Book picks similar to
X20: A Novel of "Not" Smoking by Richard Beard


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بیست-رمان-ترک-سیگار
ادبیات-انگلیسی
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The Dalai Lama's Cat


David Michie - 2012
    Why should His Holiness not have a cat?‘If only she could speak,’ continued the actress. ‘I’m sure she’d have such wisdom to share.’And so the seed was planted . . . I began to think that perhaps the time had come for me to write a book of my own—a book that would convey some of the wisdom I’ve learned sitting not at the feet of the Dalai Lama but even closer, on his lap. A book that would tell my own tale . . . how I was rescued from a fate too grisly to contemplate to become the constant companion of a man who is not only one of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders and a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate but also a dab hand with a can opener.” Starving and pitiful, a mud-smeared kitten is rescued from the slums of New Delhi and transported to a life she could have never imagined. In a beautiful sanctuary overlooking the snow-capped Himalayas, she begins her new life as the Dalai Lama’s cat.Warmhearted, irreverent, and wise, this cat of many names opens a window to the inner sanctum of life in Dharamsala. A tiny spy observing the constant flow of private meetings between His Holiness and everyone from Hollywood celebrities to philanthropists to self-help authors, the Dalai Lama’s cat provides us with insights on how to find happiness and meaning in a busy, materialistic world. Her story will put a smile on the face of anyone who has been blessed by the kneading paws and bountiful purring of a cat.

Dinner at Mine


Chris Smyth - 2012
    But Rosie is adamant. Four couples, each hosting a dinner party on a different night of the week, with a prize at the end for the best one. It'll be a good laugh, won't it? And a great way for everyone to get to know each other. What could possibly go wrong?What Rosie doesn't anticipate are the lengths her fellow hosts might be prepared to go to in order to claim the prize -- outlandish recipes, rare ingredients sourced from abroad, and a chocolate tart that looks just too good to be homemade… But perhaps she should be more worried about the mounting tension between the guests, as backbiting breaks out over the appetisers and a glass of wine too many leads to indiscreet flirtation. As the pressure in the kitchen rises, relationships begin to crack under strain, high-minded principles collide and the oven gloves come off… But that's all part of the fun. Isn't it?

Everyone Deserves a Second Chance: A Billionaire Romance Box Set


Tara Brent - 2020
    For readers who love billionaire romances with secret babies, hot daddies, and single moms. Family dramas and friendships will keep your kindle burning all night long!The Billionaire’s Secret RegretRule #1 Hands off Samantha. My best friend’s little sister.I knew that… Then how do I explain to him she’s pregnant with my baby?When I was young and stupid, I broke the heart of the only girl I’d ever loved, Sam Jenkins. We had a hot and wild summer romp that completely blew my mind, but everything changed when she told me she was pregnant.I was scared and I told her to get rid of it... I’ve never regretted anything more.We parted ways and I thought I’d lost my chance of a happy ending with Sam. At least, I felt that way until she showed up out of the blue after three years of total silence. I knew I couldn’t waste this opportunity.I had to win her back, but how on Earth could I make up for what I had done?The Billionaire Returns HomeHe’s back in town. Filthy Rich, a Single Dad.And gorgeous as Hell!We were inseparable as kids.When he left, he took a piece of my heart.Now he’s back and needs my help.And I begin to school his little girl.We soon discover the spark is still alive.When he takes me on the front room sofa I’m lost in the pits of lust.I’m in heaven and life is a dream.We are lovers - until he leaves me again!!!Turns out he doesn’t think my family is good enough for him!I have to let him go. Family blood is stronger than childhood romances.So why does it feel like my heart has stopped beating?Do we get to have a Happy Ever After?The Billionaire’s Surprise HeirI’m FURIOUS that she kept this from me!A secret she had NO right to keep…Do I destroy her or make her mine?Every redhead turns my head. It’s my greatest weakness.Why?Tiffany…that was her name, a redhead hottie from my college days.Imagine my shock when I meet up with her again on a blind date!Now, I’m not the kinda guy to go on blind dates, but I’m glad I did.This woman rocks my boat and now she’s in my life again I won’t let her go.Yet, she always pushes me away.Talk about a she-devil in disguise. She’s dodging me and lying too.What game is she playing?I WILL find out, even if it means stalking her!Will Tiffany’s secret blow up in her face and destroy her Happy Ever After?-with the only man she has ever loved.A collection of three steamy standalone romance novels. No cliffhanger, no cheating and a guaranteed HEA.

