Alex Danchev

Alex Dekker served as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces 'Green Berets' for nearly 20 years, first with 5th Special Forces Group and then as a special operations team member assigned to the United States Army Special Operations Command. He has deployed multiple times to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations worldwide, and has attended multiple advanced tactical and technical schools within the U.S. Special Operations community and interagency. Alex has traveled to dozens of countries for work and personal adventures and has spent years living abroad. He is an avid student of history who has participated as a volunteer in numerous archaeological digs, is an Arabic speaker, and holds a Masters in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. When not traveling, Alex lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Savannah, a former CIA Operations Officer, their children, and their German Shepherd Donovan.

Alex Dekker

Alex Dimitrov is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize from the American Poetry Review and a Pushcart Prize and is the author of Begging For It (2013), Together And By Yourselves (2017), and Love and Other Poems (2021). His work has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Poetry, and more. Formerly, he was the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets where he edited the popular online series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. From 2009-2013, he founded and ran Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York. Currently, he teaches creative writing at NYU where he is Writer in Residence.

Alex Dimitrov

Alex Dingwall-Main

Alex Duval

Alex Edelman

Alex Edmans

Alex Evans is Campaigns Director at Avaaz.org, a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC), and has nearly twenty years’ experience in climate and development policy. Alex has worked as Special Adviser to two UK Secretaries of State for International Development (Hilary Benn and Valerie Amos), as an expert on climate change in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and with think tanks including Chatham House and the Brookings Institution. He has also worked as a consultant on futures and foreign policy for organizations from Oxfam to the US National Intelligence Council. 
Alex lives in North Yorkshire and is married with two children.

Alex Evans

Alex Ferguson was born and brought up in Govan, Glasgow. He has always been a controversial figure, never far from the limelight, from the time he led an apprentices’ strike before entering full-time football. As a player with a reputation as uncompromising centre-forward his clubs included Glasgow Rangers, Dunfermline and Falkirk, and he became a spokesman for the player’s union. His first appointment as manager was with East Stirling, from where he moved to Love Street, where St Mirren’s crowds under his dynamic leadership rose from 3,000 to 12,000. He joined the Pittodrie set-up as manager in 1978.

Alex Ferguson

Alex Fryer

Alex Games

Alex Garland was born in London in 1970. He is the author of two novels, The Beach, The Tesseract and an illustrated novella, The Coma, in collaboration with his father. He has also written screenplays for films including 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd. In 2015, Garland made his directorial debut with Ex Machina.

Alex Garland

Dr Alex George was the UK’s Mental Health Ambassador for children and young people from 2021 until early 2025, and he currently hosts the Stompcast podcast. Dr Alex’s first children’s book A BETTER DAY was a Sunday Times No.1 bestseller, won a British Book Award and sold 42,000 copies through TCM. Dr Alex previously worked for the NHS as an A&amp;E doctor and is now passionate about helping to equip everyone – especially children and young people – with the tools needed to live a full, productive and meaningful life.

Alex George

Alex Gordon

Alex Grecian worked for an ad agency before returning to writing fiction full-time and raising his son. Alex is the author of the long-running and critically acclaimed comic-book series Proof, and the bestselling Scotland Yard Murder Squad series. He lives in Topeka, Kansas, with his wife and son.

Alex Grecian

Alex Gutteridge

Alex Halberstadt is the author of the award-winning Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and The Paris Review. He is a two-time James Beard Award nominee and a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He works and lives in New York.

Alex Halberstadt

Alex Haley

Dr Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a former senior research scientist on Google's Ethical AI team. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry and a proponent of community-based uses of technology.

Alex Hanna

Alex Hannaford

Alex Hely-Hutchinson

Professor Alex Hill is the co-founder and Director of The Centre for High Performance – a collaboration between the University of Kingston, Duke Corporate Education, London Business School and Green Templeton College, Oxford – which is dedicated to helping high-performing organizations develop a stronger and more robust economy, society and environment. The Centre has worked with organizations in sectors ranging from the arts and education to sport, technology and the military. 
 
He is also a Professor at Kingston University (UK), Educator at Duke Corporate Education (US), and Visiting Professor at Cass Business School (UK), Gordon Institute of Business Science (South Africa), The Academy of National Economy (Russia) and KEDGE Management School (France). 
 
