"Very funny and original . . . I read it in one evening and laughed much of the time" SALLY EMERSON "Consistently intelligent" FINANCIAL TIMES "This beautifully observed tableau of an increasingly feverish English can be read in one enjoyable gulp" COUNTRY LIFE Bill and Pete, best friends since school, are approaching 70 and now retired, but still meet regularly to chew the fat about sport, politics, their stagnant love lives, mutual friends and, increasingly, Bill's fractious relationship with his rebellious son Ivan. Spanning the four years from the Brexit Referendum to the end of the first Coronavirus lockdown, we watch these characters, last seen in About Time, stumble their way through chaos, mistrust, generational differences and blossoming relationships, finding new life and unexpected happiness in uncertain times.
A darkly comic foray into the world of men and women who fake their own deaths, the consultants who help them disappear, and the private investigators who’ll stop at nothing to bring them back to life. “A delightful read for anyone tantalized by the prospect of disappearing without a trace.” —Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake “Delivers all the lo-fi spy shenanigans and caught-red-handed schadenfreude you’re hoping for.” —NPR “A lively romp.” —The Boston Globe “Grim fun.” —The New York Times “Brilliant topic, absorbing book.” —The Seattle Times “The most literally escapist summer read you could hope for.” —The Paris Review Is it still possible to fake your own death in the twenty-first century? With six figures of student loan debt, Elizabeth Greenwood was tempted to find out. So off she sets on a darkly comic foray into the world of death fraud, where for $30,000 a consultant can make you disappear—but your suspicious insurance company might hire a private detective to dig up your coffin...only to find it filled with rocks. Greenwood tracks down a British man who staged a kayaking accident and then returned to live in his own house while all his neighbors thought he was dead. She takes a call from Michael Jackson (no, he’s not dead—or so her new acquaintances would have her believe), stalks message boards for people contemplating pseudocide, and gathers intel on black market morgues in the Philippines, where she may or may not obtain some fraudulent goodies of her own. Along the way, she learns that love is a much less common motive than money, and that making your death look like a drowning virtually guarantees that you’ll be caught. (Disappearing while hiking, however, is a way great to go.) Playing Dead is a charmingly bizarre investigation in the vein of Jon Ronson and Mary Roach into our all-too-human desire to escape from the lives we lead, and the men and women desperate enough to give up their lives—and their families—to start again.
Tiffany has vowed to get revenge on her half-sister and her boyfriend for killing her father Shon and her long-time lover Saliq. But first, Tiffany has to stay low until the dust settles. Tired of being slept on and disrespected, she meets Rasheeda, one of her father's former associates, who is also one of the baddest women in the streets. Rasheeda not only runs an elite escort service and a hot nightclub on the Virginia Beach strip, but she's also one of the major cocaine distributors in the Mid-Atlantic. Rasheeda takes Tiffany under her wing and introduces her to the side of the game that Shon had never revealed to his daughter. Soon Tiffany reconnects with more of her father's former associates, settles old debts and rebuilds her father's drug reign in Virginia. Her reach soon spreads to Charlotte and Memphis. But Tiffany won't be happy until she finds Kanika and Tyrell. There are people who are willing to help Tiffany seek the just revenge that she's been craving for years.
BuzzFeed's Recommended Reads in February USA Today's February Rom-Coms to Read PopSugar's Novels for a Romantic Escape The Mary Sue's Books to Help Process the COVID Pandemic BookPage's 2022 preview: Most anticipated romance Book Riot's 11 Most Anticipated New Adult Romances for Spring 22 "Reekles’s capable plotting toggles between apartments and keeps readers wondering what’s next. The result transforms the harsh realities of quarantine into rom-com enchantment." -- Publishers Weekly For the inhabitants of London Lane, a simple slip of paper underneath each of their doors is about to change their lives in a hundred different ways. URGENT!!! Due to the current situation, building management has decided to impose a seven-day quarantine on all apartment buildings on London Lane. With nowhere else to go . . . Ethan and Charlotte wonder whether absence really does make the heart grow fonder when they end up on either side of a locked door. A fierce debate over pineapple on pizza ignites a series of revelations about Zach and Serena’s four-year relationship. Liv realizes rolling with the punches is sometimes much harder than it looks after her bridesmaids’ party goes off the rails, leaving the group at each other’s throats. Isla and Danny’s new romance is put to the test as they jump ten steps ahead on the relationship timeline. And Imogen and Nate’s one-night stand is about to get six do-overs they never really asked for—not awkward at all. Through make ups, breakups, love-ins, and blowouts, friendships are tested as everyone scrambles to make it through the week unscathed. Amidst all the drama, one thing remains constant: life is full of surprises.
