Showing titles in City Life

Disgraced in the US, maverick ad man Eliott Thurber is forced to transfer to the newly opened London offices of Parabola Media. The clash of cultures has hilarious consequences as he tries to cope with promoting a range of peculiar products, challenging clients and not to mention his disgruntled new colleagues. His first assignment is a gourmet cat food for an intensely conservative company but Eliott has his eyes on a bigger prize, American investment in the NHS. After all, "where there's pain, there's gain..."

Giappone, inizi degli anni '70. In un paese già scosso dagli effetti dei violenti moti studenteschi del '68, Ryū, Lily e il loro gruppo di amici gravitano nei dintorni della base militare americana di Yokota, a poche decine di chilometri da Tokyo, di cui frequentano alcuni dei soldati lì di stanza. Vivono una quotidianità scombinata, fatta di un uso costante e ossessionato di qualsiasi sostanza stupefacente si ritrovino a portata di mano, di sesso estremo, di piccoli furti e di qualunque altro comportamento vada a costituire un'anomalia e una sfida alle regole.

Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Still worse, when he finally manages to reach an old friend, he is told that his ex-wife's body was found in his apartment and that he’s the prime suspect.

Yumi Parr is the new project coordinator of a Manhattan design agency. Set apart from her coworkers by their race, salaries, alma maters, perfect teeth, and waistbands, Yumi bears their grunt work. After one microaggression too many, she decides to implement a change. Either senior white employees with their mouthfuls of wokespeak will comply or Yumi will learn a difficult lesson about the realities of modern business culture.

Born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds.

When multi-millionaire Jacki Turner is forced to take stock of her life, she sets her daughters a challenge - in order to inherit her vast fortune, each must fulfil a task that she believes will push them to become better versions of themselves. Rose, an exhausted mother of three, must write and publish a children's picture book. Exercise-hater Mel must run the Gold Coast marathon. Isla, the eldest, must figure out who she is beyond her wealth and status, while commitment-phobic Jess must stay in a relationship for longer than three months.

Hugo Hunter was the most celebrated gay novelist of the 20th century. He published two masterpieces, securing his place alongside the dazzling literary greats of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and rubbing shoulders with everyone from Truman Capote to James Baldwin. But after decades of fame and excess, just as New York City enters the 1980s and awakes to the coming horror of AIDS, Hugo finds himself running out of money. Out of nowhere, he receives an extraordinary lifeline: an offer from his longtime publisher. The money will solve all his problems – except for one thing. Hugo Hunter is an imposter.

Eve Laing, once the muse of an infamous painter, is now - 40 years later - an artist herself. But she feels she has sacrificed her career for her family and she resents the global success of her old college roommate, now a celebrity of the international conceptual art scene. When Eve embarks on her most ambitious work yet, she takes a wrecking ball to her comfortable life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who seems to share her single-minded creative vision.

When five New Yorkers receive an anonymous, mysterious invitation to the Fifth Avenue Story Society, they suspect they’re victims of a practical joke. No one knows who sent the invitations or why. No one has heard of the literary society. And no one is prepared to reveal their deepest secrets to a roomful of strangers. Yet curiosity and loneliness bring them back week after week to the old library. And it’s there they discover the stories of their hearts, and the kind of friendship and love that heals their souls.

Organised. Neat. Lonely. Kathy Simmonds is alone at Christmas this year, after her beloved husband John passed away a few months ago. She keeps her home spick and span, struggling with her grief for a family she has lost or lost touch with. But a chance phone call from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home opens the door to something new. She meets Scruff, a messy Jack Russell with a heart of gold who has been left for dead on the streets of London.

Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood behind and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked beauty dazzles. As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their arms, she gains entrée into a world filled with bootleg bourbon, wailing jazz, and money to burn. She thinks her biggest problem is choosing between them until the truth comes out. Her two lovers are really mobsters from rival gangs....

I may be a shy letter carrier, but when my beloved apartment building is threatened by a mysterious and reclusive billionaire, I’m willing to push the envelope. I’m going to march right up to Malcolm Blackberg’s fortress of fierceness and deliver a cease-and-desist notice he can’t refuse. Except as soon as I get inside his gilded doors, things go sideways - I’m mistaken for Malcolm’s court-ordered emotional intelligence coach, as if I’m acting out a wacky postal carrier cosplay.

Carlo and Margherita: a happily married couple in their mid-thirties. They are in love, but they also harbour desires that stray beyond the confines of their bedroom: Carlo longs for the quiet beauty of one of his students, Sofia; Margherita fantasises about her physiotherapist, Andrea. Love, with its unassuming power, ultimately pulls them from the brink, but after eight years of repressed desires and the birth of a son, when the past resurfaces in the form of books sent anonymously, will love be enough to save them?

Bailey and Cody’s desire to follow their individual dreams begins to cause confusion for the young couple. Bailey, now living in New York City, is an actress and dancer on Broadway, but soon her job is at risk. Cody continues to be a coach, mentor, and friend to a group of football players in Indiana.

Lexie Gallagher is starting to think she’s better off alone. Her family fell apart years ago. Her relationships all end in disaster. Is she the common denominator who causes everyone to leave - everyone but her best friend, Gabe, who whisks her away from the scene of the latest breakup? As a human resources VP, Gabe North understands people, and how to meet their needs. What Lexie’s always needed is a true-blue friend, doubly so when she’s left at the altar. Of course, he’ll be her shoulder to cry on - even though he’s wanted to be more than friends for years.

When the Seoul police inform Min that his girlfriend Yu-jin has taken her own life, he’s sure it can't be true. She was successful, ambitious, happy, just on the cusp of graduating from university and claiming the future she’d always dreamed of. Devastated by Yu-jin’s death, Min throws himself into finding out why she could have secretly wanted to die. Or did she? And the more he learns about her, the more he begins to doubt he ever really knew her at all.

Becca and Charlie have known each other since university. Becca and Charlies have also hated each other since university. Until now. Until Ally’s bucket list. The death of their loved one should mean they can go their separate ways and not look back. But completing the list is something neither of them can walk away from. And sometimes, those who bring out the worst in you, also bring out the very best. Over the course of ten years, Becca and Charlie’s paths collide as they deal with grief, love and life after Ally.

At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class South Brooklyn; he comes from the super-rich of upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he’s curious, bold, full of mysteries. She keeps a keen intelligence under wraps; his eccentric brilliance is all but impossible to repress. While Eva welcomes Jamie into her family’s embrace, he avoids going home; with little in common, they are drawn together in a deep friendship. As Eva goes off to an elite college and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out of school and joins the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Kingsley Lynch fell to her death from a seven-story, downtown rooftop garden. Was it an accident, suicide, or was she pushed? The two detectives assigned to the case decided she jumped. Her husband, an influential city councilor disagrees, and six weeks later Kate Gazzara is assigned to reinvestigate.

An order is issued. A population may not meet, or touch or speak to each other. They stay inside, and the reality of a few streets in a capital city emerges. An underground river is discovered; an urban grove of pomeloes emerges. The imagination reaches out, and makes sense of the world. By the sea, two men walk into a future of uncertain violence. There is time now to see the human dramas within a hundred yards; to wait for the weather to change; to understand that what lies underneath this part of the city are seasonally wet pastures and woodlands.