He has written a number of books, published articles in leading academic journals such as the Harvard Business Review, advised the UK Government on educational policy, appeared on BBC Newsnight, presented at the Global Economics and Skills Forum and has written for The Times and Schools Week.

Alex Hill

Alex Hoffler and Stacey O’Gorman’s motto is ‘Follow your dream’. Just a couple of year ago Alex and Stacey quit their 9 to 5 jobs and began their Meringue Girls journey. Now they have a bakery HQ in Broadway Market with a staff of eight, which sells to Selfridges, Fortnum &amp; Mason, Recipease and Harvey Nicholls, as well as fashion events, weddings and their weekly market stall. They run masterclasses rated by the Evening Standard as one of the best in London. They have had a huge media and social media response including numerous TV appearance and over 80,000 Instagram followers. They are in talks to open a franchise in Dubai. 
 
They also do weekly food styling for various publications including the Guardian. They live in east London. Alex has a new baby, and Stacey recently got married.

Alex Hoffler

Alex Holt is the Global Head of the multi-billion-dollar Technology, Media and Telecoms practice at KPMG. He leads a large team who work with all the major organisations across the sector on everything from multi-billion M&amp;A deals through to tax, audit and management consulting. As well as leading the TMT sector globally, Alex is also the Global Lead Partner for some of the largest tech companies in the world. 
 
 Alex also serves on the Board of the anti-poverty charity JobTrain.

Alex Holt

Alex Horne 
noun 
1. comedian, writer, gambler, taskmaster, podcaster, birdwatcher, potential neologist and father.

Alex Horne

Alex Hughes is an online recipe creator who is committed to making reaching your weight goals not only delicious but fun. All her recipes are comforting, low-calorie and will help you feel full. She can be found doing a little dance in her kitchen (the recipes taste that good) at @alexskitchenbangers on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Alex Hughes

Alex James is a writer, farmer, and the bass player with Blur. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and five children.

Alex James

Alex Kadis is half-British, half-Greek, and grew up in Leyton and Walthamstow, East London. She studied English Literature at Goldsmiths University before embarking on a music journalism career. She was Features Editor at Smash Hits in its heyday (RIP) and has also written for various newspapers and magazines, including Sunday Times Style and Q Magazine. She then went into artist management and now works as a consultant in the music industry. Alex suffers from delusions of grandeur and still believes she will, one day, headline Wembley Stadium.

Alex Kadis

Alex Kantrowitz is a senior technology reporter at BuzzFeed News and one of the ten most cited technology reporters in the world. His work has been referenced by dozens of major publications, from the New Yorker to the Wall Street Journal to Sports Illustrated. He is the founder of the tech publication and podcast Big Technology, which focuses on analysing tech giants. Kantrowitz is a graduate of Cornell University's College of Industrial and Labor Relations. This is his first book.

Alex Kantrowitz

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Judy Astley

Fans of Carole Matthews, Jenny Colgan, Lucy Diamond and Milly Johnson will love this uplifting and upbeat comic novel from bestselling author Judy Astley. The perfect dose of escapism! 
 
'As irresistible as triple choc fudge cake - with extra cream' -- Mail on Sunday 
'A witty take on a modern dilemma' -- Woman and Home 
'You'll love this funny novel' -- Sun 
'Real wit...The story is so entertaining' -- Scottish Daily Record 
'A refreshingly good read' -- ***** Reader review 
'Good fun' -- ***** Reader review 
'I couldn't put the book down. Great read!' -- ***** Reader review 
 
**************************************************************************************** 
Does losing weight make you a happier person? 
 
Jay has always envied her cousin Delphine. While Jay was brought up in a large, noisy and chaotic family, Delphine was indulged, perfectly dressed with a co-ordinated bedroom, an immaculate wardrobe, dancing lessons and monogrammed silver-backed hairbrushes. 
 
Now Jay lives happily with her architect husband and their three teenage children, running a successful cleaning company and trying to keep some kind of order on her disorderly household, while Delphine has long since disappeared to Australia with her second husband. 
 
But Jay does sometimes wonder whether she should be more like her cousin - utterly well-organised and with a seemingly perfect body. 
 
So Jay decides to diet. But what should it be? She tries a range, with a variety of successes and failures. 
 
But then Delphine reappears, with a third husband in prospect and the same old air of apparently effortless superiority. But Jay never considers that perhaps Delphine is the envious one...

