A heartening and life-affirming novel about a single mother learning to make a bigger life, and the power of human connection to grow our worlds. Delphine Jones’s world is about to get much bigger...if only she’d let it. Devoted single mother Delphine Jones is an expert at putting her head down and moving through life one day at a time. Since getting pregnant at sixteen, her circle has only ever included her now eleven-year-old daughter and best friend, Em, and her complicated father whom they live with. But when an opportunity for her to finish school presents itself, Delphine finally does something she hasn’t done in years: she takes a chance on herself. Sometimes all it takes is one chance. As Delphine rediscovers her passions and her belief in herself, her circle expands to include an Oscar-winning actress turned teacher, an Eritrean couple running a local café-cum-jazz club, an elderly French widow looking to converse, and a handsome musician who awakens something in Delphine that she thought had been long buried. But as Delphine’s eyes and heart start to open, she must also face questions she’s stonewalled for more than a decade, questions about Em’s father. Is she brave enough?
A heartening and life-affirming novel about a single mother learning to make a bigger life, and the power of human connection to grow our worlds. Delphine Jones’s world is about to get much bigger...if only she’d let it. Devoted single mother Delphine Jones is an expert at putting her head down and moving through life one day at a time. Since getting pregnant at sixteen, her circle has only ever included her now eleven-year-old daughter and best friend, Em, and her complicated father whom they live with. But when an opportunity for her to finish school presents itself, Delphine finally does something she hasn’t done in years: she takes a chance on herself. Sometimes all it takes is one chance. As Delphine rediscovers her passions and her belief in herself, her circle expands to include an Oscar-winning actress turned teacher, an Eritrean couple running a local café-cum-jazz club, an elderly French widow looking to converse, and a handsome musician who awakens something in Delphine that she thought had been long buried. But as Delphine’s eyes and heart start to open, she must also face questions she’s stonewalled for more than a decade, questions about Em’s father. Is she brave enough?
A hilarious and empowering perimenopausal Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, about Clover Hendry, 46, and the day she decides to stop keeping the plates spinning, say F@#! it all, and finally get hers. Today is not the day to mess with Clover Hendry. Clover hasn’t said “No” a day in her life. Until today. Normally a woman who tips her hairdresser even when the cut is hideous, is endlessly patient with her horrendous mother, and says yes every time her boss asks her to work late—today, things are going to be very different. Because Clover is taking the day off. Today, she’s going to do and say whatever she likes, even if it means her whole life unravels. What made Clover change her ways? Why doesn’t she care anymore? There’s more to this day than meets the eye. Clover Hendry's Day Off is a joyful, raging, galvanizing story about putting life on pause, pleasing yourself, and getting your own back. Whatever it takes. Because when Clover stops caring, she can start living.
Beth Morrey's brand new, joyful and uplifting novel, LUCKY DAY, is available to pre-order now *The Sunday Times bestseller* Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find where you truly belong... Seventy-nine is too late for a second chance. Isn't it? Missy Carmichael is prickly, stubborn - and terribly lonely. Until a chance encounter in the park with two very different women opens the door to something new. Something wonderful. Missy was used to her small, solitary existence, listening to her footsteps echoing around the empty house, the tick-tick-tick of the watching clock. After all, she had made her life her way. Now another life is beckoning to Missy - if she's brave enough... 'A touching, deftly written debut that celebrates community and kindness' Sunday Times 'Moving and optimistic... will delight readers right up to the very last page' Stylist 'Bittersweet, tender, thoughtful and uplifting . . . I loved it' Nina Stibbe A Sunday Times #6 hardback bestseller w/e 15th Feb
Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160 and a good friend called Lucas, who gets her through the school day. At home her father cries in secret in the bathroom and her mother hasn't been out of the house properly for years. But Lou is about to change her life - and that of her parents - for good, all because of a school project she decides to do about the homeless. Through the project Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou cannot bear that No is still on the streets when she goes back home - even if it is to a home that is saddened and desolate. So she asks her parents if No can come to live with them. To her astonishment, her parents - eventually - agree. No's presence forces Lou and her parents to finally face the sadness that has enveloped them. But No has disruptive as well as positive effects. Can this shaky newfound family continue to live together? A tense, brilliant novel tackling the true meaning of home and homelessness.
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | A New York Times bestseller! “Utterly addictive.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train “Hooks you from the very first page and will have you racing to get to the end.”—Good Morning America A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family—and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for—and everything she feared Ashley Audrain's second novel, The Whispers, is on sale now Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter—she doesn't behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son Sam is born—and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth. For fans of Verity and We Need to talk about Kevin, The The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.
