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This is a story of a London you won’t find in any guidebooks. This is a story about what it’s like to exist in the moment, about boys too eager to become men, growing up in the hidden war zones of big cities - and the girls trying to make it their own way. This is a story of reputations made and lost, of violence and vengeance - and never counting the cost. This is a story of concrete towers and blank-eyed windows, of endless nights in police stations and prison cells, of brotherhood and betrayal.

In Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith returns home to Edinburgh and the glorious cast of his own tales of the city, the residents of 44 Scotland Street, with a new set of challenges for each one of them. Bruce, the intolerably vain and perpetually deluded ex-surveyor, is about to embark on a new career as a wine merchant, while his long-suffering flatmate Pat MacGregor, set up by matchmaking Domenica Macdonald, finds herself invited to a nudist picnic in Moray Place in the pursuit of true love.

Chrissie knows how to steal sweets from the shop without getting caught, the best hiding place for hide-and-seek, the perfect wall for handstands. Now she has a new secret. It gives her a fizzing sherbet feeling in her belly. She doesn't get to feel power like this at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer. Fifteen years later, Julia is working in a fish-and-chip shop and trying to mother her five-year-old daughter, Molly. She is always worried - about affording food and school shoes, about what the other mothers think of her.

Grace has what one might call a 'full and interesting life', which is code for not married and has no kids. Her life is the envy of her straight friends, but all this time she has been waiting in secret for love to hit her so hard that she would run out of breath, like the way a wave in a rough sea bowls you over, slams you into the sand and nearly drowns you.

En Rayuela (1963), Julio Cortázar supo condensar sus obsesiones estéticas, literarias y vitales a partir de un mosaico diverso, profundo, inagotable que, a su vez, refleja de forma maravillosa lo más esencial de su época. El amor turbulento de Oliveira y La Maga, los amigos del Club de la Serpiente, las impredecibles caminatas por París -la ciudad que promete el cielo pero puede conducir al infierno-, encuentran su contracara en la aventura protagonizada por Oliveira, Talita y Traveler en Buenos Aires.

April, 1945. As the Americans storm the Buchenwald concentration camp, among the survivors are Jakob and Emmanuelle, barely more than teenagers. Each of them has lost everything and everyone in the unspeakable horrors of the war. But when they meet, they find hope and comfort in each other. They marry and build a happy, prosperous life for themselves and their new family, but their pasts cast a long shadow over the present....

I’m Johanna Morrigan, and I live in London in 1995, at the epicentre of Britpop. I might only be 19, but I’m wise enough to know that everyone around me is handling fame very, very badly. My unrequited love, John Kite, has scored an unexpected Number One album, then exploded into a Booze And Drugs HellTM - as rockstars do. And my new best friend - the maverick feminist Suzanne Banks, of The Branks - has amazing hair, but writer’s block and a rampant pill problem. So I’ve decided I should become a 'Fame Doctor'.

Sara Goldfarb is devastated by the death of her husband. She spends her days watching game shows and obsessing over appearing on television as a contestant—and her prescription diet pills only accelerate her mania. Her son, Harry, is living in the streets with his friend Tyrone and girlfriend Marion, where they spend their days selling drugs and dreaming of escape. When their heroin supply dries up, all three descend into an abyss of dependence and despair, their lives, like Sara’s, doomed by the destructive power of drugs.

One Girl Began entwines the stories of three women, separated by history but connected by the same building. For Ellen in 1909, it is a box factory where she finds work and a transformative circle of friendship when her family fall on hard times. For Frances in 1984, it is a derelict ruin, where she joins a group of squatters and is drawn into a coercive relationship. And for Amanda in 2020, it is a gentrified conversion, where she finds herself trapped in a tiny flat and grappling with new motherhood as the pandemic looms into view.

In the early years of the 20th century, influential art critic William Nasmyth travels to a remote island off the coast of Brittany to sit for a portrait painted by his old friend, the gifted but tormented artist Henry MacAlpine. Over the course of the sitting, MacAlpine recalls their years of friendship, the double-edged gift of the critic's patronage, the power he wielded over aspiring artists, and his apparent callousness in anointing the careers of some and devastating the lives of others.

