Meik Wiking founded the world's first Happiness Research Institute in 2013, in Copenhagen, Denmark and is a New York Times and Sunday Times Bestselling author. Meik has been called The Indiana Jones of Smiles and probably the World's Happiest Man by The Times. He is the author of four globally bestselling books which have sold over 2 million copies worldwide: The Little Book of Hygge, The Little Book of Lykke, The Art of Making Memories and My Hygge Home.

Meik Wiking

Sue Meikle has always been obsessed with picture books, and after working as an Early Years Specialist for over 25 years, she has read stories to children from Stockport to South Africa. In schools, in early years centres, while on forest school adventures... Sue has even read stories on a travelling play bus! So, perhaps it was always in the stars for Sue to not just read books, but write them, too! When she's not reading or writing stories, Sue can be found walking her dog or chauffeuring her teenagers around the Greater Manchester area (because that’s where they live… in a home that they made from a derelict barn!)

Sue Meikle

David Meikle is a TV scriptwriter and Sunday Times bestselling author. He has written and co-written seven books, including the autobiographies of Charlie Richardson and Bobby Cummines.

David Meikle

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

My friend, Fionn, was being held hostage in, I don't know, Unganga Nanga, and the Government was refusing to send in a team of marines to extract him. Pack of focking cauliflower worriers. 
 
I wouldn't have minded being bound and gagged in a basement - just for some peace and quiet. My wife was up the spout again. My daughter had grown into a mix between Suri Cruise and a Chucky doll. And one or two other chickens - well, birds - were coming home to roost. 
 
Suddenly, I realized what I had to do - go and get Fionn back. 
 
Except what I didn't realize was that Unganga Nanga was no country for old tens.

Keeping Up with the Kalashnikovs

It was no country for young men. Or women ... 
 
Unemployment, emigration and do-it-yourself hair colour kits were once again a fact of life. Taxes were on the up, the IMF were on the way and there was a cash for gold outlet in Foxrock Village. 
 
But the signs for recovery were good - for me, at least. I was the chief executive of one of the few businesses turning a profit in this town, a shredding company helping to dispose of the Celtic Tiger's dirty little secrets. And I was getting plenty of love action - as the boy-toy of an attractive sixty-year-old woman who was totally rolling in it. I never imagined myself ending up as a gigolo. But, as the saying goes, where there's a will, there's a way-hey-hey! 
 
With presents galore, sex on demand and a hot meal on the table every night, life was storting to look up again. All I had to do to aovid focking it up was to keep my chinos buttoned. And, well, you can probably guess how that went.

NAMA Mia!

So there I was roysh, life focked, reputation focked, finances focked - 
everything completely focked, roysh, and we're talking big time. 
And it's all Fionn's fault, basically. He's the four-eyed focker who told me that, like, the first time you do it, roysh, you're firing blanks. Like an unloaded Uzi - 
seriously impressive, hard as fock and totally ready for action, but the safety's, like, on, you know. Well that was a pile of stinking turds for storters. And of course it's muggins here who ends up with the kid - life is SO focking unfair. On top of all that, roysh, the goys stort to, like, totally lose it - JP has gone all Jesus on my orse, Oisinn is basically trying to fock over Interpol and Christian is talking about weddings and, I don't know, love and stuff. I mean, I am seriously beginning to feel like I am the only good-looking, loaded, sane goy in the whole of, like, Dublin.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress

I woke up from a coma to a country that had changed beyond recognition and the gords waiting to talk to me. 
 
They were obviously pretty interested in finding out who shot me. The problem was that I couldn't actually remember. The entire incident was a basic blank. 
 
The good news was that whoever pulled the trigger had missed my vital organs by inches - including the most vital one of all. I decided there and then that I wasn't going to waste another minute of my life. There were thousands of beautiful women out there who had never known the pleasure of my company - and that was going to change, the minute my wounds healed. 
 
But the path to hot love seldom runs smoothly. I had problems to deal with. A daughter who hated my basic guts. A son who was growing up way too fast. A soon-to-be-ex-wife who was resorting to increasingly desperate measures to stop the bank from repossessing the house. Oh, and the Gords were having one or two problems believing my story ...

The Shelbourne Ultimatum

I've had some pretty bad New Year's Eves in my life. But this one was officially... The! Worst! Ever! 
 