From the bestselling author of Great Circle—for years Joan has been trying to forget her past, to find peace and satisfaction in her role as wife and mother. Few in her drowsy California suburb know her thrilling history: as a young American ballerina in Paris, she fell into a doomed, passionate romance with Soviet dance superstar Arslan Rusakov. After playing a leading role in his celebrated defection, Joan bowed out of the spotlight for good, heartbroken by Arslan and humbled by her own modest career. But when her son turns out to be a ballet prodigy, Joan is pulled back into a world she thought she'd left behind—a world of dangerous secrets, of Arslan, and of longing for what will always be just out of reach. “The inner lives of [Shipstead’s] characters feel as real and immediate as the shifting settings they inhabit: still-gritty mid-1970s Manhattan, shabbily elegant Paris, the sunbaked suburban sprawl of Southern California.” —Entertainment Weekly
A mysterious Iraq war veteran with a horribly scarred face…A disturbed young man in a strange mountain town…A masked preacher with a terrible secret…Amidst a firestorm of violence, betrayal and horror, their three worlds will eventually collide in an old mining shack buried deep in the mountains. Corrosion, the shattering debut novel by Jon Bassoff, is equal parts Jim Thompson, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, and an unforgettable journey into the underbelly of crime and passion. Drawn from the darkest corners of the human experience, it is sure to haunt readers for years to come. Praise for CORROSION: “Bassoff confronts directly the traumatic stress disorder of our world today and tears off its mask, even if the face must follow.” —New York Magazine “Corrosion is a beautifully bleak noir novel that stretches the boundaries of the genre to its breaking point. A virtuoso performance by the terrific Jon Bassoff.” —Jason Starr, international bestselling author of The Craving “Like some unholy spawn of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God and Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All the Time, Corrosion offers pungent writing, a cast of irresistibly damaged characters, and a narrative that’s as twisted and audacious as any I have read in a long while. A dark gem.” —Roger Smith, author of Dust Devils “Sharp, original, fierce, a real gut-ripper. Corrosion is one of the most startlingly original and unsettling novels I’ve read in ages. It ramps your pulse, it claws at your sweet spot. Bassoff has a career ahead of him brightly lit by a very bad star.” —Tom Piccirilli, author of the Edgar Award-nominated novel The Cold Spot “Imagine Chuck Palahniuk filtered through Tarantino speak, blended with an acidic Jim Thompson and a book that cries out to be filmed by David Lynch, then you have a flavor of Corrosion. The debut novel from the unique Jon Bassoff begins a whole new genre: Corrosive Noir.” —Ken Bruen, Shamus Award-winning author of The Guards “Jon Bassoff gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Hell on earth’ in his debut novel, Corrosion. It’s a harrowing page-turning tale of lost, misplaced, and mangled identity that barrels its way to breakdowns and showdowns of literal and figurative biblical proportions.” —Lynn Kostoff, author of Late Rain “Jon Bassoff’s stream of conscious novel sports Faulkner-like as this dark tale is told in first person timelines. It will grip and engage and ultimately leave you shaken to the core. Not for the tenderhearted… not no way, not no how. Corrosion is the tale of a man on a mission from God… or is it the Devil? Dare to find out.” —Charlie Stella, author of Johnny Porno “Talk about a book starting one way and then springing something on you…[Bassoff’s Corrosion] is dark and funny and sick, a book as much about identity as it is about crime.” —Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series “Corrosion is a fever dream, a lucid nightmare. It is at once poetic and brutal; hypnotic and vicious; empathetic and heartless. It is the most effective kind of horror—the kind you believe. Reading it is a deeply uncomfortable experience in the best possible way.” —Marcus Sakey, author of The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes “An archetypal, nightmare journey down a hall of mirrors. Corrosion will burn your eyeballs. Keeps you reading relentlessly to the end.” —Jonathan Woods, author of A Death in Mexico
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A profound and singular story about a young woman searching for her place in the world, from one of America’s most original voices—the irresistible story of one teenager’s reckoning with society at large and her search for a personal utopia. “Effulgent and clever.... What fun.” —The New York Times Bran’s Southern California upbringing is anything but traditional. After her mother joins a Buddhist colony, Bran is raised by her “common-law stepfather” on Bourdon Farms—a plant nursery that doubles as a cover for a biker gang. She spends her days tending plants, slogging through high school, and imagining what life could be if she had been born to a different family. And then she meets Peter, a beautiful, troubled, and charming train wreck of a college student from the East Coast, who launches his teaching career by initiating her into the world of literature and aesthetics. As the two begin a volatile and ostensibly doomed long-distance relationship, Bran searches for meaning in her own surroundings—attending disastrous dance recitals, house-sitting for strangers, and writing scripts for student films. She knows how to survive, but her happiness depends on learning to call the shots. Exceedingly rich, ecstatically dark, and delivered with masterful humor, Avalon is a poignant portrait of a young woman who, against all odds, is determined to find her place in the world and find clarity in its remote corners.
Cass has stumbled on something that might be an entirely different type of physics, and she's travelled three hundred and fifty light-years to Mimosa Station, a remote experimental facility, to test her theory. The novo-vacuum she creates is predicted to begin decaying the instant it's created, but even so short-lived a microscopic speck could shed new light on the origins of the universe. But instead of decaying, Cass's novo-vacuum is wildly successful and begins expanding, slowly but inexorably taking over the universe ... SCHILD'S LADDER: a wild ride through the far future by one of the world's most respected and acclaimed writers.