Many women are not willing to go the extra mile to please their men. For most couples, inviting someone into their bedroom is totally out of the question. Any normal woman would flip if her man even thought about trying a threesome with another woman. Jasmine is that woman, and more. It’s not until her husband James pressures her into having a threesome that their once happy lives get turned into nothing but drama.

Another high-profile case forces maverick barrister Charles Holborne into the orbit of the Kray twins, the men who refuse to stay in his past and still have the power to destroy him. Will Ronnie Kray’s mental illness finally bring the Firm crashing down? And how are a disgraced Church of England priest, an ex-stripper, and a dead man connected? Charles Holborne must once again cross the most dangerous men in London in his quest for the truth.

They call them halfheads: convicted criminals, surgically mutilated and lobotomized by the State, then sent out to do menial jobs in the community so everyone will know what happens when you break the law. There are no appeals, no reprieves, and no one ever comes back. Until now. Dr Fiona Westfield, one of the most prolific serial killers Glasgow has ever seen, is waking up. Surrounded by blood and death and darkness. William Hunter has risen through the ranks since putting Westfield away; now he’s Assistant Network Director, in charge of police actions.

London, 1927. On the morning of Friday 5th February, 1927, Miss Agnes Humphries – the landlady of the attractive, if-slightly shabby, white-fronted townhouse at Number 23 Burlington Square – has a decision to make. The rooms of the second floor lie empty, since poor Mr Blandford’s unfortunate demise, God rest his soul. And Agnes must make up her mind as to who will be her new lodger. Agnes must choose between them. But what will her decision lead to? One of the choices could result in scandal, one in devastation, and one could even lead to happiness. If only she gets it right.

O avesso da pele é a história de Pedro, que, após a morte do pai, assassinado numa desastrosa abordagem policial, sai em busca de resgatar o passado da família e refazer os caminhos paternos. Com uma narrativa sensível e por vezes brutal, Jeferson Tenório traz à superfície um país marcado pelo racismo e por um sistema educacional falido, e um denso relato sobre as relações entre pais e filhos.

Cressida Collins is the queen of makeovers. With a well-placed stitch, button or seam, she can transform any frock in The Vintage Dress Shop and give customers their Cinderella moment. Like her beautifully organised workroom under the eaves, Cress's life away from the shop is just as orderly and mapped out. But when her boyfriend of fifteen years drops a bombshell, it explodes all the carefully laid plans Cress had for her future. It's going to take more than needle and thread to put Cress's own life back together. Will she ever be brave enough to say goodbye to her old dreams and start over?

Contains volumes one and two of Reincarnated as a Familiar. A young teacher finds herself reborn with only fuzzy, damaged memories of her past life. Even worse, she's stuck in the body of a cat and can't remember her own name. Summoned by a young mage girl named Lesti, she takes up the name Astria and becomes the girl's familiar.

Maria, a trans woman in her 30s, is going nowhere. She spends her aimless days working in a New York bookstore, trying to remain true to a punk ethos while drinking herself into a stupor and having a variety of listless and confusing sexual encounters. After her girlfriend cheats on her, Maria steals her car and heads for the Pacific, embarking on her version of the Great American Road Trip.

This is the 1927 book that years later inspired the movie of the same name. It is a book about criminal violence, corrupt politics and police, and illicit sex. The City of New York, from the late colonial period up to the early twentieth century, was a bustling hub of commerce, industry, and immigration. For many the city was the gateway to a new life in America, and for many others it was a place to steal a buck from their fellow New Yorkers and visitors to the city with thievery, fraud, and vice—in neighborhoods such as the Five Points, the Bowery, Hells Kitchen, and the Water Front.

When her husband suggests a romantic break, Claire feels obliged to say yes but immediately regrets it. After all that they've been through, how can one weekend in Paris save their marriage? Claire and Ronan aren't the only people on a make-or-break visit to the City of Love. There is a big-shot movie producer from Hollywood, full of regret for a life ill-lived; a student from Boston, torn between love and duty; a Ukrainian refugee struggling to protect her little sister; and an old woman from Dijon, hoping to be braver than she has ever had to be before.