My wife had just given birth to a baby that wasn't mine. My son had just walked out on his bride-to-be on the eve of their wedding. And my old dear was making threats of revenge against me for allowing her to choke on the olive from her breakfast Martini. 
 
Throw into the mix three infant sons who were banned from every public park and children's play centre in the city; a father who was working with dodgy Russian business interests to put himself in the Taoiseach's office; and a daughter who was about to do something truly shocking - even by her standards. 
 
But then, one day, totally out of the blue, I received a very unexpected phone call... 
 
And let's just say that Schmidt got real.

Schmidt Happens

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly thought he knew all he needed to about women's bodies ... 
 
So there I was, roysh, in a state of basically very blissful ignorance, when suddenly Sorcha's up the Damien and I have to listen to, like, women's stuff. 
 
And now he's getting a biology lesson he could have SO lived without ... 
 
I am telling you, roysh, I never even knew nipples could crack and I was very happy not knowing it. I mean, all I knew about the whole scenario was six seconds of seriously good loving, and now I'm basically expected to be an expert on how to, like, breathe like Dorth Vader and deal with baby turds. 
 
Sometimes, life just isn't fair to the babe magnet supremo ... 
 
This is SO not good for my rep - but do you think Sorcha even, like, cares about that? Not focking likely!

Should Have Got Off at Sydney Parade

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly thought he had it all: 
 
Nice gaff, cool cor, plenty of dosh, a stake in Dublin's trendiest nightclub and a face that made boyfriends jealous. To say nothing of a beautiful wife and kids ... 
 
All that remained was for him to totally fock it up: 
 
And I mean, totally ... 
 
But did he see it coming? Of course not - too busy using his killer lines on the Seoige sisters: 
 
And then it hit me, all at once, on a lonely night in the Ice Bar ...

This Champagne Mojito is the Last Thing I Own

It looked like it was Game Over for the Rossmeister General. 
I was staring down the barrel of the big four-oh! And what did I have to show for it? 
 
I was an out-of-work rugby coach who was soon to be divorced. My old dear was sliding away in a nursing home in a certain suburb of West Dublin. And my old man had brought the country to the verge of, like, nuclear annihilation. 
 
And if that wasn’t bad enough, my teenage daughter was in love again. My sister-in-law was about to give birth to a baby that was possibly mine. And Castlerock College was about to go – I can’t even say the word – co-ed. 
 
People kept saying that we were facing Ormageddon. But I was like, ‘Hey, it’s not the end of the world.’ 
 
Because Father Fehily used to say, ‘Sometimes good things come to an end so that better things can come to a beginning.’

Don’t Look Back in Ongar

Fame. Fortune. Screaming girls. The adoration of strangers. I've had it all before, yet nothing could have prepared this Horny Little Devil for his new life in the City of Angels. Sacked as the coach of the Andorra rugby team and on the run from the sister I never knew I had, I decided to head west, vowing to win back my wife and daughter from a risk assessor predicting economic doom for the world. Imagine my shock when I discovered that my old dear, on a nationwide book tour, was already busy charming America out of its collective elasticated pants. 
 
With Trevion, a 1991 Gulf War-veteran-turned-celebrity-Svengali, on my side, not to mention my brand new bromance with a gym instructor called Harvey, I was determined to become more famous than even her. But one nose job and one abdominal resculpt later, I no longer knew where reality ended and reality TV began ...

Rhino What You Did Last Summer

I felt like I was living in a world teetering on the brink ... 
 
Life as a stay-in-bed husband turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected. My wife was pregnant with a baby that possibly wasn't mine. My old man was engaged in a war with the feminist movement that he was never going to win. And my old dear was making a lot of unexplained trips to Russia. 
 
Throw into the mix an eldest son with a possible sex addiction and three infant sons who were so thick they made me look like Edward Einstein. 
 
I might have actually gone over the edge if it wasn't for the belief of my daughter and the challenge of helping her win the greatest prize that South Dublin has to offer - the Strictly Mount Anville glitter ball.

Dancing with the Tsars

South Dublin's favourite son thought he could face any challenge - until he was asked to cross the bridge over the River Dargle. 
 
For Ross O'Carroll-Kelly - schools rugby hero, celebrated bon vivant and lover of beautiful women - life has suddenly become complicated. 
 