Size Matters

a witty and warm-hearted comedy from bestselling author Judy Astley

Julie Hilden

Maya and Ilan have an unusual marriage: Maya agrees to tolerate Ilan's chronic infidelity as long as she can participate and he will never stray without her. To her surprise, she finds their threesomes as arousing as they are disturbing and, for a while, everything seems fine. But as Maya's writing career takes off and she becomes more independent, Ilan feels threatened, and opts for another kind of sexual experimentation - one that plays on Maya's fear and ultimately threatens her life. 
 
Meanwhile, Maya is drawn into another relationship with a fateful third character. When her new liaison begins to mirror her marriage to Ilan, Maya discovers that her lover, seemingly a stranger, knows far more about her past than she has revealed. 
 
A compelling chronicle of obsession and power, 3 brings new immediacy to a timeless question: what is the greatest sacrifice you would make for love?

Zane Radcliffe

'She emerged from a flurry of windblown rose petals, her pale skin interrupted at regular intervals by bands of red - scarlet bob, scarlet lips, cropped scarlet top, scarlet mini, scarlet knee socks, scarlet boots. She looked like a barber's pole, or a lolly that had to be licked.' 
 
Scarlet plucks her twelve-string guitar with nails the colour of glazed cherries and Belfast music hack Jessie (Jay to his friends) Black is smitten. He charms his way on to her tour bus as her band head for Dublin, but the second they cross the border he feels the heat of a sniper's bullet... 
 
Who wants Jay dead? Or rather, who doesn't want him dead? Any number of people might, with some justification, have pulled the trigger. There's Scarlet's stalker, the gun-toting shoe fetishist. And the still-grieving widow of Northern Ireland's international goalkeeper, Miles Huggins, who Jay inadvertently killed. Not to mention the property magnate who was blackmailed into handing Jay the key's to Belfast's first-ever million-pound flat. Or the RUC Chief Constable who has given Jay an ultimatum. Or, now you come to mention it, how about Sinn Fein numero uno Martin O'Hanlon, whose cover Jay's been strong-armed into exposing? However it's when Scarlet goes missing that things start getting serious and Jay has to go it alone. 
 
A story of blackmail, corruption and exploding peacocks, 'Big Jessie' is the new firecracker thriller from the author of the WHSmith Award-winning 'London Irish'.

Big Jessie

Ben Elton

The war on drugs has been lost but for want of the courage to face the fact that the whole world is rapidly becoming one vast criminal network. From pop stars and princes to crack whores and street kids. From the Groucho Club toilets to the poppy fields of Afghanistan, we are all partners in crime. 
 
HIGH SOCIETY is a story or rather a collection of interconnected stories that takes the reader on a hilarious, heart breaking and terrifying journey through the kaleidoscope world that the law has created and from which the law offers no protection.

High Society

Gigi Levangie

Clarissa is an archetypal LA babe. She is 28 (real age 31), has never done a day's work in her life and is outspoken, hedonistic and exceedingly manipulative. And she wants to keep it that way. Her life is a constant round of lunches with her hilariously bitchy girlfriends (known as the Star Chamber), parties, and yet more parties. The only thing missing from her life is a rich husband to keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed. So, without further ado, she sets about planning an extravagant wedding (just two hundred of her closest friends) and reserving the finest hotel suites in town for her reception before she's so much as spoken to her intended. But she soon finds out that Aaron, the son of a billionaire, is more than a match for her and that, for the first time in her life, Clarissa has bitten off more than she can chew.

Maneater

Bruce shoots movies. Wayne and Scout shoot to kill. In a single night they find out the hard way what's real and what's not, who's the hero and who's the villain. The USA watches slack-jawed as Bruce and Wayne together resolve some serious questions. Does Bruce use erection cream? Does art imitate life or does life simply imitate bad art? And most of all, does sugar-pie really love his honeybun?

Popcorn

Ravi Shankar Etteth

Swati Varma is one of modern Delhi's more bleesed inhabitants. Then on brilliant morning when the world seemed cleansed by the coming of the rains, the unthinkable happens: his pregnant wife is killed in a road accident. Devastated, Swati makes a pilgrimage back to the land of his forebears, Panayur, in the state of Kerala, to scatter his beloved's ashes in the sacred waters of the Papanasini river. 
 
