Showing titles in City Life

Dramatisations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most popular works, plus bonus documentary Often described as ‘the laureate of the Jazz Age’, F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the reckless, hedonistic spirit of 1920s America in his classic novels The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned and Tender is...

I may be a shy letter carrier, but when my beloved apartment building is threatened by a mysterious and reclusive billionaire, I’m willing to push the envelope. I’m going to march right up to Malcolm Blackberg’s fortress of fierceness and deliver a cease-and-desist notice he can’t refuse. Except as soon as I get inside his gilded doors, things go sideways - I’m mistaken for Malcolm’s court-ordered emotional intelligence coach, as if I’m acting out a wacky postal carrier cosplay.

Under the neon hush of a sleepless city, a night-shift tram conductor keeps count of the lights that flicker above his route — lanterns that, according to an old myth, drink sorrow so the streets can sleep. As rain hums against glass and passengers drift in and out like ghosts of their own stories, he carries memories of loss, guilt, and love left unfinished. Each night becomes a quiet confession — a dialogue between man, machine, and the city’s secret pulse.

Robert Doughten Savile, aka "Doughty," is the son of a once-wealthy, now hard-up family from Darien, Connecticut. Doughty lives in a perpetual cloud of delusion, convinced of his own genius and status. While he has little capacity to accurately assess his own abilities or prospects, he cruises through life on the sheer force of his own sense of entitlement, dropping out of college and landing in the early '90s in New York City, a place brimming with both prosperity and desperation.

A trio of novels by the renowned author, dramatised for BBC Radio Guyanese writer E. R. Braithwaite is probably best known for his semi-autobiograpical, internationally bestselling novel To Sir with Love, which was adapted as an award-winning film starring Sidney Poitier. Collected here are...

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, winner of the Goldsmiths Prize, The Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. 'A beautiful, vigorous and achingly melancholy hymn to the common man that is as unexpected as it is daring' John Banville, Guardian A noir...

What will be will be. Belinda Marshall’s idyllic teenage life in Brittany, France, fell apart when her parents dramatically separated and her mother took her back to England. Fast forward 35 years when Belinda’s world is once again turned upside down. It’s the week before Christmas and her employer 'surprises’ Belinda by asking for her help to rejuvenate their latest investment, a run-down campsite in Brittany.

Penny is not living her best life. Her job is far from thrilling and her long-term boyfriend shows no sign of wanting to commit. She has just turned fifty and is going nowhere. Wanting a new start, Penny applies for a job as cabin crew, to find out if she can push herself out of her comfort zone...

Brought to you by Penguin. A spellbinding portrait of 90s London and three lives brought together by chance, from the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of Fire Rush *Guardian book to read 2026* London in the 90s. After years in a hostel for young homeless women, Jaycee finally has a room of her...

Isa Epley is 21 years old and wise enough to understand that the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. In her diary she chronicles her New York City adventure during the sweltering summer of 2013. By day, Isa and her best friend, Gala, sell clothes in a market stall, pinching pennies for their Bed-Stuy sublet and bodega lunches. By night, they weave from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side among a rotating cast of celebrities, artists, and bad-mannered grifters. 

A bet between the gods Hermes and Apollo leads them to grant human consciousness and language to a group of dogs overnighting at a Toronto veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of more complex thought, the pack is torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old ‘dog’ ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into their transformed world, as they become divided, as each struggles with their new existence.

Phoebe and Sam meet by chance at St Pancras station. Heading in opposite directions, both seeking their own adventures, meeting the love of their lives wasn’t part of the plan. So they make a promise: to meet again in the same place in 12 months' time if they still want to be together. But is life ever as simple as that? This is a story of what-ifs and maybes - and how one decision can change your life forever....

An unambitious 22 year-old, Darren lives in a Brooklyn brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Manhattan office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya and eating his mother's home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC's hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the 36th floor. 

Brought to you by Penguin. WINNER OF THE 2022 AKUTAGAWA PRIZE The power dynamics of the office are never more obvious than when it comes to food: mandatory lunches with the boss, the colleague who tries to curry favour with home-baked goods, discovering the discarded remnants of someone else's...

1851, England. After her merchant husband saved her from a life of prostitution, Louisa Hill was briefly happy as a housewife in Bristol. But then a constable arrives at her door. Her husband has been found hanged in a Bath hotel room, a note and a key to a property in Bath she knew nothing about the only things she has left of him. Knowing the debt collectors will arrive any moment, Louisa must leave everything she knows behind, and move to Bath. But left with no means of income, Louisa knows she has little choice but to return to her old way of life.

In the wake of first heartbreak, Nur somehow meets his perfect woman. Yasmina is bright, beautiful and, what’s most remarkable, she’s into him too. Before long, they are inseparable. But no relationship is perfect. For Yasmina, the complexities of family and cultural expectation are something she wants to navigate with Nur by her side. For Nur, the pressures of being the ‘good son’ are suffocating, and soon threaten everything he wants for his future with Yasmina. Can he find a way to offer her everything she deserves?

Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and coke. To many outsiders, these idyllic images represent the so-called easy life in Caribbean nations such as Trinidad and Tobago. However, the reality is far different for those who live there — a society where poverty and patriarchy savagely rule, and where love and revenge often go hand in hand. Written in combination of English and Trinidad creole, Pleasantview reveals the dark side of the Caribbean dream.

New to town and delusionally confident, Slide imagined himself living in a glossy building with doormen and sweeping views of the skyline. Instead he's landed in a creaking, stuffy apartment with two roommates: a loping giant who hardly leaves his room, and a weight-obsessed neurotic who keeps no fewer than forty-seven lamps throughout the house, blazing at all hours. Unwilling to accept this fate, Slide—a barber with an opaque past—embarks on a quest for the perfect apartment, pinballing through the sprawling, madcap city of Polis and its endless procession of neighborhoods.

Brought to you by Penguin. The sensational Korean bestseller For fans of WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS IN THE LIBRARY and THE ALCHEMIST Welcome to the Marigold Mind Laundry where we wash away the stains from your heart. After young Jieun accidentally misuses her powers, causing her beloved family...

"Utterly charming . . . I would read a hundred of these stories" Shelby Van Pelt, bestselling author of Remarkably Bright Creatures Is three days with a cat enough to change your life? The troubled and anxious of Tokyo are desperate to find out. They all have their problems - and they all want...