Showing titles in City Life

"Weißt du, Charly, im Leben muss man lieben und zwar sehr. Diejenigen, die den Schmerz fürchten, glauben nicht an das Leben." Der kleine Charly verliert in den berüchtigten Pariser Vorstädten seine Mutter. Mutig macht er sich auf die Suche nach ihr und nimmt die Hörerschaft mit auf eine Reise, die von Warmherzigkeit sowie Poesie geprägt ist und eine gänzlich neue Perspektive schafft.

Saul doesn’t get why he’s misunderstood. At his high-tech day job, he hides in the bathroom writing a novel about his dead grandfather and wonders why his boss wants to fire him. He tells his almost ex-wife about a blind date and wonders why she slams the door in his face. He aches with worry for his seven-year-old son, who seems happier living with his mom and her new man. When the blind date becomes a complicated relationship, and Saul’s blunders at work threaten the survival of the company, Saul has to wake up and confront his fears.

Lyric Smith didn’t become the nation’s most successful lifestyle guru by losing focus. Yet Josiah Manning, daytime television’s hottest - and sexiest - young Black producer makes her do just that. Publicly, Josiah wants Lyric to star in a new talk show. Privately, he’s headlining her sexiest fantasies. But when their explosive chemistry leads to complications instead of contracts, will Lyric find the ultimate partner to help her crush her rivals … or exit stage left alone? 

On the eve of the Occupy Wall Street protests, C is flat broke. Once a renowned textile artist, she’s now the sole proprietor of an arts supply store in Lower Manhattan. Divorced, alone, at loose ends, C is stuck with a struggling business, a stack of bills, a new erotic interest in her oldest girlfriend, and a persistent hallucination in the form of a rogue garden gnome with a pointed interest in systems collapse. Replaying recent history through a distorting glass, The Visitors charts the last days of a broken status quo as the path is cleared for something new.

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence. 

The Vanderhaven family of Manhattan has it all: wealth, prestige, good looks, and a thriving business empire. But their seemingly perfect world is ripped apart when their younger daughter, eight-year-old Brenna, runs off after overhearing her parents arguing. Out on the streets, she quickly realizes shes lost. Even more frightening, Brenna soon realizes that a man is following her. Meanwhile, in a townhouse in Brooklyn, Callie Griffin is throwing a birthday party for her one-year-old son, Oliver. The joy of the day is ruined by her sister Lauren's too-short, drive-by appearance.

The Not Wives traces the lives of three women as they navigate the Occupy Wall Street movement and each other. Stevie is a nontenured professor and recently divorced single mom; her best friend, Mel, is a bartender, torn between her long-term girlfriend and her desire to explore polyamory; and Johanna is a homeless teenager trying to find her way in the world who bears shared witness to a tragedy that interlaces her life with Stevie’s.

'A truly moving, uplifting story about love, connection and finding the courage to start over' - Rowan Coleman 'The perfect holiday read' - Josie LLoyd What are you most afraid of . . . ? Gemma is terrified of slowing down, because if she does, she’ll have to admit how lonely she’s felt...

Eight-year-old TC skips school to explore the city’s overgrown, forgotten corners. Sophia, 78, watches with concern as he slips past her window, through the little park she loves. She’s writing to her granddaughter, Daisy, whose privileged upbringing means she exists in a different world from TC - though the two children live less than a mile apart.

Is it worse to lie to your husband or the police? Rikke is deceiving them both. When their upstairs neighbour Jørgen is found dead, she's questioned alongside her husband Åsmund. How can Rikke admit in front of Åsmund that Jørgen and she were having an affair? Or explain to the police the complexity of her feelings for Jørgen? The hint of relief that he's dead. And, as the investigation closes in on the neighbourhood, how long can she conceal the affair from her neighbours, her husband and her teenage daughter?

Daddy’s girl Samantha Reynold hadn’t bargained on unexpectedly needing to step into her father’s shoes and take over the family casino business. Pampered and spoiled, Sam knows nothing about the rules of this glamorous but deadly new world. She has a lot to learn and even more to prove. But she won’t let her family down, especially when it looks like they could lose everything to their biggest rivals - the Stoker family.

Martin, a market analyst, and Lily, a corporate attorney, have a life that many would envy - they share an expensive New York apartment with their twin toddlers, sample the delicacies of Manhattan's finest restaurants, and take Caribbean vacations. But when the couple's nanny announces her imminent departure, they panic: How will they ever find a replacement capable of managing their spirited boys? Enter Maeve, a young Irish emigre.

The “Metro” of the title of this brilliant and mordant social comedy refers to the Moscow underground - the sparkling subway system that enchants its young hero, seven-year-old Sasha, on his first visit to Moscow. The vaulted ceilings and gleaming escalators appear to his young eyes as emblems of a higher life, of beauty, harmony, and hidden strength. Years later, Sasha escapes the jaws of a provincial ammunition factory and returns to Moscow as an aspiring actor, whereupon he enters quite another “Moscow underground”.

London, 1946. Struggling to cope with the idea of raising her daughter in a hostile environment, African Caribbean nurse Hope makes the difficult decision to entrust her precious baby to her best friend, Eunice, to take back home to Antigua. But their plan goes disastrously wrong. In the decades that follow, all of them will witness - and play a part in - the seismic changes rocking the British Isles, as the old establishment crumbles, immigration builds and the country adjusts to the realities of a post-war, post-colonial future.

'Spiky, clever, funny' – Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters 'Brilliant, propulsive . . . A riot'– Maddie Mortimer, author of Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies 'A delicious gallop through 90s tabloid London' – Sam McAlister, author of Scoops It’s peak 90s London. Shoulder pads are out...

It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors.

Fleeing her moribund marriage in Cape Town, Beth accepts a diplomatic posting to Shanghai. In this anonymous city, she hopes to lose herself in books, wine, and solitude, and to dodge whatever pangs of conscience she feels for her fealty to a South African regime that, by the 21st century, has betrayed its early promises.

When Jane’s partner goes missing she needs to find out if he’s in danger while also contending with the politics of a large international film festival: Hollywood power brokers, Russian oil speculators, Chinese propagandists, and a board chair who seemingly has it out for her.

The Orphanage Girls is a gritty and moving historical saga set in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Jam Factory Girls, Mary Wood. Children deserve a family to call their own . . . Ruth dares to dream of another life – far away from the horrors within the walls of Bethnal...

Worn down by a job he hates and a stressful family life, middle-aged, middle-class Bradley picks up a teenage escort and commits an unspeakable crime. Now she's tied up in his warehouse and he doesn't know what to do. Max is homeless, sleeping rough and barely existing - known for cadging a cigarette from anyone passing and occasionally even the footpath. Nobody really sees Max - but he has one friend, and she's gone missing. In order to find her, Max is going to have to call on some people from his past and reopen wounds that have remained unhealed for a very long time.