Returning to this long-forgotten world, he is reunited with a childhood companion who now cares for the crumbling, ghost-filled palace that was his home. For Panayur - seemingly still free from the religious turmoil that threatens so much of the country - was once a kingdom, and Swati is the direct descendant of the its last king. As two friends talk, share memories and exchagne secrets, thousands of miles away, Vel - a cousin Swati never kew he had - sets out on a quest for the truth about his family that will take him from America, to Berlin and, ultimately, to Panayur. 
 
And so begins an extraordinary and healing journey. One that will lead both Swati and Vel back through the cruel, vibrant, myth-filled history of the kings of Panayur to the legend that lies at its heart - the legend of the tiger by the river...

The Tiger By The River

SMALL, WELL APPOINTED FUTURE. SEMI DETACHED. 
 
If the end of the world is nigh, then surely it's only sensible to make alternative arrangements. Certainly the Earth has its points, but what most people need is something smaller and more manageable. Of course there are those who say that's planetary treason, but who cares what the weirdos and terrorists think? Not Nathan. All he cares is that his movie gets made and that there's somebody left to see it. 
 
In marketing terms the end of the world will be very big. Anyone trying to save it should remember that.

This Other Eden

John O'Farrell

It's a big night at the London Palladium. As Jimmy Conway steps out blinking into the spotlights live on national television, he can't help wondering whether he should have perhaps shared his little secret with someone by now. Jimmy has never done any performing of any sort ever before... 
 
Just as 'bogus doctors' are occasionally discovered working in hospitals, Jimmy Conway has become a 'bogus celebrity'; winning an award for something he never did, being photographed in Hello! in someone else's house, and ultimately making a fool of the entire mad and shallow celebrity merry-go-round.

This Is Your Life

Eleanor Bailey

For the last 150 years, Berlin has been a city of myth, dreams and possibility. For Erich, it has been home for over two decades. Yet even after two failed marriages and a stuttering career as a artist, he has little to show for it: a pair of dysfunctional children, an agoraphobic girlfriend who believes she is Marlene Dietrich and a worthy but unprofitable café gallery. With the arrival of his younger brother Max, recovering from a suicide attempt, everything changes. Max has always been the golden one for whom success came easily and yet who never cared. Erich's problem is that he always cared too much. 
 
The brothers are at a crossroads, both emotionally and geographically. It is only together that they can claw their way back to life, perhaps through the life and times of Europe's most gilded city . . .

Marlene Dietrich Lived Here

WINNER OF THE WH SMITH'S PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD [New Talent] 
 
There are 750,000 Irish living in London. One of them has to get out. For good... 
 
It is the summer of 1999. Bic (half-Irish, half-Scots) is eking out a living selling crêpes to the hordes descending on Greenwich market. With one severed ear, two bizarre deaths and the arrest of his dog for civil disobedience, Bic's year hasn't exactly been going to plan. 
 
But when raven-haired Roisin takes the stall opposite his, things seem to be looking up - if Bic can just get past her over-protective brothers. That is, until Bic wakes up the-morning-after-the-night-before, in his clothes, in Edinburgh, to find he's the UK's Most Wanted Man - on the run and with fourteen murders to his name... 
 
'Very fresh, very funny' COLIN BATEMAN 
 
'A huge and exciting plot...I loved the twist at the end' Goodreads 
 
'Great story and full of humour' Goodreads

London Irish

Diana Appleyard

It has been an idyllic summer, Tess reflects, as she packs up the Cornish holiday home in preparation for plunging back into the cold reality of normal life. An idyllic summer, and there will be more - so why does she feel awash with a nameless fear about returning home? 
 
Alone at the holiday cottage for one last night with her young daughter - Mark and the boys have already returned home to London - she has the time, and the silence, to take stock of her life. A life, which, on the surface, has everything a woman could want. So why, now the children are growing up, does she want more? The dramatic decision she takes that night sets her off on a quite new journey - but one for which she may need the courage to travel alone...

Out Of Love

One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones. 
 
Yet again the public gorges its voyeuristic appetite as another group of unknown and unremarkable people submit themselves to the brutal exposure of the televised real-life soap opera, House Arrest. 
 
Everybody knows the rules: total strangers are forced to live together while the rest of the country watches them do it. Who will crack first? Who will have sex with whom? Who will the public love and who will they hate? All the usual questions. And then, suddenly, there are some new ones. 
 
