Showing titles in Literature & Fiction

Just along the coast from Penstowan, the local festival has filled the area. Former Met police officer Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker has agreed to step in and help run the Pie Hard food truck, along with her rather reluctant fiancé, DCI Nathan Withers. As they prepare for a weekend of camping and being elbow deep in shortcrust pastry, Jodie hadn’t bargained on witnessing a fight between members of the lead band. But when the body of one of the band members is found not far from the campsite, Jodie finds it hard to believe it was an accident. Especially when the other members had so much to gain…

In God Is My Broker, Buckley aims his sharp humor at the self-help gurus; and the likes of Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, and Deepak Chopra had better watch out. Down to their last $304, the abbots in this story make a bunch of money playing the stock market - and then get carried away in today's commercialism and self-help principles when they begin to market their homemade wine. From redecorating their decrepit digs in the "peasant chic" style to outrageous television commercials, these monks will stop at nothing to get to the top of the wine business!

A plucky farm boy will find more than he's bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there's the Dark Lord, who wishes for the boy's untimely death...and also very fine cheese. Then there's a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, and the Dread Necromancer Steve....

You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright, as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of Obvious Child. But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility.

The first novel in a charming new series, award-winning author Jane Myers Perrine's The Welcome Committee of Butternut Creek is an amusing, warmhearted look at a small town's reception of its newly ordained minister. The mission of committee members Miss Birdie and Mercedes is to educate Adam Jordan on how things should be done in town. But soon the ladies decide on a new goal - to find him a wife.

When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline 'YOUNG MAN MISSING', he realises he saw the youth just a few days earlier - en route to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen. Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he's pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.

Two necromancers, a dwarf kingdom, and a sky city - it sounds like a prelude to mayhem, and given Timmy’s luck, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. To keep his castle and earn his pardon, Timmy has his work cut out for him. Whether it’s rescuing princesses, crushing hordes of goblins, or dealing with eldritch abominations, Timmy and the gang are there to save the day - and rob the occasional crime lord. But saving the day isn’t always easy.

Grange, Florida, is famous for its miracles - the weeping fiberglass Madonna, the Road-Stain Jesus, the stigmata man. And now it has JoLayne Lucks, unlikely winner of the state lottery. Unfortunately, JoLayne's winning ticket isn't the only one. The other belongs to Bodean Gazzer and his raunchy sidekick, Chub, who believe they're entitled to the whole $28 million jackpot. And they need it quickly, to start their own underground militia before NATO troops invade America. But JoLayne Lucks has her own plans for the Lotto money - an Eden-like forest in Grange must be saved from strip-malling.

When Daphne arrives in Berlin, the last thing she expects is to run into more drama than she left behind. Of course, she knew she'd need to do the usual: make friends, acquire lovers, grapple with German and a whole new way of life. She even expected the long nights gorging alone on family-sized jars of Nutella, and the pitfalls of online dating in another language. The paranoia, the second-guessing of her every choice, the covert behaviors? Probably come with the territory. But one night, when Daphne is alone in her apartment, something strange, unnerving and entirely unexpected intervenes.

In 1994, Christopher Buckley published one of the most acclaimed and successful comic novels of the decade, Thank You for Smoking. Now, Buckley returns to the strange land of Washington, DC, in Little Green Men, a millennial comedy of manners about aliens and pundits...and how much they have in common. The reluctant hero of this hilarious novel is John Oliver Banion, a stuffy Washington talk-show host, whose privileged life is thrown into upheaval when aliens abduct him from his exclusive country-club golf course.

By day, Mark Wojcik can be found elbow-deep in engine grease, making cars and trucks safe for the highway. By night, he can be found traipsing through the wilds of Pennsylvania, making the world safe for humans. He's more than just a mechanic, he's a New Templar Knight. He travels the backroads and byways fighting weresquonks, ningen, selkies, ghosts, and . . . gnomes? Is that gnome . . . naked? (Sigh.) Season One collects the first four novellas in the Spells, Salt, & Steel series: Spells, Salt, & Steel; Open Season; Deep Trouble; and Close Encounters.

Mallory Devereaux is known throughout the town of Royal Flush, Louisiana, as a walking disaster, and her luck just got worse. She needs to raise $10,000 in one week to keep the IRS from seizing her adoptive father’s business, where she works as the demolition foreman. When the opportunity to cool cards at her uncle’s casino comes up, Mallory hopes her luck is changing. But when she realizes her uncle has assembled a tournament of criminals, she wonders what she’s stepped in the middle of.

For almost four decades Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture - from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of nine novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.

FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare is known for her fierce dedication and discipline on the job, chasing down the world’s most wanted criminals and putting them behind bars. Her boss thinks she is tenacious and ambitious; her friends think she is tough, stubborn, and maybe even a bit obsessed. And while Kate has made quite a name for herself for the past five years the only name she’s cared about is Nicolas Fox - an international crook she wants in more ways than one.

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida—war photographer, gambler, and closet queen—has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali.

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.

Alexis Spencer thinks she has it all figured out. Even when life gets her down, she’s never too far away from another inspirational quote to rationalize her failures and ignore all her problems. Her boyfriend breaks it off, she loses her job, her closest friends are a distant memory, and her college debt is still as high as the day she left. In typical fashion, she blames the world for her problems, including her 18-year-old self who should have just tried harder and put their life on a better track.

From the outside, Harold is an average seven-year-old third grader growing up in the 1960s. Bored by school. Crushing on a girl. Likes movies and baseball—especially the hometown Boston Red Sox. Enjoys spending time with his grandfather. But inside Harold’s mind, things are a lot more complex and unusual. His thoughts come to him as birds flying through a small rectangle in the middle of his brain. He visits an outdoor cafe on the moon and is invited aboard a spaceship by famed astronomer Carl Sagan.

In 1914 collisions between motor cars and horse-drawn carriages are an everyday occurrence on the streets of Paterson, New Jersey. But when an out-of-control driver smashes into a buggy driven by Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp, their lives change forever. Constance, the oldest, demands payment for the damages but quickly realizes that she is dealing with a madman.

Fixie Farr has always lived by her father’s motto: “Family first.” And since her dad passed away, leaving his charming housewares store in the hands of his wife and children, Fixie spends all her time picking up the slack from her siblings instead of striking out on her own. The way Fixie sees it, if she doesn’t take care of her father’s legacy, who will?