When Colonel Vikram Rathode of the Indian Army calls Dr Nisha Garg in New Delhi from Drass after 13 years, his carefully-constructed world of 'missions impossible' and honour stripes crumbles. Vikram has to make a choice between love and duty. And, with the Corona virus pandemic raging across the world and threatening to bear down on India, Vikram stakes his career to leave his post to pull Nisha out of the mire into which she was sinking at the isolation ward in Delhi's prestigious Safdarjung Hospital. Vikram elopes with Nisha from the hospital, braving the Covid lockdown - for he cannot go wrong in life again. He had made a mistake 13 years ago when he left her for the Army. He has to make it up to her. Entwined around a debate over whether army officials are entitled to leave on personal grounds in times of national emergencies, Lockdown Love, explores the daring frontiers of personal compulsions against the call of duty - and military commitments. A passionate and nail-biting drama that begins in the icy mountains of Drass and moves to New Delhi, ending at the army post in Udhampur. A thought-provoking and delightful novel. A true page-turner!
In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world? COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans? Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.
Lock-down A state of isolation, close proximity, or confinement. Join fourteen bestselling authors as they distract YOU from lockdown with this collection of all-new short and steamy stories. There's no escaping... love is catching. All proceeds will benefit organizations supporting families in need during this challenging time. LOVE IN LOCKDOWN is only available for a limited time, so one-click your copy before it's gone. Royalties will be split 50/50 between the two charities. Authors as not affiliated with either charity we are just trying to spread some love.
As the world is shaken by a virus, Shobhaa De – a writer who understands the human heart and how it beats – felt the need to document not just what she is going through personally but what the entire world is experiencing. And out of this need emerged many unique narratives ... Lockdown Liaisons is a collection of short stories, from the varying perspectives of both men and women – young and old, brave and cowardly, cheerful and weighed down – each story an unique offering from a writer who understands how very fragile human relationships can be as they break, suffer and are redefined under trying circumstances. Explore, read and understand the subterranean world of shifting emotions during Covid-19, through stories that will speak to you. There is a woman with a young child who discovers that she doesn’t love her husband after all, there is a migrant worker who has to make a tough choice as he gets ready to walk hundreds of uncertain kilometres homewards. And many more. But what binds these stories together is love. These are stories that show how Covid-19 is affecting the hearts of hundreds of people as they struggle to make sense of altered circumstances, of the ‘new normal’ that will emerge in a post-Covid world.
With everything that has happened in the pandemic, Rochelle and Donovan, best friend duo, have found themselves also struggling in their personal lives. Donovan's colourful sex life has slowed down, while Rochelle's love life has suffered a major blow. Even though Donovan is a serial cheater, he is completely blindsided by the realization that his wife of several years is not as demure as she performs. Now that his world is turned upside down by the shock of his life, he ponders on how to move forward. With Rochelle by his side helping him through this rough patch, Donovan reverts to his old ways and takes Rochelle with him on the wildest ride of her life. In their quest for healing, they both mask their pain in the excitement of uninhibited sex, which introduces them to a new side to their friendship and leaves them craving an alternative arrangement. As they both grapple to resolve their individual challenges, they discover something unexpected. What will be the outcome of this revelation for the pair of friends? Only time will tell.
