Meg is 24. She’s left behind her adolescent loneliness and spends her nights in the bars and clubs of East London, occasionally finding brutish men to dominate her in bed.
But it’s May 2018. England are going to win the World Cup, Love Island is the best it’s ever been, and Meg’s getting ready to enjoy the best London summer of her life.
That’s when she receives the email. It’s from Daniel, the name on the screen that consumed her at age 14. Daniel, the boy who helped forge all of Meg’s desires and wants. Daniel, who disappeared one day and ruined everything. Daniel, who would now like to meet.
This is My Idea of Fun is a charged novel is about fun and desire, about the MSN era and the life-changing potency of meeting strangers online.
A captivating, funny and devastatingly tender reimagining of Little Women.
‘I know who I am, I’m a Sharma sister. A necessary one. One that is loved.’
Kav has always known that she’s destined for more. She wants to tell the stories that matter but, instead, she’s stuck working on a reality TV show – until she meets Luca, the man who slots so effortlessly into her life and pushes her to chase her dreams.
Meanwhile, Mally – the ambitious one – is quickly climbing the corporate ladder. She’s set on her success, but what does that mean if she has no one to share it with?
Married to her childhood sweetheart, Ori has everything you could ever dream of; though she’s hiding a secret that could unravel everything she’s built forever.
Then there’s Trina, the quiet dreamer struck by wanderlust, knitting the family together. Until she finds herself facing a terrifying diagnosis that leaves everyone reeling.
Back in the hospital where their father died, each of the sisters are left struggling to find their place in the world; navigating grief, heartbreak and loneliness, and learning to fall in love with life again.
Heartbreaking, funny and achingly relatable, The Sharma Sisters is an irresistibly fresh coming-of-age story brimming with authenticity, love and sisterhood.
Four of them went to the hotel
Four students travel to Ravencliffe, an eerie abandoned hotel perched on steep cliffs on the Welsh coast. After a series of unexplained accidents, only three of them leave. The fourth, Leo, disappears, and is never seen again.
Only three of them came back
A decade on, the friends have lost contact. Oscar is fame-hungry, making public appearances and selling his story. Richard sank into alcoholism and is only just recovering. Bex just wants to forget – until one last opportunity to go back offers the chance to find out what really happened to Leo.
Ten years later, they return one last time
But as soon as they get to the hotel things start going wrong again. Objects mysteriously disappear and reappear. Accidents happen. And Bex realises that her former friends know far more than they are letting on about the true events at Ravencliffe that night…
Though young in years, Jane Austen has long had the sharp wit and shrewd insight to observe what others do not.
So when the body of a milliner is shockingly discovered during a lavish ball at Sir John Harcourt’s estate, she sees how blind polite society can be to the truth.
With the death pronounced a murder and Jane’s brother Georgy swiftly accused of the deed, the injustice of it strikes close to home.
Jane writes stories filled with secrets exposed, motives questioned, and manners deceiving. Now, she must turn her powers of observation to detection, to unmask the true murderer.
For if she fails, her beloved brother will face the ultimate punishment – the hangman’s noose . . .
Welcome to Hwawoldang, the pastry shop where every delicious bite comes with satisfaction for both the mouth and the soul . . .
When twenty-seven-year-old Yeon-hwa loses her grandmother, the proprietor of Hwawoldang, she honours her final wish: to keep the shop open for one more month, between 10pm and midnight.
Yeon-hwa hopes to learn the secrets behind Hwawoldang’s desserts, and the enigmatic woman who made them.
But when one of the shop’s most loyal patrons arrives, Yeon-hwa quickly discovers Hwawoldang is no ordinary pastry shop, as its customers are not entirely alive . . .
With each new visitor, Yeon-hwa is drawn deep into their memories. The true calling of the pastry shop is to shepherd her customers into the afterlife, but can Yeon-hwa continue her grandmother’s legacy? And will the task bring her closer to the woman she barely knew?
Evocative, nourishing and cosy, A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang is an ode to lost souls finding home, in this life and beyond.
A gripping new journey through ancient history, uncovering the origins of homophobia and the untold stories of those who dared to love.
In the early days of ancient Greece, queer love was celebrated. The most famous warrior in antiquity loved another man, the poet whose lyrics were memorised by philosophers and kings sang of her desire for women. Men could swear oaths of undying love and live out the rest of their lives together in peace. What fragments survive of this ancient world all tell us one thing: it was not a sin to be queer.
In this extraordinary book, Harry Tanner sets out on a journey to discover the origins of homophobia in the West. He follows the traces of this sinister idea as it swept across the ancient Mediterranean. Wherever he discovers the roots of homophobia taking hold, Tanner finds a confluence of crises mirrored across the centuries. Inequality, fear and an obsession with self-control – this is how societies turn on their queer citizens, time and time again, since the dawn of history.
This is a powerful story that draws on the rich world of the ancients to reveal how homophobia infected Western religion and ideology – the consequences of which we are still living with today – and to that end how we can move forward and resist homophobia in the future.
Joel Foster is a hapless twenty-something. His girlfriend, Beth Lewis, would likely have been a hapless twenty-something, too, had she not been obliterated by a very large cement truck. Some time after Beth’s tragic death, Joel is still trying to juggle grief with the world of modern dating. And while he still feels like a widower, he has to find a new love before three years is up.
The catch? Just as Joel thinks he’s finally falling for someone, he starts getting haunted by Beth.
It’s not a ghost story, it’s a love story. With ghosts.
On 2 June 1984 the British-registered tall ship Marques left Bermuda Harbour, cheered on by watching crowds. With other sailing vessels from across the world, the barque was heading for Halifax, Nova Scotia, having won the first leg of the internationally famous Tall Ships Race. As they sailed out to sea, there was not a cloud in the sky. But by midnight the weather had changed and the seas became violent.
Just 80 miles from Bermuda, things took a turn for the worse – the ship lurched and water poured in through the wide-open hatches. In 40 seconds the Marques had vanished. Of the 28 people on board, 19 were lost: crew and passengers, hailing from Britain, Canada, the US and the Caribbean. Among the missing was Shirley Cooklin’s 18-year-old son Ben.
Driven to seek answers, Shirley finds only dead ends and denials. She begins to wonder – what if this was not a freak accident caused by the wind? What if the tragedy was the result of a gross act of negligence? And why is the Thatcher government so interested in the incident?
Alone in her new house and haunted by old secrets, Sadie has felt adrift in LA – until a chance encounter with a magnetic stranger leads her to the most exclusive wellness class in the city.
At first she’s sceptical, but the group – and the attention of its leader, Lilith – is transformative… and completely addictive.
No one in Sadie’s life understands that Deep Flow isn’t a cult, but a community. Finally, a place where she might belong.
But when the sisterhood is jeopardised, Sadie’s desire to prove her loyalty becomes all-consuming, putting her carefully constructed life at risk.
What would she sacrifice to protect the secrets of her past?
Cast in a cult film at the age of eighteen, Jenny Evans was on the cusp of something extraordinary; a route out of her hometown, a future of promise. But the new world she was exploring crumbled around her when she was assaulted at a party by a high-profile figure.
Jenny reported this crime to the police when she became aware of other allegations of violence against The Famous Man. Shortly after doing so, details of what she had experienced were printed in a tabloid newspaper.
Jenny trained as a journalist herself to try to find out how this happened. In the aftermath of devastation, she picked up the pieces and fought back against the systems that caused her harm. Her investigation helped expose the jaw-dropping press abuse and police corruption we now call the ‘phone-hacking scandal’.
Now training as a lawyer, Jenny is still working to fight for justice in a system that so horrifically fails its victims.
