Showing titles in City Life

When she’s having sex with her boss, Iris likes to have the lights on so he can see how much younger she is than his wife. She likes watching her colleagues eat unhealthy lunches at their desk while her stomach aches with emptiness. She likes coasting at work knowing she’s going to land a big promotion anyway. So why when it arrives does she find herself sprawled on her hallway floor, crying uncontrollably? Why, instead of a sense of triumph, does a crippling depression threaten to overwhelm her? Why does the support and stability of her family and friends feel so suffocating?

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

Sacrificing one night with a ruthless Mafia Don was meant to save my family. Until his brother, Vito, captured my heart and ignited a war. Vito Vitali is Sin City's ultimate catch. Rich, dangerously handsome, and a god among men. He's the forbidden temptation I can't resist, Dominating both the Vegas Strip and my every thought. One night with his devilish brother was not only to clear my family's debt, It was my chance to uncover the truth behind my father's murder. Instead, it threw me into the arms of Vito, Sparking a fierce battle for loyalty and love. As Vito and I drew closer, his ...

Ray Eke has always found peace in his job, collecting litter for the city council. Until the day he finds the brutalized, bloodless body of a girl on his round. He recognizes her immediately too. Lauren Pascoe went missing three years before. It’s also clear she hasn’t been lying on the roadside verge all this time. Someone’s clearly been holding her prisoner. Keeping her as their very special toy.

After 10 years in London, working in a stressful City firm, Liv O’Neill returns home to Sandycove, a picturesque seaside village, just outside Dublin to care for her mother after a fall. Whilst Liv reconnects with friends and family, she is amazed by Sandycove’s thriving community spirit with its artisan shops, delis and cafes - it’s not quite the place she left behind. As village life begins to creep under her skin, Liv is forced to confront the things that drove her away. Can Liv balance her past, present and future and find her own happy place?

Lexie Gallagher is starting to think she’s better off alone. Her family fell apart years ago. Her relationships all end in disaster. Is she the common denominator who causes everyone to leave - everyone but her best friend, Gabe, who whisks her away from the scene of the latest breakup? As a human resources VP, Gabe North understands people, and how to meet their needs. What Lexie’s always needed is a true-blue friend, doubly so when she’s left at the altar. Of course, he’ll be her shoulder to cry on - even though he’s wanted to be more than friends for years.

Grand Life Apartments is a middle-class apartment block surrounded by lush gardens in the coastal city of Chennai, India. It is the home of Kamala, a pious, soon-to-be retired dentist who spends her days counting down to the annual visits from her daughter who is studying in the UK. Her neighbour, Revathi, is a thirty-two-year-old engineer who is frequently reminded by her mother that she has reached her expiry date in the arranged marriage market. Jason, a British chef, has impulsively moved to India to escape his recent heartbreak in London.

Here is the preface to twelve magnificent stories, originally part of The John Cheever Audio Collection, in which John Cheever celebrates - with unequaled grace and tenderness - the deepest feelings we have.

My life was empty until my fake marriage turned real. I've dodged marriage for years, but now my inheritance is on the line. Then Erin walks into my life, a beautiful disaster. I'm a grumpy billionaire almost twice her age, and she's a sassy waitress. She was having a string of bad luck. She needs a break, and I need a wife. I see my chance and propose a fake marriage for a hefty sum. We must stay married for two years to secure the company my grandfather left me. We kissed and shared a passionate wedding night that shifted everything. My heart burns with desire when I look at her now. I ...

In the heart of Dressmakers' Alley, Madame Pauline’s sweatshop is rumoured to be a particularly unpleasant place to work. Filled with seamstresses paid a pittance who turn a blind eye to what darker activities are hidden behind locked doors. Young Winnie Brown is keen to prove her value to the Women Movement and secures a job as a seamstress to investigate the whispers of some unsavoury goings on. Her concerns are soon justified when she hears a desperate cry for help.

Johnny, aka Felix Jones, is Hollywood's go-to action star. About to film his first romantic comedy, he's looking to change his image and show he's more than just a six pack with pithy one-liners. But off screen, he’s got a reputation for other things too, and not all of them are good. Anne, aka Elizabeth Moore was, until a year ago, heiress to one of New York’s biggest business dynasties. Southern Texas is hot. And temperatures do nothing but rise when ‘Anne’ sits next to ‘Johnny’ at the bar. Add in a trip to the ER, a hairless cat, and a NASA movie set, and things get even spicier.

The vibrant stories in I’ll Give You a Reason explore race, identity, connection, and belonging in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. A young widow goes on her first date since her husband’s death and finds herself hunting a bear in the woods with a near stranger. An unhappy wife compares her mother’s love spells and rituals to her own efforts to repair her strained marriage. A self-conscious college student discovers a porn star who shares her name and becomes obsessed with her doppelgänger’s freedom and comfort with her own body.

Situated in a rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, Yeonnam-Dong's Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold. Furnished with a coffee machine, a full bookshelf, and warm lighting, it is a haven from the world for many locals. And when a notebook is left behind there, it becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbours who were once just faces in the crowd. But there is a darker story behind the notebook...

1944 год, Будапешт. Осенним вечером в небольшом трактире четыре старых приятеля – часовщик, книготорговец, столяр и хозяин заведения – проводят время за графином домашнего вина и разговорами о житейских пустяках. За стенами трактира – комендантский час и разгул нилашистского террора, внутри – островок стабильности и спокойствия. Приятели утешают себя тем, что, как люди маленькие, повлиять все равно ни на что не могут. Зато и упрекнуть себя им не в чем, их совесть чиста. Всего через сутки все четверо окажутся перед самым трудным выбором из возможных – когда сохранить человеческое достоинство можно будет только ценой жизни.

Thomas, a young German musician, is dying. Leo, a renowned Italian writer and Thomas's boyfriend, finds it impossible to mourn his loss and condemns himself to wandering the Earth, in the hope of finding the dividing line between the living and the dead. He travels through a Europe where past and present overlap, roads intersect, years merge and faces emerge - and tries in vain to bring into focus the blurred lines of their relationship.

When multi-millionaire Jacki Turner is forced to take stock of her life, she sets her daughters a challenge - in order to inherit her vast fortune, each must fulfil a task that she believes will push them to become better versions of themselves. Rose, an exhausted mother of three, must write and publish a children's picture book. Exercise-hater Mel must run the Gold Coast marathon. Isla, the eldest, must figure out who she is beyond her wealth and status, while commitment-phobic Jess must stay in a relationship for longer than three months.

The regulars at the magical Cafe Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary, secret menu time travel offering. Many patrons have reunited with old flames, made amends with estranged family, and visited loved ones. But the journey is not without risks and there are rules to follow. Travellers must have visited the cafe previously and most importantly, must return to the present in the time it takes for their coffee to go cold.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

When I agreed to work for Dimitri Orlov, I knew I was entering an entirely different world—the dangerous realm of the Russian mafia. As the son of a Bratva boss, Dimitri’s life is thrown into danger and power plays, with enemies lurking in every shadow—and now I’m caught in the crossfire. Every day by his side pulls me deeper into his dark existence, and even though I should be terrified, I can’t resist the pull between us. Even when a wealthy stranger offers me an escape—enough money to pay off my father’s debt—I can’t imagine a night with anyone but Dimitri. His fiancée...

Historia del Gordo Villarreal, hermano del famoso lugarteniente y brazo ejecutor del Cartel de Tijuana, muy reconocido en una de las ciudades más violentas de todo el país y el mundo. Apodado 6-1 Villarreal. Fue detenido en aguas internacionales junto con su patrón y compadre el Sr. Lobo Arreaga Farías.