Showing titles in City Life

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: It’s close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and, ideally, very little thinking. Her first gig - watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods - turns out to be inconvenient. Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all but something altogether more meaningful.

When Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.

Regarded as one of the most important works in American literature and among the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, The Great Gatsby is the quintessential portrait of Jazz Age America, depicting not only the wild parties, romance, love, and the intense and often unfulfilled desire for wealth and status, but also the immorality, loneliness, disappointment and corruption of The Roaring Twenties.

Piglet is judging the contents of your shopping trolley. She is listening to what you order for lunch and is observing whether the dessert you serve is homemade or snatched from a packet. There isn't another 31-year-old that takes food more seriously. And who could blame her, with a childhood nickname like that? In just over a fortnight, she is marrying Kit. Kit and his tasteful family present an opportunity for reinvention - when she had been growing up in Derby, this life, this man had been beyond her imagination.

Award-winning novelist Vikram Seth is renowned worldwide for his magnum opus A Suitable Boy. But his dazzling debut, though less well-known, is equally innovative, masterly and ambitious. First published in 1986 and inspired by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, it is written entirely in verse, comprising almost 600 stanzas of rhyming sonnets. This epic poem focusses on the interconnected stories of five young professionals, as they make their way in the 'unfettered city' of San Francisco in the '80s.

Agnes Green is not having the summer of her life. Trapped in the suburbs with a strict religious mother, her nights are spent secretly dating Toby—who loves arthouse film, getting stoned, and ignoring her texts—and her days listening to sermons about the sins of the flesh. Then she meets Emily. Beautiful, charismatic and oddly controlling, Emily has a suggestion for Agnes. A life-changing way of making cash and having fun. It might even involve love. And it's easy. All you have to do is put a little black dress on and go to lunch.

This is Nadia. She is fiercely independent, with an excellent sense of humour and a love of smoking alone on her balcony late at night. This is Saeed. He is sweet and shy and kind to strangers. He also has a balcony but he uses his for stargazing. This is their story: a love story, but also a story about how we live now and how we might live tomorrow.

Bystander is a pitiless, bold work of intense psychological realism narrated by a professionally successful but socially bankrupt anti-hero who expects global connection and local anonymity. It excoriates the contingency of contemporary morality, and, at a time of growing isolation, forces the listener to examine what it means to be a good neighbor.

Yeongju tem se sentido desmotivada. Sua vida se tornou uma sucessão de frustrações e ela sente um vazio eterno no peito. Cansada de viver assim, decide deixar tudo para trás e colocar em prática um antigo sonho: abrir uma livraria. Desde a infância, Yeongju encontra conforto nos livros, e abrir a loja parece ser a solução ideal para os seus problemas. Mas começar um negócio nunca é fácil, e ela precisa aprender que ser uma amante dos livros não é o suficiente para tornar o seu sonho realidade.

It's 1949 and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to the grand stage of New York City. It is the era of mambo, and the Castillo brothers, workers by day, become stars of the dance halls by night, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth, exuberance, love, and freedom―a golden time that decades later is remembered with nostalgia and deep affection.

If I Had Your Face plunges us into the mesmerising world of contemporary Seoul - a place where extreme plastic surgery is as routine as getting a haircut, where women compete for spots in secret 'room salons' to entertain wealthy businessmen after hours, where K-Pop stars are the object of all-consuming obsession and ruthless social hierarchies dictate your every move. Navigating this cutthroat city are four young women balancing on the razor edge of survival.

Joachim von Hartmann is born into a wealthy Argentine banking family and spends his early years in Buenos Aires. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, he has inherited the looks of his German ancestors, while his twin brother, Javier, could not be more different. Following the death of their father and when details emerge about Joachim’s maternal grandfather’s wartime activity, both boys and their mother, Liese, are cast out from the family. After the years of glamour and luxury, she must raise them alone with no financial support.

In Lahore, Daru Shezad is a junior banker with a hashish habit. When his old friend Ozi moves back to Pakistan, Daru wants to be happy for him. Ozi has everything: a beautiful wife and child, an expensive foreign education - and a corrupt father who bankrolls his lavish lifestyle. As jealousy sets in, Daru's life slowly unravels. He loses his job. Starts lacing his joints with heroin. Becomes involved with a criminally minded rickshaw driver. And falls in love with Ozi's lonely wife. But how low can Daru sink? Is he guilty of the crime he finds himself on trial for?

An ex-boxer turned nail salon worker falls for a pair of immaculate hands, a mother and daughter harvest earthworms in the middle of the night, a country-music-obsessed housewife abandons her family for fantasy and a young girl's love for her father transcends language. In this stunning debut, Souvankham Thammavongsa captures the day-to-day lives of immigrants and refugees in a nameless city, illuminating hopes, disappointments, love affairs and above all, the pursuit of a place to belong.

One night in New York City's Chinatown, Lola is at a dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. The next night, she runs into another ex. And then…another. The city has become awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What might have passed for coincidence becomes something far stranger when the recently engaged Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship, but the fact that her best friend and her former boss might have an unhealthy investment in its outcome.

Isa Epley is 21 years old and wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. In her diary she chronicles her New York City adventure during the sweltering summer of 2013. By day, Isa and her best friend, Gala, sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, and bad-mannered grifters. 

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a charming young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom's awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming's orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he's already mapped out their future together. But, shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.

Franny Doyle is having the worst day. She’s been sacked, the subway doors ripped her favorite dress to ruins, and now she’s flashed her unmentionables to half of lower Manhattan. On the plus side, a dashing stranger came to her rescue with his (Gucci!) suit jacket. On the down side, he can’t get away from her fast enough. Worse yet? Someone posted their (entirely not) meet-cute online. Suddenly Franny and her rescuer, Hayes Montgomery, are the newest social media sensation, and all of New York is shipping #SubwayQTs.

Crush Hour: A Musical presents a series of heart-warming and hilarious chance encounters via London’s transport links, in the run up to Christmas.

A woman meets her next-door neighbor and loans her a spatula, then starts suffering horrific gaps in her memory. A man, feeling jilted by an unrequited love, becomes obsessed with sorting through his neighbors' garbage in the belief that it will teach him how to better relate to people. A landlord decides to raise the rent, and his tenants hatch a plan to kill him at a team-building retreat. In 10 captivating, unnerving stories, Flowers of Mold presents a range of ordinary individuals who have found themselves left behind by an increasingly urbanized and fragmented world.