Who is the murderer? How did he or she manage to kill under the constant gaze of the thirty television cameras? Why did they do it? And who will be next?

Dead Famous

John Harding

At fifty the guarantee runs out... 
About to hit the big five-oh, obsessed with sex, cocaine-fuelled and gripped by a crippling fear of death, Professor Michael Cole is finding life a bit of a struggle. 
It's finding the time to squeeze everything in, really. He's supposedly writing the definitive biography of his literary hero, John Donne, but barely manages three hundred words a week. His insatiable enthusiasm for his prettier female students might be partly to blame, but they are only young once. And the fact that one of his female colleagues has yet to succumb to his charms is, admittedly, a distraction he could well do without. But throw in a fight for promotion, a wife to lie to and two small children to look after and it's no wonder his blood pressure has reached life-threatening heights. He knows the time has come to act his age. The question is how. 
Because Michael Cole is very much a creature of habit and, as we all know, old habits die hard. But it's when he's caught in the act of adultery by his grandmother that Cole truly begins to see the writing on the wall. After all, she's been dead for twenty-five years... 
 
Marrying humour, heart and a singular understanding of the human condition, WHILE THE SUN SHINES is an uproariously funny yet hugely affecting novel about growing-old disgracefully and the price we sometimes have to pay...

While The Sun Shines

Ruaridh Nicoll

In the magnificent wilderness that is the Scottish Highlands, Aaron and Hugh have been friends for as long as they can remember, bound by a shared affinity for their surroundings and an increasing sense of alienation from the remote, close-knit community that is their home. 
 
But when a young woman - fleeing life in the city and a broken love affair - moves to the area, the ties that bind the boys are slowly, irrevocably stretched to near-breaking point. And as the strain on Aaron and Hugh's friendship builds, so the violence that is endemic in the land begins to infect them both. Driven to the very edge of reason, they turn on their world to vent their frustration and anger and hurt in the only way they know, embarking on a spree of quite horrific destruction...

White Male Heart

Robert Edric

1897. In an isolated station in the Belgian Congo, an Englishman awaits trial for the murder of a native child. Imprisoned in a makeshift gaol, Nicholas Frere awaits the arrival of the Company's official investigator, while his friend, James Frasier, attempts to determine the circumstances which surround the charge. 
 
The world around them is rapidly changing: the horrors of the Belgian Congo are becoming known and the flow of its once-fabulous wealth is drying up. Unrest flares unstoppably into violence. 
 
Frere's coming trial will seek to determine considerably more than the killing of a child. But at the heart of this conflict lies a secret so dark, so unimaginable, that one man must be willingly destroyed by his possession of it, and the other must both sanction and participate in that destruction. 
 
'More disturbing even than Conrad in his depiction of the heart of darkness . . . it will be surprising if this year sees a more disturbing or haunting novel' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times 
 
'Relentless . . . an impressive and disturbing work of art' Robert Nye, Literary Review 
 
'Edric describes a compelling plot in fine, spare prose' David Isaacson, Daily Telegraph

The Book Of The Heathen

Willy Russell

The hilarious, bittersweet novel from the playwright behind EDUCATING RITA, SHIRLEY VALENTINE and award-winning musical BLOOD BROTHERS. 
 
Dear Morrissey, 
I'm feeling dead depressed and down. Like a streetlamp without a bulb or a goose at the onset of Christmas time. 
Anyroad, I thought I'd pen a few lines to someone who'd understand... 
 
It's 1991. Raymond Marks is a normal boy, from a normal family, in a normal northern town. Only lately, he's been feeling dead down. His dad left home after falling in love with a five-string banjo. His fun-hating grandma believes she should have married Jean-Paul Sartre: 'I could never read his books, but y' could tell from his picture, there was nothing frivolous about John-Paul Sartre.' Felonious Uncle Jason and Appalling Aunty Paula are lusting after the satellite dish. 
 
And so he turns to the one person who'll understand what he's going through: Morrissey. Told through a series of heartfelt letters to the frontman of The Smiths, this is a laugh-out-loud funny, incredibly poignant tale from a character you can't help but love. 
 
