In this sordid and hilarious tale of whopping academic grants, sleeping on the job, sexual confusion and consenting adults, terrifying departmental secretaries, surprise impregnations and alcoholic lecturers we might conclude that most people are just not cut out for university life.

    One sticky summer day as Kate is waiting for her husband to come home from his bicycle shop, she spots her distinguished neighbor returning from his last day of work after six decades at Atlanta's oldest men's clothing store. Over a cup of butter coffee, he tells Kate a story of love and heartbreak that makes her remember her past, question her present, and wonder what the future will bring. A magical story on its own, Waking Kate is also a short fiction tie-in to Allen's 2014 bestseller Lost Lake.

    But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical – and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be - he comes steadily to realise he is facing the most crucial performance of his life.Ishiguro's extraordinary and original study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification – and the highest praise.

    Troubled restaurant inspector Danny Skinner is on a quest to find the mysterious father his mother will not identify. Unraveling this hidden information is the key to understanding the crippling compulsions that threaten to wreck his young life. His ensuing journey takes him from the festival city of Edinburgh to the foodie city of San Francisco. But the hard-drinking, womanizing Skinner has a strange nemesis in the form of mild-mannered fellow inspector Brian Kibby.It is Skinner's unfathomable, obsessive hatred of Kibby that takes over everything, threatening to destroy not only Skinner and his mission but also those he loves most dearly. When Kibby contracts a horrific, undiagnosable illness, Skinner understands that his destiny is inextricably bound to that of his hated rival, and he is faced with a terrible dilemma.Irvine Welsh's work is a transgressive parable about the great obsessions of our time: food, sex, and celebrity.

    A beautiful older woman named Peggy greets her and invites her to stay, on the house's usual conditions: she has ninety-nine nights to turn her life around. With nothing left to lose, Alba takes a chance and moves in. She soon discovers that this is no ordinary house. Past residents have included Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker, who, after receiving the assistance they needed, hung around to help newcomers - literally, in talking portraits on the wall. As she escapes into this new world, Alba begins a journey that will heal her wounds - and maybe even save her life. Filled with a colorful and unforgettable cast of literary figures, The House at the End of Hope Street is a charming, whimsical novel of hope and feminine wisdom that is sure to appeal to fans of Jasper Fforde and especially Sarah Addison Allen.

    Here, many famous names are mentioned and there is obviously a grave risk that families and friends are going to take offence... Uncle Oswald discovers the electrifying properties of the Sudanese Blister Beetle and the gorgeous Yasmin Howcomely, a girl absolutely soaked in sex, and sets about seducing all the great men of the time for his own wicked, irreverent reasons.

    Plato focuses on the obscure and confusing era that began in A.D. 1500, the Age of Mouldwarp. His subjects include Sigmund Freud's comic masterpiece "Jokes and Their Relation to the Subconscious," and Charles D.'s greatest novel, "The Origin of Species." He explores the rituals of Mouldwarp, and the later cult of webs and nets that enslaved the population. By the end of his lecture series, however, Plato has been drawn closer to the subject of his fascination than he could ever have anticipated. At once funny and erudite, The Plato Papers is a smart and entertaining look at how the future is imagined, the present absorbed, and the past misrepresented.

    His star has waned. The world is leaving him behind. His agent, the ruthless Minerva Cinch, convinces him that his only hope is to write a sword-and-sorcery blockbuster. Unfortunately, Philip—allergic to the faintest trace of Tolkien—is utterly unsuited to the task. In a dark hour, a dwarfish stranger comes to his rescue. But the deal he makes with Pocket Wellfair turns out to have Faustian consequences. The Murdstone Trilogy is a richly dark comedy described by one U.K. reviewer as "totally insane in the best way possible."

    Not your ordinary affair. For Frank it began with his own insatiable sexual appetite, a mysterious lacquered box- and then an unhinged voyage through a netherworld of imaginable pleasures and unimaginable horror… Now Frank - or what is left of Frank - waits in an empty room. All he wants is to live as he was before. All Julia can do is bring him her unfulfilled passions… and a little flesh and blood…

    Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday. There, Dennis enters the fragile and bizarre world of Aimée, the naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr Joyboy, the master of the embalmer's art...A dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide, The Loved One depicts a world where love, reputation, and death cost a very great deal.This is an alternate cover edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3....

    I was born part precious metal, part pirate."), an orphaned girl who is taken in by blind Mr. Pew, the mysterious and miraculously old keeper of a lighthouse on the Scottish coast. Pew tells Silver stories of Babel Dark, a nineteenth-century clergyman. Dark lived two lives: a public one mired in darkness and deceit and a private one bathed in the light of passionate love. For Silver, Dark's life becomes a map through her own darkness, into her own story, and, finally, into love.One of the most original and extraordinary writers of her generation, Jeanette Winterson has created a modern fable about the transformative power of storytelling.

    The years pass but no one looks any older. One night a doctor tells the story of a young woman who gives birth to a baby in the most horrible way! Evil psychic powers, obsession and the supernatural in the most ordinary, everyday places. A spine-chiller from the master of horror.

    Emerging from his angst-filled childhood, he rushes into the throes of the twentieth century on the Western Front during the Great War, and quickly changes his role on the battlefield from cannon fodder to cameraman. When he becomes a prisoner of war, he discovers Rousseau's Confessions, and dedicates his life to bringing the memoir to the silver screen. Plagued by bad luck and blind ambition, Todd becomes a celebrated London upstart, a Weimar luminary, and finally a disgruntled director of cowboy movies and the eleventh member of the Hollywood Ten. Ambitious and entertaining, Boyd has invented a most irresistible hero.

    For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies. Until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan himself.Mack's testament - a compelling blend of memoir, legend, history, and, quite probably, madness - recounts one man's emotional crisis, disappearance, resurrection and death. It also transports you into an utterly mesmerising exploration of the very nature of belief.

    Formerly a governess, she has landed on the occupation of prestidigitator, and thanks to her overwhelming beauty—and to a lesser extent her professional talents—she takes the town by storm, gaining admittance to her grandfather's college. It is there, at the institution inspired by Beerbohm's own alma mater, that she falls in love with the Duke of Dorset, who duly adores her in return. Ever aware of appearances, however, Zuleika breaks the Duke's heart when she decides that she must abandon the match. The epidemic of heartache that proceeds to overcome the academic town makes for some of the best comic writing in the history of English literature.