The Taste of Ginger


Mansi Shah - 2021
    All she did was fall in love with a white Christian carnivore instead of a conventional Indian boy. Years later, with her parents not speaking to her and her controversial relationship in tatters, all Preeti has left is her career at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm.But when Preeti receives word of a terrible accident in the city where she was born, she returns to India, where she’ll have to face her estranged parents…and the complicated past they left behind. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of her heritage, Preeti catches a startling glimpse of her family’s battles with class, tradition, and sacrifice. Torn between two beautifully flawed cultures, Preeti must now untangle what home truly means to her.

Capital


John Lanchester - 2012
    It’s 2008 and things are falling apart: Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are going under, and the residents of Pepys Road, London—a banker and his shopaholic wife, an old woman dying of a brain tumor and her graffiti-artist grandson, Pakistani shop owners and a shadowy refugee who works as the meter maid, the young soccer star from Senegal and his minder—are receiving anonymous postcards reading “We Want What You Have.” Who is behind it? What do they want? Epic in scope yet intimate, capturing the ordinary dramas of very different lives, this is a novel of love and suspicion, of financial collapse and terrorist threat, of property values going up and fortunes going down, and of a city at a moment of extraordinary tension.

The Course of Love


Alain de Botton - 2016
    De Botton's essay "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person" (The New York Times, May 28, 2016), which draws from The Course of Love, was the #1 most emailed article for days.We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after." The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. You experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy—an annotation and a guide to what we are reading.This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience—fictional, philosophical, psychological—that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love.

The Secrets of Lost Stones


Melissa Payne - 2019
    Haunted by memories and grief, Jess packs what’s left and heads for the small mountain town of Pine Lake, where she takes a position as caregiver to an eccentric old woman.A rumored clairvoyant, Lucy is strange but welcoming and immediately intuits Jess as a “loose end” in need of closure. But Jess isn’t the only guest in Lucy’s large Victorian home. There’s also Star, a teenage runaway with a secret too painful to share. And the little boy with heart-shaped stones, who comes with a hope for reconciliation—and a warning.Soon Jess learns that she’s not the only lost soul running from the ghosts of the past. She and Star have been brought together for a reason: to be saved by the very thing that destroyed them.

How To Have An Almost Perfect Marriage


Mrs. Stephen Fry - 2012
    

The High Season


Judy Blundell - 2018
    The ultimate summer read, this novel of money, class, and family is perfect for fans of Meg Wolitzer, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest.No matter what the world throws her way, at least Ruthie Beamish has the house. Lovingly renovated, located by the sea in a quiet village two ferry rides from the glitzier Hamptons, the house is Ruthie's nest egg--the retirement account shared with her ex-husband, Mike, and the college fund for their teenage daughter, Jem. The catch? To afford the house, Ruthie must let it go during the best part of the year.It's Memorial Day weekend and Ruthie has packed up their belongings for what Jem calls "the summer bummer" the family's annual exodus to make way for renters. This year, the Hamptons set has arrived. Adeline Clay is elegant, connected, and accompanied by a "gorgeous satellite" stepson.The widow of a blue-chip artist, in a world defined by luxury and ease, Adeline demonstrates an uncanny ability to help herself to Ruthie's life. Is Adeline just being her fabulous self, or is she out to take what she wants?When an eccentric billionaire, his wayward daughter, a coterie of social climbers, and Ruthie's old flame are thrown into the mix, the entire town finds itself on the verge of tumultuous change. But as Ruthie loses her grasp on her job, her home, and her family, she discovers a new talent for pushing back. By the end of one unhinged, unforgettable summer, nothing will be the same--least of all Ruthie.In a novel packed with indelible characters, crackling wit, and upstairs/downstairs drama, Judy Blundell emerges as a voice for all seasons--a wry and original storyteller who knows how the most disruptive events in our lives can twist endings into new beginnings.