'Big-hearted, wonderfully funny and engrossing' THE MIRROR 
 
'A warm, funny, poignant story. I loved The Wrong Boy - and so will you' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 
 
'A comic masterpiece' BEL MOONEY, MAIL ON SUNDAY

The Wrong Boy

Michael Adams shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer games and occasionally doing a bit of work. And then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children. 
 
For Michael is living a double life - he escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to work through the night or travel up north. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in a secret flat, doing all the things that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can have it all, until is deception is inevitably exposed... 
 
The Best a Man Can Get is written with the hilarious eye for detail that sent John O'Farrell's first book, Things Can Only Get Better, to the top of the bestseller lists. It is a darkly comic confessional that is at once compelling, revealing and very, very funny.

The Best A Man Can Get

Jody Shields

'He watches her eating one fig, then two more, grinding the seeds between her teeth, the sound echoing in her head, perhaps the last sound Dora heard before there was the thunder of blood in her ears...' 
Vienna, 1910. On a warm August night, the body of a young girl is discovered in the city's celebrated Volksgarten. She has been strangled. Using the latest forensic methods and psychological thinking, the Chief Inspector of Police begins his painstaking search for the killer. He is not alone, however. His wife Erszébet - an exotic, passionate woman steeped in the folk tales and Gypsy lore of her native Hungary - becomes obsessed with the dead girl. In secret, and enlisting the help of a young English governess, she conducts her own investigation of the murder, guided by intuition, instinct and superstition... With its beautifully-evoked setting of Vienna just prior to the Great War, a city embracing the modern and yet in thrall to superstition and prejudice, and riven by corruption, perverse sexual practices and disease, The Fig Eater is a rich and seductive period page-turner of a novel.

The Fig Eater

Perfect escapism again from the pen of bestselling author Judy Astley, No Place for a Man is a sizzling and seriously funny novel about family life and the eternal need to hold everything - and everyone - together. Perfect for fans of Carole Matthews, Jenny Colgan, Lucy Diamond and Milly Johnson. 
 
'Amusing and entertaining, easily relatable and recognisable characters' -- ***** Reader review 
'I couldn't put the book down. Great read!' -- ***** Reader review 
'Warm and witty' -- ***** Reader review 
'Riveting' -- ***** Reader review 
 
******************************************************************************* 
SOMEONE HAS TO HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER, AND IT WON'T BE HIM! 
 
Jess has just waved goodbye to her darling son, off backpacking to Oz. She's left with two teenage daughters and husband Matt - all of whom find themselves regularly featured in her popular and lighthearted newspaper column in which she conveys to her readers an enviably cheery muddle of family life. 
 
 Things become less rosy when Matt, after twenty years with the same firm, is made redundant. Only Jess sees the potential calamity in this. Matt is delighted with his new freedom and takes to hanging out at the local bar with others of the male barely-employable tendency, drinking and drifting and dreaming up hopeless schemes to make them all rich... 
 
Daughter no. 1, meanwhile, has taken up with a mysterious boy living in an abandoned car on the allotment, and her younger sister is over-burdened with a surfeit of secrets. 
 
For Jess, trying to hold everything together and missing her first-flown child, it becomes ever-harder to maintain the carefree façade for her readers. Of course she could just tell them the truth...

No Place For A Man

another light-hearted and laugh-out-loud comedy from bestselling author Judy Astley

Guy Burt

It was the end of term at Our Glorious School. Most of the pupils were preparing to return home; some were going away on a geography field trip. But for five members of the sixth form, it sounded more fun to embark upon what their friend and mentor Martyn called 'an experiment with real life' - to spend three days together in The Hole, a windowless cellar room in an unfrequented part of the school buildings. Martyn was to lock them in, and in three days he would come and let them out again. 
 
At first, it all seemed quite a laugh - eating and drinking, jokes and banter. Solid Mike and dependable Liz, Geoff with his secret supplies of booze, irritating Frankie and delicate Alex - what a story they would have to tell when Martyn came to release them! How surprised and admiring their friends would be! 
 
But three days passed, and Martyn did not return... 
 
The Hole is a dark and menacing first novel, written when the author was still at school. Compulsive and claustrophobic in quality, it has been compared to John Fowles's The Collector.

The Hole

John McCabe

Everything is related... 
 
