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Strangers on the 16:02
by Priya BasilIt's a hot, crowded train. Helen Summers is on her way to see her sister Jill to tell her an awful secret. Another passenger, Kerm, is on his way back from his grandfather's funeral.They are strangers, jammed against each other in a crowded carriage. Noisy school kids fill the train - and three of them are about to cause a whole heap of trouble. In the chaos, Helen and Kerm are thrown together in a way they never expected.Catching a train? Read Strangers on the 16:02 and you'll never feel the same way about your fellow passengers again.
The Stranger Times: (The Stranger Times 1) (The Stranger Times #1)
by C. K. McDonnellSTOP PRESS! The Stranger Times wins the 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Audio Work! 'Wonderfully dark, extremely funny' proclaimed ADAM KAY, author of the No.1 bestselling This is Going to Hurt'A filmic romp with great characters, a jet-propelled plot, and a winning premise' said the GUARDIANJASON MANFORD thinks it's 'Hilarious. You'll never look at Manchester the same way again.'The Chronicles of St Mary's series author JODI TAYLOR declared 'I loved this . . . great premise - great story - great characters . . . hugely enjoyable.'And THE TIMES called it 'ripping entertainment from start to finish.'There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . . A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door - and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got problems of her own.When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.The Stranger Times is the first novel from C.K. McDonnell, the pen name of Caimh McDonnell. It combines his distinctive dark wit with his love of the weird and wonderful to deliver a joyous celebration of how truth really can be stranger than fiction.Readers love The Stranger Times:***** 'A delight from start to finish - laugh out loud funny yet with plenty of thrills.'***** 'Full of wit and humour, and knows how to keep the reader hooked.'***** 'You'll soon fall in love . . . fans of Pratchett, Gaiman, Aaronovich will be blown away.'The Stranger Times and This Charming Man shortlisted for a 'Dead Good Reader Award' - the 'The New Kid on the Block Award for Best New Series'!
A Stranger On Board: This summer’s most tense and unputdownable thriller
by Cameron WardThere's a murderer on board. And everyone is a suspect...'Fast-paced, gripping and intense - A Stranger on Board is going to make waves this summer' T.M. LOGAN'What a tense, breath-taking read! Amazing' 5***** READER REVIEW ________Welcome to The Escape.A luxury superyacht. A once-in-a lifetime opportunity to get away. Until the first passenger goes missing...Everyone on board has a part to play.The newcomer with secrets buried in her past.The unexpected guest looking for an escape. The crew looking to settle old scores. They all have something to hide.But only one of them is a killer...________READERS LOVE A STRANGER ON BOARD:'A gripping suspense that grabs from the first page . . . Fizzing with adrenaline' 5***** Reader Review'Loved every page of this - was hooked from the start!' 5***** Reader Review'A fantastic, fast-paced story with enough intrigue to keep you gripped and guessing until that final climax!' 5***** Reader Review'This book gripped me and had me hooked until the very last page' 5***** Reader Review
The Stranger in the Mirror: A Memoir of Middle Age
by Jane ShillingMiddle age took Jane Shilling by surprise. She hadn't seen it coming, and she certainly wasn't ready for it. Living a flawed, bittersweet version of the idyll she dreamed of in her twenties, in a tumbledown urban cottage by the Thames, with a son, a cat and a horse in a livery fifty miles away, she wondered whether middle age was the beginning of the end. Or was there one last great adventure to be had? The Stranger in the Mirror is one woman's attempt to understand what middle age means for her and whether, as a new generation of women turns fifty, a revolution is under way. It definitely won't reverse the signs of ageing - but it will make you laugh, it will make you think and it could just make you look in the mirror in a slightly different way...
Stranger in a Strange Land: 100 Days in the Credit Analysis Department of an Indian Bank
by Abhishek Mukherjee2017 RUNNER-UP OF THE BODLEY HEAD | FINANCIAL TIMES ESSAY PRIZEIn this sharp, witty essay, written from inside the Indian banking system, we witness the absurdities and mundanities of corruption and bureaucracy, set against a backdrop of modern urban India. In a personal battle with his moustachioed boss, Mukherjee illuminates a Kafkaesque system of compliance inherited from the British Raj and shows us how to walk away from it laughing.
The Stranger: Black Lace Classics
by Portia Da CostaOnce she had got over the initial shock of the young man’s nudity, Claudia allowed herself to breathe properly again...When Claudia finds a sexy stranger near her home she discovers that he has lost his memory along with his clothes.Having turned her back on relationships since the death of her husband, Claudia finds herself scandalising her friends by inviting the stranger into her home and into her bed...From the Sunday Times bestselling author of In Too Deep
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio: The Classic Collection Of Eerie And Fantastic Chinese Stories Of The Supernatural (Tuttle Classics Of Japanese Literature Ser.)
by Pu SonglingThe Strange Tales of Pu Songling (1640-1715) are exquisite and amusing miniatures that are regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction. With their elegant prose, witty wordplay and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this selection reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems. Here a Taoist monk conjures up a magical pear tree, a scholar recounts his previous incarnations, a woman out-foxes the fox-spirit that possesses her, a child bride gives birth to a thimble-sized baby, a ghostly city appears out of nowhere and a heartless daughter-in-law is turned into a pig. In his tales of humans coupling with shape-shifting spirits, bizarre phenomena, haunted buildings and enchanted objects, Pu Songling pushes back the boundaries of human experience and enlightens as he entertains.
Strange Music
by Laura FishIn Laura Fish's ambitious and captivating novel, three very different women struggle for freedom. While Elizabeth Barrett Browning is confined to bed, chafing against the restriction of her doctors and writing poetry and fretful letters, at her family's Jamaican estate Kaydia, the Creole housekeeper, tries to protect her daughter from their predatory master; and a recently freed black slave, Sheba, mourns the loss of her lover.As Elizabeth, a passionate abolitionist, struggles to come to terms with the source of her wealth and privilege both Sheba and Kydia fight to escape a tragic past which seems ever-present. The resulting novel is an extraordinary evocation of the dark side of the nineteenth-century that is both horrifying and ultimately redeeming.
The Strange Crime of John Boulnois
by G K ChestertonThe colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest with a sort of sudden interest.'You have heard of it?' he asked. 'Where have you heard of it?''Well, I mustn't tell you his name, of course,' said the little man simply. 'He was a penitent, you know. He had lived prosperously for about twenty years entirely on duplicate brown-paper parcels. And so, you see, when I began to suspect you, I thought of this poor chap's way of doing it at once.''Began to suspect me?' repeated the outlaw with increased intensity. 'Did you really have the gumption to suspect me just because I brought you up to this bare part of the heath?''No, no,' said Brown with an air of apology. 'You see, I suspected you when we first met. It's that little bulge up the sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet.''How in Tartarus,' cried Flambeau, 'did you ever hear of the spiked bracelet?''Oh, one's little flock, you know!' said Father Brown, arching his eyebrows rather blankly. One of detective fiction's most idiosyncratic and best-loved characters, G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown is both a diminutive, genial clergyman and a master sleuth. In these two stories involving the ingenious, unobtrusive priest, a murdered man denounces his killer with his dying breaths, and a brilliant French inspector follows a trail of gentil carnage across London.This book includes The Strange Crime of John Boulnois and The Blue Cross.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde & the Suicide Club
by Robert Louis StevensonDr Jekyll faces awful consequences when he lets his dark side run wild with a potion that changes him into the disgustingly evil Mr Hyde.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
by Robert Louis StevensonEveryone has a dark side.Dr Jekyll has discovered the ultimate drug. A chemical that can turn him into something else. Suddenly, he can unleash his deepest cruelties in the guise of the sinister Hyde. Transforming himself at will, he roams the streets of fog-bound London as his monstrous alter-ego.It seems he is master of his fate.It seems he is in complete control.But soon he will discover that his double life comes at a hideous price...
The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn & Other Stories
by John BuchanIn 'The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn' and the other stories in this collection, peculiar worlds of temptation, adventure or iniquity are perilously close at hand. Mr Hawthorn himself steps outside to allow his porridge to cool and disappears for five years and more, a Glasgow grocer is shipwrecked and ultimately worshipped as a god, a young mathematician discovers an entirely new aspect of reality and becomes terrified by what he finds there, and an ageing sinner clings grimly, weakly to a hard-won life of decency: John Buchan in each demonstrating his abilities as a gripping writer of short stories.In his introduction, Giles Foden explores Buchan's innate sense of the fascination held by sudden jeopardy and vanished comfort, and the themes of the will and fate in his work.
Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach
by Jean SpracklandStrands describes a year's worth of walking on the ultimate beach: inter-tidal and constantly turning up revelations: mermaid's purses, lugworms, sea potatoes, messages in bottles, buried cars, beached whales and a perfect cup from a Cunard liner. This is a series of meditations prompted by walking on the wild estuarial beaches of Ainsdale Sands between Blackpool and Liverpool, Strands is about what is lost and buried then discovered, about all the things you find on a beach, dead or alive, about flotsam and jetsam, about mutability and transformation - about sea-change.
Strandloper: From the author of the 2022 Booker longlisted Treacle Walker
by Alan GarnerA captivating novel by the author of the 2022 Booker Prize-longlisted Treacle WalkerBased on a true story, Strandloper tells the extraordinary tale of a nineteenth-century Englishman, William Buckley, who was convicted and transported to Australia. Refusing to accept his fate he escaped and lived among the Aborigines for thirty years.In this visionary novel, Alan Garner is as true to William the Cheshire bricklayer and William the Aboriginal spiritual leader, as William is true to his fate. The result is extraordinary.'A remarkable feat of literary imagination' Sunday Times
Straight Up: My Autobiography
by Danny DyerGrowing up in the eighties in East London was no picnic. Proper hard bastards, wannabe villains and cockney wide boys everywhere you went, all looking to make their mark. With trouble at home and more at school, Danny Dyer didn't have many options. He was a rascal, running with a tough crowd, getting himself into scrapes with the Old Bill, on the verge of becoming just another nobody. Until he started to act.It came naturally to him. He landed role after role, working with big stars, making a name for himself. And then came Human Traffic, and his career went into overdrive. Fame opened doors into the best clubs, the best booze and even better drugs. But with the highs came the lows, and as the drinks flowed, the work dried up. Shut out of an industry that didn't understand him, that heard his reputation before bothering with his talent, he had no choice but to turn it around and sort himself out. This is the real story - straight up.Funny, honest, full of swagger, and jammed full of antics and anecdotes, this memoir tears it up proper and delivers on every page.
Straight Outta Crawley: Memoirs of a Distinctly Average Human Being
by Romesh RanganathanTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERStraight Outta Crawley is the hilarious and irreverent autobiography from comedian Romesh Ranganathan.'Very, very funny. I can't recommend it highly enough.' Jonathan Ross_________________________________At the age of 9, Romesh Ranganathan delivered his first ever stand-up set at a Pontin's holiday camp talent competition, smashing the other competitor, a young girl playing the kazoo.The gig went so well that Romesh retired his comic genius for twenty-two years, hiding behind the guise of a maths teacher, before finally revealing himself again (no, not like that) at the tender age of 31. In 2010, Ranganathan staged his epic comeback gig to an almost silent room, and has since gone on to earn his place as the most in-demand overweight vegan Sri Lankan comedian in Britain.Now, for the first time, he tells the full story of how he got here. From the delights of Sri Lankan hospitality to his struggles as a child, teacher and now parent, to his adolescent flirtation with a rap career and his attempts to make it in comedy, Straight Outta Crawley is Ranganathan's hilarious and irreverent autobiography.Have you read Romesh's latest book? As Good As It Gets: Life Lessons from a Reluctant Adult is Romesh Ranganathan's hilarious and painfully accurate dissection of what it really means to grow up.
Straight Jacket
by Matthew Todd'This is an essential read for every gay person on the planet' - Elton John'A really brilliant and moving read for everybody, especially LGBTQI+ people' - Olly Alexander, star of It's A SinStraight Jacket is a revolutionary clarion call for gay men, the wider LGBT community, their friends and family. Part memoir, part ground-breaking polemic, it looks beneath the shiny facade of contemporary gay culture and asks if gay people are as happy as they could be - and if not, why not? Meticulously researched, courageous and life-affirming, Straight Jacket offers invaluable practical advice on how to overcome a range of difficult issues. It also recognizes that this is a watershed moment, a piercing wake-up-call-to-arms for the gay and wider community to acknowledge the importance of supporting all young people - and helping older people to transform their experience and finally get the lives they really want.WINNER BOYZ BEST LGBT BOOK 2017SHORTLISTED FOR THE POLARI BOOK PRIZE 2017'Insightful, inclusive, clever and engaging' - Jeremy Langmead'Utterly brilliant' - The Guardian
The Story of Wales
by Jon GowerThe Story of Wales is a vibrant portrait of 30,000 years of power, identity and politics. Revisiting major turning points in Welsh history, from its earliest settlements to the present day, Jon Gower re-examines the myths and misconceptions about this glorious country, revealing a people who have reacted with energy and invention to changing times and opportunities. It's a story of political and industrial power, economic and cultural renewal- and a nation of seemingly limitless potential. The Story of Wales is an epic account of Welsh history for a new generation.
The Story of Us
by Felicity EverettIt is 1982 and Thatcher is in Downing Street, Human League is in the charts and Dallas is on the telly.But the girls of Albacore Street are too busy to notice. For Stella, Bridget, Vinnie, Maxine and Nell, life revolves around demos, parties and no-strings sex. Against a background of Greenham Common and the Miner's Strike, however, they are about to learn that life is not quite as simple as they thought.Twenty years on and they are juggling like mad, but dropping all the balls. Their partners are straying, their daughters want plastic surgery, and their careers have stalled. Living increasingly separate lives, the tie that binds them grows thinner, until tragedy brings them back together, giving them a chance to refocus themselves on their friendship, their misdirected lives, and their survival.
The Story of the Treasure Seekers
by Edith NesbitWhen their father's business fails, the six Bastable children decide to restore the family fortunes. But although they think of many ingenious ways to do so, their well meant efforts are either more fun than profitable, or lead to trouble...
The Story of the Stone: The Warning Voice (The Story of the Stone #3)
by Cao XueqinThe Story of the Stone (c. 1760), also known by the title of The Dream of the Red Chamber, is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature.Divided into five volumes, of which The Warning Voice is the third, it charts the glory and decline of the illustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with the fortunes of the author's own family). The two main characters, Bao-yu and Dai-yu, are set against a rich tapestry of humour, realistic detail and delicate poetry, which accurately reflects the ritualized hurly-burly of Chinese family life. But over and above the novel hangs the constant reminder that there is another plane of existence - a theme which affirms the Buddhist belief in a supernatural scheme of things.
The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone #1)
by Cao XueqinThe Story of the Stone (c.1760) is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The first part of the story, The Golden Days, begins the tale of Bao-yu, a gentle young boy who prefers girls to Confucian studies, and his two cousins: Bao-chai, his parents' choice of a wife for him, and the ethereal beauty Dai-yu. Through the changing fortunes of the Jia family, this rich, magical work sets worldly events - love affairs, sibling rivalries, political intrigues, even murder - within the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion and karma determines the shape of our lives.
The Story of the Stone: The Dreamer Wakes (The Story of the Stone #5)
by Cao XueqinThe Story of the Stone (c. 1760), also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber, is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The fifth part of Cao Xueqin's magnificent saga, The Dreamer Awakes, was carefully edited and completed by Gao E some decades later. It continues the story of the changing fortunes of the Jia dynasty, focussing on Bao-yu, now married to Bao-chai, after the tragic death of his beloved Dai-yu. Against such worldly elements as death, financial ruin, marriage, decadence and corruption, his karmic journey unfolds. Like a sleepwalker through life, Bao-yu is finally awakened by a vision, which reveals to him that life itself is merely a dream, 'as moonlight mirrored in the water'.
The Story of the Stone: The Debt of Tears (The Story of the Stone #4)
by Cao XueqinThe Story of the Stone (c. 1760), also known by the title of The Dream of the Red Chamber, is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature.Divided into five volumes, of which The Debt of Tears is the fourth, it charts the glory and decline of the illustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with the fortunes of the author's own family). The two main characters, Bao-yu and Dai-yu, are set against a rich tapestry of humour, realistic detail and delicate poetry, which accurately reflects the ritualized hurly-burly of Chinese family life. But over and above the novel hangs the constant reminder that there is another plane of existence - a theme which affirms the Buddhist belief in a supernatural scheme of things.
The Story of the Stone: The Crab-Flower Club (The Story of the Stone #2)
by Cao Xueqin"The Story of the Stone" (c. 1760), also known as "The Dream of the Red Chamber", is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The fifth part of Cao Xueqin's magnificent saga, "The Dreamer Awakes", was carefully edited and completed by Gao E some decades later. It continues the story of the changing fortunes of the Jia dynasty, focussing on Bao-yu, now married to Bao-chai, after the tragic death of his beloved Dai-yu. Against such worldly elements as death, financial ruin, marriage, decadence and corruption, his karmic journey unfolds. Like a sleepwalker through life, Bao-yu is finally awakened by a vision, which reveals to him that life itself is merely a dream, 'as moonlight mirrored in the water'.