Green Girl


Kate Zambreno - 2011
    In Bookforum, James Greer called it ambitious in a way few works of fiction are. This summer it is being republished in an all-new Harper Perennial trade paperback, significantly revised by the author, and including an extensive P.S. section including never before published outtakes, an interview with the author, and a new essay by Zambreno.Zambreno's heroine, Ruth, is a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes, by day spritzing perfume at the department store she calls Horrids, by night trying desperately to navigate a world colored by the unwanted gaze of others and the uncertainty of her own self-regard. Ruth, the green girl, joins the canon of young people existing in that important, frightening, and exhilarating period of drift and anxiety between youth and adulthood, and her story is told through the eyes of one of the most surprising and unforgettable narrators in recent fiction—a voice at once distanced and maternal, indulgent yet blackly funny. And the result is a piercing yet humane meditation on alienation, consumerism, the city, self-awareness, and desire, by a novelist who has been compared with Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and Elfriede Jelinek.

Pack Up the Moon


Kristan Higgins - 2021
    That's what Lauren decides to leave her husband when she finds out she's dying. Each month, she gives Josh a letter containing a task to help him face this first year without her, leading him on a heartrending, beautiful, often humorous journey to find happiness again in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins. Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they're wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness. As Lauren's disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future--a future without the only woman he's ever loved. He's so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren. But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It's a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed...from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn't Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren's most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn't follow a straight line. Sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, and always uplifting, this novel from New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins illuminates how life's greatest joys are often hiding in plain sight.

The Secret of You


Victoria Connelly - 2014
    What exactly is William hiding in the unused wing of the manor house? And is it a story Anna could sell?Set in the beautiful Cotswolds, The Secret of You is a novel about love, trust and antiques from the bestselling author of A Weekend with Mr Darcy and Wish You Were Here.* * * * *Praise for Victoria Connelly:‘Great fun. A real page-turner.’ Andrew Davies, screenwriter of Pride and Prejudice‘Sunshine on a rainy day. A charmingly written slice of warm-hearted escapism.’Lisa Jewell‘A lovely feel-good story.’ Katie Fforde‘Victoria writes with a deliciously light touch and joyous enthusiasm.’ Fiona Walker‘Fun, amusing and heart-warming.’ Trashionista‘Warm-hearted, very sweet and it will charm your socks off.’ Novelicious‘Victoria Connelly is an exceptional new voice in romantic fiction whose stories shine with warmth, humour and heart. The Perfect Hero is romantic comedy gold from a fast-rising star!’ Single Titles‘Fun, flirty fantasy from the gifted pen of Victoria Connelly. A magical story with a gorgeous setting and more than enough handsome men to go around!”Carole Matthews

The Twins


Saskia Sarginson - 2013
    They thought the three of them would be together forever.But an innocent mistake one summer set them on drastically different paths. Now in their twenties, Issy is trying to hold together a life as a magazine art director, while Viola is slowly destroying herself, consumed with guilt over the events they unknowingly set into motion as children.When it seems that Viola might never recover, Issy returns to the town they haven't seen in a decade, to face her own demons and see what answers, if any, she can find.A deeply moving, gripping debut, this is a novel about the secrets we carry, and the bonds between twins.

Rock 'n' Roll Babes From Outer Space


Linda Jaivin - 1996
    Linda Jaivin, who staked her claim as the queen of close encounters with her bestseller Eat Me, introduces an even more eye-popping round of pleasure-seeking escapades with the extraterrestrials extraordinaire in Rock 'n' Roll Babes from Outer Space. Look out, because here come Baby Baby, the nymphomaniac and wannabe rock star; Doll Parts, the gutsy punk with an eye for Earth girls; and Lati, the turbo chick with a dangerous habit of mooning asteroids. Once they flee their dreary home planet to experience every hedonistic pleasure Earth can offer, their explosive misadventures become a cosmic tribute to Girl Power and a hilarious, unforgettable ride.

Disclaimer


Renée Knight - 2015
    She has no idea who might have sent her The Perfect Stranger - or how it ended up on her nightstand. At first, she is intrigued by the suspenseful story that unfolds.And then she realizes.This isn't fiction.The Perfect Stranger recreates in vivid, unmistakable detail the day Catherine became hostage to a dark secret, a secret that only one other person knew - and that person is dead.Now that the past Catherine so desperately wants to forget is catching up with her, her world is falling apart. Plunged into a living nightmare, she knows that her only hope is to confront what really happened on that terrible day... even if the shocking truth might destroy her.