The Flood Girls


Richard Fifield - 2016
    A town where nearly all of the volunteer firemen are named Jim, where The Dirty Shame—the only bar in town—refuses to serve mixed drinks (too much work), where the locals hate the newcomers (then again, they hate the locals, too), and where the town softball team has never even come close to having a winning season. Until now.Rachel Flood has snuck back into town after leaving behind a trail of chaos nine years prior. She’s here to make amends, but nobody wants to hear it, especially her mother, Laverna. But with the help of a local boy named Jake and a little soul-searching, she just might make things right.In the spirit of Empire Falls and A League of Their Own, with the caustic wit of Where’d You Go, Bernadette thrown in for good measure, Richard Fifield’s hilarious and heartwarming debut will have you laughing through tears.

Shit Happens


Eileen Wharton - 2012
    She's got problems though when bits of her ex-husband turn up in different places and the slimy DI Savage seems to be bending the evidence to link her to the death. Add the fact that she's being pressured into taking a ‘job’ by hard-nosed Vera Devlin from the estate and having to work in a topless bar to make ends meet and you can see she's up against it. Desperate to extricate herself from the mess she breaks into her old marital home to find the diary of her dead husband, except that his mother has taken up residence and arrives back early from bingo… Set against a backdrop of Northern council estate life, this fast paced, humorous novel exemplifies the problems caused by poverty, piles and unruly children, think Jeremy Kyle meets the Thorn Birds and you won't be far wrong!

Steel Dogs


Matthew Bracey - 2020
    This action-packed tale follows Chris and Matthew Bracey (of London's renowned God's Own Junkyard Neon Museum) on a farcical and disturbing journey to bag a million quid. As the day of the deal approaches and the deal commences, everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. This is bad luck at its worst. The humiliating truth of what went on in China, Matthew and Chris made a pact to not spill the beans, saying "what happened in China, stays in China." But now after one last request from his dying fathers deathbed to write the book, that is now not the case. Matthew lifts the lid on the untold story.

Archy's Life of Mehitabel


Don Marquis - 1938
    Don Marquis' creations have been constantly in print since 1934.

This Book Will Save Your Life


A.M. Homes - 2006
    M. Homes has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her keen ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years. Richard Novak is a modern-day Everyman, a middle-aged divorcé trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one- except his trainer, nutritionist, and housekeeper. He is functionally dead and doesn't even notice until two incidents-an attack of intense pain that lands him in the emergency room, and the discovery of an expanding sinkhole outside his house-conspire to hurl him back into the world. On his way home from the hospital, Richard forms the first of many new relationships: He meets Anhil, the doughnut shop owner, an immigrant who dreams big. He finds a weeping housewife in the produce section of the supermarket, helps save a horse that has fallen into the sinkhole, daringly rescues a woman from the trunk of her kidnapper's car, and, after the sinkhole claims his house and he has to relocate to a Malibu rental, he befriends a reluctant counterculture icon. In the end, Richard is also brought back in closer touch with his family-his aging parents, his brilliant brother, the beloved ex-wife whom he still desires, and finally, before the story's breathtaking finale, with his estranged son Ben. The promised land of Los Angeles-a surreal city of earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and feral Chihuahuas-is also very much a character in This Book Will Save Your Life. A vivid, revealing novel about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you, it should significantly broaden Homes's already substantial audience.

Maybe I'm Bad: Poems and Thoughts


Amie James - 2019
    It is an acquired taste, for those who do not mind profanity and dishevelled emotions.

Damon Runyon Omnibus


Damon Runyon - 1944
    A world of speakeasies and dancing girls where a gambler or bootlegger is perfectly normal and respectable in every way. Those familiar with "Guys and Dolls" know what to expect!