Scientist and part-time dreamer, Dr Darren White is losing the plot. Work has descended into a distinctly unscientific mess and his research is non-existent. Taking time out from discovering the last great theory of the twentieth century, Darren begins an illicit investigation into Class A pharmaceuticals and fears he may be on the verge of murdering an irritating colleague. What's more worrying though is the sudden appearance of a Bomb in his Head, which needs defusing, and soon. 
 
Darren has tried everything to arrest his helpless slide: the catchily named Operation MWIMI (Make Work More Interesting) foundered on the rocks of his facial hair, and The Day of Rules turned into the most unruly of days. Nothing has really helped. And now he needs to get his life in order because he has met Neuro Girl, who doesn't look like the sort of woman who would stand for any bombs going off in her vicinity. 
 
The more Darren searches for order, the more elusive it becomes, until the surprise contents of a stolen computer suggest that things are rarely what they seem. And when your only hope is that life isn't logical, then you know you're in trouble...don't you?

Paper

Sam and Lucy seem like the perfect couple. Successful, happy and in love. But life isn't that simple. Lucy thinks thinks Sam is a sad, cold sensitivity-exclusion zone who would rather read a newspaper than have an emotion. Sam thinks Lucy is blaming him because she can't walk past Mothercare without getting all teary. The problem is that they might be infertile. And in more ways than one. 
 
Lucy wants a baby. Sam wants to write a hit movie. And given that the average IVF cycle has about a one in five chance of going into full production, Lucy's chances of getting what she wants are considerably better than Sam's. 
 
What Sam and Lucy are about to go through is absolutely inconceivable. The question is, can their love survive? Or are the odds stacked against them once again?

Inconceivable

Nicholas Rinaldi

It is 1942 and the island of Malta is under siege by the dominant German air force. Out of the smoke and magnesium glare of bomb blast steps Rocco Raven, native of Brooklyn, New York, apprentice radioman and expert secondhand car dealer. His only contact is an American secret serviceman, Fingerley, whose rank upgrades with their every meeting and whose purpose is known to no-one but himself. Far from finding a role for Rocco, Fingerley leaves him to face the chaos alone. On only his second day there, his billet, on the top floor of a brothel, is blown to pieces. Without contacts or belongings, Rocco is left to wander the devastated streets of Valetta in a bewildered daze until he sees an apparition, a beautiful, ethereal woman. She is Melita, the Jukebox Queen of Malta, who spends her time delivering the jukeboxes wrought by her cousin from old automobile and gramophone parts to the bars and restaurants which must accommodate the beleagured civilian and military populations. It is the beginning of an extraordinary relationship that is at once passionate and guarded, which flourishes as the island's fortunes decline. Under the threat of starvation and in a world populated by the eccentrics of war, Rocco's seems to be the lone voice of sanity, until he too is affected by the madness around him and succumbs to the voluntary thrill of danger... 
The Jukebox Queen of Malta is an extraordinary novel of passion and intrigue set in a world which seems perilously balanced between what is real and what is not. It is a magnificently evocative piece of storytelling, where the bizarre and heady atmosphere of a society under siege masks the uneasy truce between the Allied occupiers and the Maltese natives, and where the physical beauty is only tainted by the sense of mystery desecrated.

The Jukebox Queen Of Malta

Ethan Coen

From brilliantly funny and darkly surreal pastiche, to poignantly evoked small-town lives, the stories in Ethan Coen's outstanding debut collection are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the award-winning Coen Brothers' films. Yet at the same time they belong in the great tradition of American fiction writing.  Peopled with mobsters and hicks, and peppered with sparkling dialogue, some are delicious send-ups of  genre classics by authors such as Chandler and Hammett, while others are miniatures of private desperation drawn with a humour and tenderness which places them alongside the best work of Raymond Carver. Their great achievement, however, is that they are unmistakably the work of Ethan Coen, each one meticulously crafted, exhilaratingly imaginative, breathtakingly daring and hilariously funny. Ethan Coen's first venture into writing fiction is a triumph which will be welcomed as much by lovers of great fiction as by the Coen Brothers' legions of fans.

Gates Of Eden

It's two fifteen a.m., you're in bed alone and you're woken by the phone. 
 
Your eyes are wide and your body tense before it has completed so much as a single ring. And as you wake, in the tiny moment between sleep and consciousness, you know already that something is wrong. 
 
Only someone bad would call at such an hour. Or someone good, but with bad news, which would probably be worse. 
 
