Book picks similar to
Learning to Swim: And Other Stories by Graham Swift
short-stories
fiction
literature
british
A Chancer
James Kelman - 1985
Unable to hold a job for long, his life revolves around Glasgow bars, living with his sister and brother-in-law, betting shops, and casinos. Sometimes Tammas wins, more often he loses. But gambling gives him as good a chance as any of discovering what he seeks from life since society offers no prospect of a more fulfilling alternative.
Death’s Door
Paul Finch - 2018
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When a stalking case lands on DS ‘Heck’ Heckenburg’s desk it seems pretty straightforward.But when Heck discovers that the victim lives in the same house that a young woman was brutally murdered in six years earlier, instinct tells him that it’s not so simple after all.Before long Heck is entangled in something far more dangerous than he had expected. In a race against the clock, can Heck and Gemma stop history from repeating itself – or will they end up getting caught in the crossfire?
The Sunday Times bestseller returns with a heart pounding short story that fans of M.J. Arlidge and Stuart MacBride won’t be able to put down.
To the Wedding
John Berger - 1995
As the book cinematically moves from one character's perspective to another, events and characters move toward the convergence of the wedding--and a haunting dance of love and death.
Jeeves and the Wedding Bells
Sebastian Faulks - 2013
Wodehouse documented the lives of the inimitable Jeeves and Wooster for nearly sixty years, from their first appearance in 1915 ("Extricating Young Gussie") to his final completed novel (Aunts Aren't Gentlemen) in 1974. These two were the finest creations of a novelist widely proclaimed to be the finest comic English writer by critics and fans alike.Now, forty years later, Bertie and Jeeves return in a hilarious affair of mix-ups and mishaps. With the approval of the Wodehouse estate, acclaimed novelist Sebastian Faulks brings these two back to life for their legion of fans. Bertie, nursing a bit of heartbreak over the recent engagement of one Georgina Meadowes to someone not named Wooster, agrees to "help" his old friend Peregrine "Woody" Beeching, whose own romance is foundering. That this means an outing to Dorset, away from an impending visit from Aunt Agatha, is merely an extra benefit. Almost immediately, things go awry and the simple plan quickly becomes complicated. Jeeves ends up impersonating one Lord Etringham, while Bertie pretends to be Jeeves' manservant "Wilberforce,"—and this all happens under the same roof as the now affianced Ms. Meadowes. From there the plot becomes even more hilarious and convoluted, in a brilliantly conceived, seamlessly written comic work worthy of the master himself.A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013
M/F
Anthony Burgess - 1971
But in the streets of Castita's capital, where a wild religious festival is in full swing, a series of bizarre encounters - including his own repulsive doppelganger (the son of a circus bird-woman) - and disturbing family revelations await Miles, who soon finds himself a willing victim of dynastic destiny. A darkly surreal comedy of dazzling linguistic inventiveness, MF is an outrageous tale of blood, lust and the machinations of fate.
Liza's England
Pat Barker - 1986
The tough, severe, but very real and recognizable world of women is put to the most strenuous tests, and Liza, at eighty-four, is proof that loyalty, fortitude and humor survive.
Absent in the Spring
Mary Westmacott - 1944
This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself. Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her.
The Glass-Blowers
Daphne du Maurier - 1963
'If you marry into glass' Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say goodbye to everything familiar, and enter a closed world'. But crashing into this world comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution, against which the family struggles to survive.Years later, Sophie Duval reveals to her long-lost nephew the tragic story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. Drawing on her own family's tale of tradition and sorrow, Daphne du Maurier weaves an unforgettable saga of beauty, war, and family.
The Game
Jack London - 1905
On the eve of their wedding, twenty-year-old Jack Fleming arranges a secret ringside seat for his sweetheart to view her only rival: the "game." Through Genevieve's apprehensive eyes, we watch the prizefight that pits her fair young lover, "the Pride of West Oakland," against the savage and brutish John Ponta and that reveals as much about her own nature, and Joe's, as it does about the force that drives the two men in their violent, fateful encounter.
The Liar
Stephen Fry - 1991
Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel, by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic.Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth.The Liar is a thrilling, sophisticated and laugh out loud hilarious novel from a brilliantly talented writer.
The Half You Don't Know
Peter Cameron - 1997
Focusing on characters both young and old, gay and straight, single and married, he discovers the dramas that are obscured by life's daily struggles. These beautifully crafted stories depict the surface of the world we all know, but go on to reveal the mysteries lurking beneath life's deceptively placid surface - the half we don't know.
I Want It Now
Kingsley Amis - 1968
But as he comes closer to his prize other questions present themselves. Is the androgenous Simona really worth it? Why doesn't she like sex? Is it possible to drink all day? With his unerring eye for absurdity and class satire Kingsley Amis shows us what happens when money meets naked ambition.