The Hungry Toilet


Jason Hall - 2012
    People are going missing and no one knows how or why. Your will meet some fantastic and hilarious characters on your way to solving the mystery. Includes the bonus story - Going on a Bat Hunt. The Hungry Toilet is a Top 10 Best Selling book with the author being described as the "New Roald Dahl of Rhyming." If your children enjoy Dr Seuss, Roald Dahl and David Walliams they will love this book too! Free to Amazon Prime Members Updated for all devices (Kindle, Paperwhite, Fire, HD, iPad & iPhone)

The Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses 2012 Edition


Bill Henderson - 2011
    The result: "The most creative, generous, and democratic of any of the annual volumes" (Rick Moody).Among its numerous awards, the Pushcart Prize has been chosen for the Poets Writers / Barnes Noble "Writers for Writers" Award and the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement recognition.

Doesn't Everyone Have A Secret?


Sue Shepherd - 2015
    Steph is a harassed mum who's considering an affair with her children's sexy headmaster. Penny is trying to deal with a crush on her boss, OCD and a sad secret from her childhood. And Mike is a vicar who is being blackmailed for his secret, although it's not all that it seems! Meanwhile, all three are being watched over by their own guardian angels, who try to push them in the right direction and help move their lives along - but not always successfully ... Doesn't Everyone Have a Secret? is genuinely laugh out loud funny, but also deals in a sensitive way with serious problems that any of us could face in life. Sue Shepherd's debut novel is bold, it doesn't pull any punches, and it has bucket loads of heart.

Breaking the Rules: Confessions of a Bad Girl


Catherine Townsend - 2008
    

How to Kill Your Family


Bella Mackie - 2021
    Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I’m long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of 28, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing.When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, she vows revenge, and sets about to kill every member of his family. Readers have a front row seat as Grace picks off the family one by one – and the result is as and gruesome as it is entertaining in this wickedly dark romp about class, family, love… and murder.But then Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit.Outrageously funny, compulsive and subversive, perfect for fans of Killing Eve and My Sister, the Serial Killer.

Selected Writings


Henri Michaux - 1948
    This selection is from L’Espace du Dedans, which collected eight books of prose poems, sketches and free verse. Brilliantly translated by Richard Ellmann, Michaux asks readers to join him in a fantastic world of the imagination. It is a world where wry humor plays against horror––where Chaplin meets Kafka––a world of pure and rare invention.

Plan B


Jonathan Tropper - 2000
    Ten years ago, Ben, Lindsey, Chuck, Alison, and Jack graduated from New York University and went out into the world, fresh-faced and full of dreams for the future. But now Ben's getting a divorce; Lindsey's unemployed; Alison and Chuck seem stuck in ruts of their own making; and Jack is getting more publicity for his cocaine addiction than his multimillion-dollar Hollywood successes.Suddenly, turning thirty-- past the age their parents were when they were born, older than every current star athlete or pop music sensation-- seems to be both more meaningful and less than they'd imagined ten years ago.Jonathan Tropper's wonderful debut novel is about more than friendship, love, celebrity, addiction, kidnapping, or even turning thirty-- it's a heartfelt comic riff on what it means to be an adult against your will, to be single when you thought you'd have a family, to discover you are not, in fact, immortal, and to learn that Star Wars is as good a life lesson today as it was when you were six years old.

The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe: A Kaplan New SAT Score-Raising Classic


Edgar Allan Poe - 2004
    But did you know that these stories are also packed with words you need to know for the SAT?Learning words by reading them in context is the most effective way to expand your vocabulary, and this book can help you do just that! This edition of The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe includes:705 SAT vocabulary words highlighted throughout the textDefinitions for each highlighted word on the facing page A word-pronunciation guideIt's a pain-free way to build your vocabulary—and to score higher on the test!The tell-tale heart --Hop-frog --The black cat --Ligeia --The assignation --The oval portrait --The fall of the house of Usher --The murders in the Rue Morgue --Ms. found in a bottle --A descent into the maelström --The pit and the pendulum --The Sphinx --William Wilson.