine of the Roman general Camillus. Deeply in love, can she exert her own power to survive the threat of exposure by those who know her sordid past?

In the fourth book of the Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters series, the fates of three people who've never met converge in profound and unexpected ways.

The pain of China’s Cultural Revolution well behind them, Benfu and his treasured Calla Lily are content in their old age surrounded by their family of adopted daughters. Once abandoned, the girls are now cherished members of the Zheng family. Yet there remains an emptiness in their hearts: their only biological daughter, Dahlia, was abducted as a newborn 30 years before. When their daughter Linnea discovers an unexpected clue about what really happened to Dahlia, the elderly couple’s hopes are reignited.

Coming of age during China’s Cultural Revolution, Benfu survived the cruel years, but he did not emerge unscathed. The Scavenger’s Daughters is the story of Benfu and his beloved wife Calli, chronicling their attempts to build a life in the turmoil and aftermath of Maoist China. At the heart of their struggle lies the pain of losing their only child. To fill the terrible hole in their lives, they take in abandoned girls - the unwanted "weeds" - as their own, lovingly caring for them as flowers in a garden.

Otori Takeo and the beautiful Kaede are now married. But the inescapable forces of destiny that have bound their lives from birth make their happiness an impossible dream. Takeo, still only seventeen, must raise an army to reclaim his Otori lands, and fulfil the prophecy of the blind sage...