Showing titles in City Life

The troubled and anxious of Tokyo are desperate to find out. They all have their problems - and they all want to believe that a temporary feline companion from a unique pet shop can help them find a solution. Or at least provide a few days' relief and distraction. But, like all their kind, the Blanket Cats are mysterious creatures with their own unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn't what they really need. Three days may not be enough to change your life. But it can be enough to change how you see it.

Thirteen-year-old Alice Truelove can’t take another day of her father’s cruelty. Better a life on the streets than being constantly blamed for her mother’s sad death, or that’s what Alice thinks as she packs up her meagre possessions. But fending for herself in the Black Country town of Wednesbury is not as easy as she expected, and it soon hits her that without help she will quickly be hungry and cold.

I’ve been kidnapped by a Mafia grump who's given me a secret baby bump. My father is the newly elected mayor and is at war with my captor. Giovanni, a casino billionaire, is chiseled out of marble and simply irresistible. The perfect specimen of an older alpha man with one problem - his heart is stone like the rest of him. While locked in chains I’m seduced and thrust into seventh heaven. I never knew sinning with the enemy could feel this good. Now with a baby growing inside me and my father refusing to negotiate, I dread that my unborn child will become the new bargaining chip. With ...

To his customers and neighbours on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger and bigger all the time.

He's a billionaire hotel tycoon. My brother's best friend. And the last man I should want. I didn't know event planner meant becoming entangled with Christopher Downing, but that's exactly what happens when I agree to organize his hotel's grand reopening gala. Even if he's been a thorn in my side since high school. Even if his arrogance should be enough to keep me far away. Even if working closely with him might be the thing that finally breaks me. Not only does Christopher know how to push all my buttons, but he's irritatingly handsome, unexpectedly great with his daughter, and keeps ...

In a city teeming with stories, how do lost souls find one another? It’s a question Meg Rhys doesn’t think she’s asking. Meg is a self-identified spinster librarian, satisfied with living with her cat, stacks of books, and her dead sister’s ghost in her New York City apartment. Then she becomes obsessed with an intriguing library patron and the haunted house he’s trying to research. The house has its own story to tell too, of love and war, of racism’s fallout and the ghost story that is gentrification, and of Brooklyn before it was Brooklyn.

Housewife Nancy never dreamed that she’d end up in Vickers steelworks factory, but when husband Bert is called up to serve, she needs to put food on the table for her two young children. Betty’s sweetheart, William, has joined the RAF Reserves, so she can’t sit around and do nothing - even if it means giving up her ambitions to study law at night school. Young Patty is relishing the excitement the war brings. But this shop-girl is going to have to grow up quickly, especially now she’s undertaking such back-breaking and dangerous work in the factory.

Abigail, a wealthy homeowner, decides to throw a lavish birthday in a hillside mansion to raise money for the city’s newest affordable housing project—and prove to her family that she’s made something worthwhile of her life. Sunny, a construction worker who sleeps in a van along the bay’s shore, is in the running for an apartment—but only if enough funds are raised at the party.

In this eye-opening short story, a tech reporter’s mistake unites two women eight thousand miles apart. One in New Jersey, one in the Philippines. Same name: Sandra Guzman. Same job: content moderators for a mega social media website. What transpires between them is a friendship that changes their perceptions of each other’s privilege and challenges the power of the very industry they work for.

Here is the preface to 12 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.

Hugo Hunter was the most celebrated gay novelist of the 20th century. He published two masterpieces, securing his place alongside the dazzling literary greats of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and rubbing shoulders with everyone from Truman Capote to James Baldwin. But after decades of fame and excess, just as New York City enters the 1980s and awakes to the coming horror of AIDS, Hugo finds himself running out of money. Out of nowhere, he receives an extraordinary lifeline: an offer from his longtime publisher. The money will solve all his problems – except for one thing. Hugo Hunter is an imposter.

Musicians Johnny “Whoops” Watson and Billy Bates and their band, Conflict, again find themselves navigating treacherous ground when the life of their manager, mentor and friend is threatened by an unknown adversary. Can they aid their friend and survive the danger while still successfully pursuing their dream of a life in music?

El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelo's bodies. The mystery of Rothko's refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrator's husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Gericault's workshop; Gustave Courbet's devilish seascapes incite viewers "to have sex, or to eat an apple"; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseau's honor.... All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrator's life in Buenos Aires.

Magazine editor Jane Avery spends her nights alone with Netflix and Oreos - until the Dress turns her loose. Suddenly she's surrendering to dark desires, and New York City has become her erotic playground. But what began as a fantasy will go too far...and her next conquest could be her last.

Sophia is determined to grow old disgracefully and refuses to be invisible. She craves fiery passion and steamy romance, not targeted ads for funeral plans. After a heart-shattering breakup, she ditches love to date a new man each week for a year. As she flirts, fumbles and sips fizz through an array of encounters, from an opera buff in a cape to an orgasm whisperer, she discovers it's never too late to rewrite your own love story, even if it's not the one you expected…

Mark is the dominant alpha with a badge and a past he can't escape. The one who left me tangled in memories after a steamy night. Now, this muscular silver fox sets my heart racing.

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence.

I’ve organized a million-dollar gala for a silver-fox Mafia boss, not knowing it’s my wedding. My best friend’s father, Carlito Marcelli, hired me to plan an exclusive event. Carlito’s presence is magnetic—intense, brooding, and impossible to ignore. Beneath his sharp suits and quiet authority lies a dangerous bad boy with a heart I shouldn’t want to claim. His dark gaze and deep voice make him irresistible, but he’s completely off-limits. On a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas, I lose my grip on professionalism and give in to the chemistry between us, letting him explore every inch...

England, 1941. Reunited briefly with her husband-to-be before he returns to fighting, Lily Baker now finds her mundane army office work dreary. But when her boss asks her to keep watch on the happenings at the depot, she quickly suspects a new weapons supplier of fraud. As she trains her sharp eye on the potential cheat, she agrees to help an unmarried colleague with an unexpected pregnancy. But when, without evidence, she is accused of being the one with child, she faces hard decisions.

I tried to take down the kingpin… now I’m carrying his baby. I had one job—seduce Luca Moretti, plant the bug, and disappear. Easy. Until I let him touch me. Until I let him ruin me. He was supposed to be a target. Cold. Untouchable. But one night in his bed changed everything. Now I’m pregnant with the most dangerous man in the city’s child… and every enemy he’s ever made wants me dead. Luca should’ve killed me when he discovered I lied. Instead, he claimed me. He locked me away in his villa like a secret. Said I was his. Promised to protect me—even if he doesn’t trust ...