His father has been accused of rigging a General Election, his seventy-year-old mother is about to bring six surrogate babies into the world, and his daughter is being hailed as 'Ireland's answer to Greta Thunberg', telling everyone who cares to listen that the end of the world is nigh. 
 
As if that wasn't bad enough, the Greatest Rugby Player Never to Play for Ireland has a nagging sense that he has to more to contribute to the beautiful game. 
 
Now he's been offered a job coaching an underachieving school who've been waiting almost a century for their moment of glory. The challenge is to persuade a collection of jokers, chokers and forty-a-day smokers that they have what it takes to win the Leinster Schools Senior Cup. 
 
The only drawback ... the school is in Bray!

Braywatch

That risk assessor ex of Sorcha's turned out to be right - it really was the end of the world as we knew it ... 
 
See, I thought the porty was going to last forever. I certainly didn't believe the current economic blahdy blah was going to affect people like me. But as I watched the shutters fall, one by one, on all my old haunts - Renards, Mint, Guess Meanswear - I was forced to question all the truths that I once held as sacred. 
 
Sorcha's boutique was bleeding me dry, the Deportment of Social Welfare had stuck two yahoos in the penthouse next door, while Oisinn - his business empire in ruins - hadn't been seen since he porked his cor at Dublin Airport and took off for who knows where. 
 
'Isn't it wonderful?' the old man went. 'Times like these, they bring out the best in people like us.' 
 
But just when I thought the recession couldn't get any worse, an unexpected twist in the tale threatened to take away the most precious thing in the world to me.

The Oh My God Delusion

I was a rugby player with a great future behind me. A 35-year-old father-of-five with an expanding waistline, who was trying to survive the bloody battlefield we call everyday life. 
 
My son was locked in a violent turf war with a rival Love/Hate tour operator, my daughter was in love with a boy who looked like Justin Bieber and my old dear was about to walk up the aisle with a 92-year-old billionaire who thought it was still 1936. 
 
I was, like, staring down the barrel of middle age with the contentment of knowing that I was the greatest Irish rugby player who no one in Ireland had ever actually heard of. Until a chance conversation with an old Jesuit missionary made me realize that it wasn't enough. 
 
I was guided, as if by GPS, to a muddy field in - let's be honest - Ballybrack. And there I finally discovered my destiny - to keep a struggling Seapoint team in Division 2B of the All Ireland League. 
 
Or die trying.

Game of Throw-ins

The incomparable, irredeemable Ross O'Carroll-Kelly gives the ultimate low-down on the centre of the universe, South Dublin - a land of untold beauty and wealth, which boasts more yacht clubs per head of population than Monte Carlo, where girls talk like Californians, where rugby is the number one religion and where it's possible to buy a Cappuccino - at Champs Elysee's prices. The Ross Guide to South Dublin contains all you need to know about this extraordinary region, where it'll be soon be too expensive for anyone to live.

South Dublin - How to Get by on, Like, 10,000 Euro a Day

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is broke and out of love. His wife has gone to America, taking his daughter with him; his mother has become a celebrity chef on daytime television, with a particular skill for handling phallic ingredients; and his father continues to languish in Mountjoy Jail. 
 
To cap it all, Immaculata, a Nigerian girl whom Sorcha has been sponsoring by direct debit for fifteen years, has turned up on his doorstep. Things couldn't get worse. 
 
But the long road back begins high in the Pyrenees, in the tax haven of Andorra, where Ross must spread the Gospel of rugby to the strange, primitive natives who have only ever heard of soccer, skiing and duty free shopping. There, he meets Conchita, a beautiful, sultry psychoanalyst, who persuades him to look inwards and find out what it is that makes him tick. Sorry, thick.

Mr S and the Secrets of Andorra's Box

biblio.categories.code

biblio.publicationStatus

biblio.brand

biblio.workEditions.format

biblio.ageRange

biblio.series.seriesName

biblio.imprint.description

biblio.type

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Search Results

Doctor Who Target Oct 3

White Nights

Little Black Classics Box Set

Wuthering Heights

A decorative banner with a portrait of David Larbi and small illustrations of everyday sources of comfort like a cup of tea, flowers and a candle.

Showing results for: ‘Meik-Wiking’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter