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The Park Bench Test: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance
The Park Bench Test: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance
Sarah Lefebve
¥51.50
~ “Can you still see yourself sitting on a park bench, holding hands with that person when they are old and wrinkly? That’s the question you have to ask yourself…” Aspiring journalist Becky loves her boyfriend Alex, but when her best friend Katie gets engaged, she’s left wondering if Alex really is her Mr Right. Their other best friend Emma doesn’t believe in ‘the One’– she’s just looking for a man who will stick around longer than her dad did. As they come together to plan Katie’s big day, navigating the chaos of wedding dress shopping, seating plans, and the dreaded singles table, the girls begin to question their own relationships; and the possibility of settling for anything less than butterflies… Debut author Sarah Lefebve asked her own friends and family how they knew they had found the elusive Mr Right and then turned their honest – and often surprising – answers into this charming, emotional and downright funny romance.
Snow in May
Snow in May
Kseniya Melnik
¥66.22
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE The stories of Kseniya Melnik’s debut collection are small-town miracles, each a miniature epic. Their focus is Magadan, a town in the Northern Far East of Russia, and the unvisited lives of its inhabitants and emigrants – schoolchildren, doctors, teachers, mothers, daughters. Some characters span several stories. Some of their stories span decades and continents. The measure of their telling, though, is invariably the measure of everyday existence. Their dramas, too, are made of quotidian stuff, each life with its own sly or suppressed tragedies, and its brief, often unexpected ecstasies. Kseniya Melnik’s sensibility is sober and humorous; her stories are moving and funny. In their patient, deliberate unfolding – at once surprising and convincing – and in the fitness of their details – vital because they are suggestive – we sense, above all, an assurance that is dazzling.
The Islands of Chaldea
The Islands of Chaldea
Diana Wynne Jones
¥51.50
The brand new and final novel from the magical pen of ‘the Godmother of Fantasy’, Diana Wynne Jones; co-authored with her sister Ursula Jones. Now in paperback. How are you supposed to turn into a Wise Woman if your powers just won’t show up? Aileen is convinced she’ll never become as magical as her Aunt Beck. Then one day her aunt is set a seemingly impossible mission. She must go to the island of Logra and rescue the kidnapped High Prince from the enemy, and Aileen must go with her. They set off along with Ivar, Aileen’s spoilt cousin, and Ogo his clophopping servant, recruiting on their way a huge and elusive cat, a monk with an uncannily wise parrot, and a boy inventor who keeps a pet lizard up his sleeve. But this is no band of mighty warriors, and the evil Lograns and their wizards have blocked their way with an invisible barrier in the sea. Aileen doubts that even with all the magic in the Islands of Chaldea, including Aunt Beck’s, they will be able to penetrate it. But Aileen is about to discover that she could be more important to the mission than she realises. Perhaps it is her, above all, who is being drawn to Logra, and for a very special purpose…
Last Christmas
Last Christmas
Julia Williams
¥51.50
It’s the most wonderful time of year. Isn’t it? Discover the true spirit of Christmas with this seasonal treat for fans of Love, Actually and The Holiday. Discover the true spirit of Christmas… Catherine Tinsall is dreading Christmas. As the 'Happy Homemaker' she is an online sensation, but the reality couldn't be more different. With Catherine's marriage in tatters, her children running wild and her mother increasingly forgetful, seasonal cheer is running low. Husband Noel also hides a secret: he's facing the axe at work. Until he chances upon the village of Hope Christmas, deep in the Shropshire countryside, which could be the second chance he's searching for. If he can save it from the developers… In Hope Christmas itself, schoolteacher Marianne Moore is trying to heal her battered heart. But Christmas is a time for families, and memories of what she's lost haunt her at every turn. Meanwhile, Gabriel North faces a lonely Christmas but hides his sadness for the sake of his son. Will his wife ever come home? Or does love lie elsewhere? All four need a Christmas miracle. And it might just happen - courtesy of a mysterious guardian angel … Forced to reassess their lives, will Catherine, Noel, Marianne and Gabriel discover what the meaning of Christmas really is? An irresistible gift of a tale that will warm the hearts of Christmas-lovers and Scrooges alike…
Lost Days (Emily the Strange)
Lost Days (Emily the Strange)
Rob Reger
¥66.22
Emily is not your average thirteen year-old girl. She wears the same black dress every day. She loves maths and science. Her best friends are four black cats and she's into old rock and punk music. Emily is anything but typical and so is this exciting new series of novels about her life. 13 elements you will find in the first Emily the Strange novel: ? Mystery ? A beautiful golem ? Souped-up slingshots ? Four black cats ? Amnesia ?Calamity Poker ? Angry ponies ? A shady truant officer ? Top-13 lists ? A sandstorm generator ? Doppelgangers ? A secret mission ?Earwigs
Vulgar Things
Vulgar Things
Lee Rourke
¥66.22
The second novel from Lee Rourke, author of the cult hit ‘The Canal’. Jon Michaels – a divorced, disaffected and fatigued editor living a nonde* life in North London – wakes one morning to a phone call informing him that his uncle has been found dead in his caravan on Canvey Island. Dismissed from his job only the day before and hung-over, Jon reluctantly agrees to sort through his uncle’s belongings and clear out the caravan. What follows is a quixotic week on Canvey as Jon, led on by desire and delusion, purposeful but increasingly disorientated, unfolds a disturbing secret, ever more enchanted by the island – its landscape and its atmosphere. Haunted and haunting, ‘Vulgar Things’ is part mystery, part romance, part odyssey: a novel in which the menial entrances and the banal compels.
The Lad Of The Gad
The Lad Of The Gad
Alan Garner
¥63.77
In "The Lad of the Gad", Alan Garner has reworked five stories from the Gaelic layers of British folktale. Folk and fairy tales have not always been relegated to children, and older readers will appreciate Garner's ability to give these stories a new vitality for our time. "Mr Garner's renderings are alive, vigorous and occasionally poetic, singing of sea and islands and the wide wild spaces of north and west! He has brought us five fine tales and had told them so that they fall well on the ear, hold the attention and stir the imagination." - "The Literary Review".
S is for Space
S is for Space
Ray Bradbury
¥72.99
One of Ray Bradbury’s classic short story collections, available in ebook for the first time. S IS FOR SPACE is a spine-tingling short story collection from one of the genre’s master storytellers. Science fiction, fantasy, small town life, and small town people are the materials from which Ray Bradbury weaves his unique and magical stories of the natural and supernatural, the past, the present , and the future. This book contains sixteen of Bradbury's most popular science fiction stories.
The Lawman of Silver Creek: (A Novella) (The Men of Fir Mountain)
The Lawman of Silver Creek: (A Novella) (The Men of Fir Mountain)
Lori Connelly
¥18.65
"If you want an emotional romantic adventure to nineteenth century frontier America this is for you." Jane Hunt Reviews For fans of Diana Palmer and Linda Lael Miller comes a new novella in The Men of Fir Mountain series. As sheriff of Silver Creek, Matthew Marston's job is to look after his town. But when he fails to protect the most important person in his life, Claire, from an attack, Matt feels as though he will never be able to forgive himself. Her husband-to-be's newly found overprotectiveness drives the headstrong Claire from his arms. She can't see a future with a man who won't allow her to follow her dreams. In a small town where everybody knows your name and your business, it's impossible for the pair to stay apart, especially as Claire finds that she can't completely turn her back on the lawman that she loves.
Coffin Underground
Coffin Underground
Gwendoline Butler
¥26.88
Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent John Coffin investigates a spate of killings at the notoriously evil No.22 Church Row. But he suspects there’s more to it than just a haunted house…From one of the most universally praised English crime writers, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie.
With a Zero at its Heart
With a Zero at its Heart
Charles Lambert
¥56.90
24 themed chapters. Each with 10 numbered paragraphs. Each paragraph with precisely 120 words. The sum of a life. In his beautiful and haunting new book, Charles Lambert explores the fragmentary nature of memory, how the piecing together of short recollections can reveal a greater narrative. Through chapters tackling elemental themes such as Sex, Death, and Money, Lambert assembles the narrator’s moving life story. Executed with all the grace and finesse of his previous acclaimed work, this is an incredible artistic achievement, breathtaking in its simplicity yet awe-inspiring in its scope. With cover and text design by the renowned designer Vaughan Oliver, With a Zero at its Heart is as beautiful to look at as it is to read.
A Strong Hand to Hold
A Strong Hand to Hold
Anne Bennett
¥53.76
A heartbreaking tale of love and loss in a time of war, perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Annie Groves. Jenny O’Leary is devastated one morning in 1940 when she receives a telegram giving her the dreadful news that one of her brothers has been killed in action. Grief threatens to engulf her, but as an ARP warden, tending to Birmingham’s injured after the nightly raids, she is well-used to the suffering that thousands are enduring every day. Linda Prosser is just twelve years old and desperately close to her mother and two tiny brothers. As the bombs drop around them one fateful night, Linda takes a risk which has disastrous consequences. Terrified, and buried beneath a mass of debris after her home takes a direct hit, it is Jenny who crawls through the wreckage of the house to rescue her. So begins a friendship which is last through the years. But when Linda falls in love with a man that Jenny despises, she is faced with sacrificing her future happiness for the friend who has given her everything…
Love Me Tender
Love Me Tender
Anne Bennett
¥54.84
A heartrending tale of love and tragedy during The Birmingham Blitz. Perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Annie Groves. For Kathy O’Malley, life has not been easy with her husband, Barry, out of work and with two children to feed. Then when war breaks out in 1939, many of the local men enlist, including Barry, leaving the women to cope as best they can. The years that follow are full of hardship: rationing, nightly air raids and endless shifts working at the local munitions factory all take their toll on Kathy who longs to feel the strong arms of her husband around her once more. When she meets Doug, a handsome American GI, she is drawn immediately drawn to him but determined to honour her marriage vows. But after she receives a telegram informing that her husband is missing, presumed dead, she makes a decision that will have consequences, not just for herself, but for the lives of all those she loves too…
A Man Lay Dead (The Ngaio Marsh Collection)
A Man Lay Dead (The Ngaio Marsh Collection)
Ngaio Marsh
¥27.27
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the first volume of the 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries. Sir Hubert Handesley's extravagant weekend house-parties are deservedly famous for his exciting Murder Game. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have skilful alibis - so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunit…
The Nursing Home Murder (The Ngaio Marsh Collection)
The Nursing Home Murder (The Ngaio Marsh Collection)
Ngaio Marsh
¥27.27
Ngaio Marsh’s bestselling and ingenious third novel remains one of the most popular pieces of crime fiction of all time. Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse Jane Harden are almost too nervous to operate. The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary – and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead. Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why…
A Surfeit of Lampreys (The Ngaio Marsh Collection)
A Surfeit of Lampreys (The Ngaio Marsh Collection)
Ngaio Marsh
¥38.36
Ngaio Marsh’s most popular novel begins when a young New Zealander’s first contact with the English gentry is the body of Lord Wutherford – with a meat skewer through the eye… The Lampreys had plenty of charm – but no cash. They all knew they were peculiar – and rather gloried in it. The double and triple charades, for instance, with which they would entertain their guests – like rich but awful Uncle Gabriel, who was always such a bore. The Lampreys thought if they jollied him up he would bail them out – yet again. Instead, Uncle Gabriel met a violent end. And Chief Inspector Alleyn had to work our which of them killed him…
American Innovations
American Innovations
Rivka Galchen
¥66.22
A short-story collection from one of America’s brightest young talents. In one of these intensely imaginative stories a young woman’s furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated dependences and loves of a family. Following spiralling paths towards utterly logical, entirely absurd conclusions, Galchen’s creations occupy a dreamlike dimension, where time is fluid and identities are best defined by the qualities they lack. The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, allowing the reader the pleasure of discovering familiar favourites in new guises. Here ‘The Lost Order’ covertly recapitulates James Thurber’s ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, while ‘The Region of Unlikeness’ playfully mirrors Jorge Luis Borges’s ‘The Aleph’. By turns realistic, fantastical and lyrical, all these marvellously uneasy stories share a deeply emotional core and are written in dryly witty, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer of eye-opening ingenuity.
The Riftwar Saga Series Books 2 and 3
The Riftwar Saga Series Books 2 and 3
Raymond E. Feist
¥206.30
The Riftwar Saga continues… This ebook contains Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon, books two and three of the Rift War Saga by Raymond E. Feist. For nearly a year peace reigned in the enchanted kingdom of Rillanon. But new challenges awaited Arutha, the Prince of Krondor, when Jimmy the Hand – the youngest thief in the Guild of Mockers – came upon a sinister Nighthawk poised to assassinate him. What evil power raises the dead and makes corpses do battle with the living at the behest of the Guild of Death? And what high magic can defeat it? Meanwhile, a life-or-death quest must be undertaken to find an antidote to a poison that fells a beautiful princess on her wedding day… And so the Rift War Saga continues…
One Hundred Names
One Hundred Names
Cecelia Ahern
¥58.86
The uplifting and captivating new novel from the worldwide bestseller Cecelia Ahern Kitty Logan has lost her way… As a journalist, she’s spent the past few years chasing the big scoops – no matter the consequences. When she makes a terrible mistake, she finds herself mired in scandal, her career implodes and even her personal relationships are tested to the limits. At a loss, Kitty finds distraction in a list of one hundred names her late mentor and boss, Constance, has left her. Kitty’s been given one final chance, the most important assignment of her life – to write the story behind the one hundred names as a tribute piece to Constance. As she tracks down the people on the list and tries to work out what connects them, Kitty meets some extraordinary people. Can these strangers’ stories help her finally understand her own?
The Road to Reckoning
The Road to Reckoning
Robert Lautner
¥61.51
A novel that hits right to the heart of fans of Cold Mountain and True Grit. Set in 1837, this is the completely compelling story of 12-year-old orphan Thomas Walker and his treacherous journey home through the wide open lands of America. ‘I, to this day, hold to only one truth: if a man chooses to carry a gun he will get shot. My father agreed to carry twelve.’ Young Tom Walker cannot believe his luck when his father allows him to accompany him on the road, selling Samuel Colt’s newly-invented revolver. They will leave behind the depression and disease that is gripping 1830’s New York to travel the country together. Still only twelve years old, Tom is convinced that he is now a man. Fate, it seems, thinks so too … On the road west the towns get smaller, the forests wilder, and the path more unforgiving. A devastating encounter cuts their journey tragically short, and leaves Tom all alone in the wilderness. Struggling to see a way home, he finds his only hope: ageing ranger Henry Stands, who is heading back east. Tom’s resolve to survive initiates an unlikely partnership that will be tested by the dangers of the road ahead, where outlaws prowl.
Josephine Cox Mother’s Day 3-Book Collection
Josephine Cox Mother’s Day 3-Book Collection
Josephine Cox
¥165.91
Josephine Cox’s classic novels get straight to the heart and heartbreak of family drama. THE BEACHCOMBER In the summer of 1952, two lonely people arrive in the pretty seaside hamlet of West Bay. Tom Arnold has abandoned all his possessions and walked away from a highly paid job. A year ago, the car he was driving with his family was deliberately run off the road high above the cliffs. He was the only survivor. The driver was never found. Kathy Wilson has tried to cling on to her zest for life through times of pain and loneliness. Recovering from her divorce, she seeks comfort in the arms of other men. But a shocking, revealing row with her mother is the final straw, and when she inherits a rundown house in West Bay, she flees to Dorset. For both Tom and Kathy, it seems there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But a brutal killer is still on the loose, and suddenly West Bay is no longer the peaceful place it seemed… LOVERS AND LIARS In the sleepy Lancashire village of Salmesbury, childhood sweethearts Emily and John are secretly planning a life together when they are cruelly forced apart. Already abandoned by her father, and unhappy at home, Emily is heartbroken when John leaves the village. Her life takes a devastating turn for the worse when she gives birth to a child. Many miles away, John is trying to forget Emily and forge a new life. When it looks as though history is about to repeat itself, Emily must put the past – and John – behind her and safeguard her daughter. But can she really forget him? LIVE THE DREAM Luke Hammond: handsome, rich, charismatic, cursed by private tragedy. Amy Atkinson: humble and kind with a good – but wounded – heart. When they meet by chance, a spark of love takes hold of their hearts. But neither are sure that they can dare to love again. Amy is torn between her head and her heart, but her sense of honour is paramount – and when she discovers his true identity, she is thrown into even greater turmoil.