You lie there in the darkness and wait for the answer machine to kick in. Your own voice sounds strange as it tells you that nobody is there but that a message can be left. 
 
You feel your heart beat. You listen. And then you hear the one voice in the world you least expect . . . your very own Blast From the Past.

Blast From The Past

It's time to start thinking the unthinkable... 
 
Carrie Adams, successful television producer, mother and wife, is about to return to work. Baby Tom has fallen in love with the new nanny; six-year-old Rebecca isn't too keen, but hopes the nanny will at least be better organised than Mummy. Carrie meanwhile is desperate to reinvent herself from housewife to svelte career woman. 
 
Because this is what today's women do, don't they? They're smart, successful, glamorous wives and perfect part-time mothers. They can be brilliant at work and brilliant in bed. Carrie lives by the maxim that working full-time is no problem as long as she has the right childcare, and has never doubted for a moment that this is her path in life - until reality begins to hit home. She isn't happy, the children aren't happy, and husband Mike -until recently trying desperately to be a New Man - is now becoming more and more detached from family life. She begins to think the unthinkable. Perhaps, just perhaps, she doesn't have to do all this...

Homing Instinct

Pamela Jooste

'My name is Lily Daniels and I live in The Valley, in an old house at the top of a hill with a loquat tree in the garden. We are all women in our house. My grandmother, my Aunt Stella with her hopalong leg, and me. The men in our family are not worth much. They are the cross we have to bear. Some of us, like my mother, don't live here any more. People say she went on the Kimberley train to try for white and I mustn't blame her because she could get away with it even if we didn't believe she would.' 
 
Through the sharp yet loving eyes of eleven-year-old Lily we see the whole exotic, vivid, vigorous culture of the Cape Coloured community at the time when apartheid threatened its destruction. As Lily's beautiful but angry mother returns to Cape Town, determined to fight for justice for her family, so the story of Lily's past - and future - erupts. Dance with a Poor Man's Daughter is a powerful and moving tribute to a richly individual people.

Dance With A Poor Man's Daughter

Jerzy Kosinski

The hero of this astonishing novel is called Chance - he may be the man of tomorrow. Flung into the real world when his rich benefactor dies, Chance is helped on his life journey by Elizabeth Eve, the young, beautiful, resourceful wife of a dying Wall Street mogul. Accidentally launched into a world of sex, money, power - and national television - he becomes a media superstar, a household name, the man of the hour - and, who knows, perhaps the next President of the United States of America.

Being There

Let bestselling author Judy Astley sweep you away with this uplifting, laugh-out-loud comedy which shows EXACTLY what little boys are made of. Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan, Milly Johnson and Trisha Ashley. 
 
'A funny, incisive gem of a novel' - Sunday Post 
'This deliciously funny novel had me laughing out loud' - Woman and Home 
'A funny, warm and moving novel' - Sunday Mirror 
"Judy Astley's books are always a joy to read." -- ***** Reader review 
"Judy Astley is a brilliant writer, you get lost in her books. They are all brilliant in my opinion." -- ***** Reader review 
'Great escapism' -- ***** Reader review 
************************************************************************** 
PEACE AT LAST? NOT LIKELY! 
 
After twenty years of marriage, Nina had offloaded serial philanderer Joe and was happy enough, thank you, coping alone with their two demanding daughters and her own hectic life. It felt like freedom, not having to wonder constantly where Joe was, who with and up to what. 
 
But into Nina's new, carefree life some disturbing elements began to appear. A flasher had been accosting young girls on the nearby common, leaving every man in the area under suspicion. Home, to Nina, no longer felt so safe. And Joe, during one of his oh-so-civilised monthly lunches with Nina, revealed that the new love in his life, pin-thin, power-dressed Catherine, had decided that she now required a baby. 
 
But babies, Joe told Nina, were what he did with her: a remark that Nina found oddly unsettling...

Every Good Girl

the perfect, light-hearted, feel-good romance to settle down with…

Hetty Feather was left at a foundling hospital when she was a tiny baby. Having grown up in a loving foster family until she was five, and then finding herself returned to the hospital, she begins to question who her actual family are, and is determined to stop at nothing to find out where she came from. Jacqueline Wilson’s acclaimed series follows Hetty and her friend Diamond as they work their way up from their lowly backgrounds to become stars, overcoming loss, unkind bosses and flirtatious boys.

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