The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful – but desperately lonely – older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall. . . . Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.

    

    [Penguin Readers Level 6]

    A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq. But as an army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die. He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at – robbing banks.Hammered out on a prison typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America.

    Her mother blames her for her father’s death, and her brothers want her out of their way. When Evangeline learns she’s solely responsible for their failing ranch—putting her family’s future squarely on her shoulders—she’ll have to find a creative way to save their home before they lose it all.She’ll have her reckoning...Her only ally: the cop who sent her away. Chris Chambers is positive she went to prison to protect someone else. He strikes a deal: help him track down the real criminals in exchange for clearing her name. But the closer Evangeline and Chris get to exposing the truth—and to each other—the deeper Evangeline is drawn into a dangerous sting that could finally bring her justice…or put her dreams on hold permanently.She’ll fight for the life she always wanted…Everyone’s lives moved on while Evangeline’s stood still. Now she has a chance to rebuild her family ranch, her life, and expose the people who put her away, so she can become the woman she was always meant to be.

    Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. But her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

    A father who rediscovers loveAlex loves his wife Jody, but has forgotten how to show it. He loves his son Sam, but doesn't understand him. He needs a reason to grab his future with both hands.A son who shows him how to liveMeet eight-year-old Sam: beautiful, surprising - and different. To him the world is a frightening mystery. But as his imagination comes to life, his family will be changed . . . for good.

    An invalid mother whose health continues to fail. A son banished from home. Thirty-three-year-old Addie Coulter is certain life can't get any worse. But after a series of tragedies and losses that challenge her will and test her faith, Addie is forced to leave the only home she's ever known and travel with her daughter to live with her brother and sister-in-law in Golden Meadow. It is here, on the road to recovery, that she meets the dashing Hiram Graham and begins to believe it's possible to love again. Set during a time when life itself was filled with strife and hardship, author Ramona Bridges weaves an unforgettable story about unfailing love, deceit, and forgiveness in her debut novel, Sweet By and By. When the revealing of a horrible secret and the arrival of a dangerous criminal threatens to disrupt everything Addie's built and destroy her chance at true love, she's left with only one option: trust in her Savior to bring her safely to the other side. With a cast of characters that will capture your imagination and your heart, Sweet By and By celebrates God's promise of faith and hope amidst life's inevitable disappointments.

    I step into the shower and almost faint, an image of taking the day by the throat and bashing its head against the wall floating in my mind.Thirty-year-old Millie just can't pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job until she can return home to her empty apartment, where she oscillates wildly between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she watches TV until she drops off to sleep, and the cycle begins again.When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning - one that involves nicer clothes, fresh produce, maybe even financial independence - within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization, lurking just beneath the surface, of just how hollow that vision has become. Darkly hilarious and devastating, The New Me is a dizzying descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse of American consumer culture.

    In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home.Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

    Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, when we no longer know who we are.

    Only the housekeeper, the estimable Mrs Logan, seems able to carry on.A train accident in a provincial town on the railway Lucas owns claims the life of nine-year-old Alice Brinklow and, amid the public outcry, Alice's father, Thomas, journeys to London demanding justice. As he arrives in the Capital on a frozen January morning his fate, and that of the entire Jarmyn family, will hinge on such strange things as an ill-fated visit to a spiritualist, an errant chicken bone and a single vote cast at a board room meeting.Written with charm, humour and rich period detail, Maggie Joel has created an intriguing novel of a Victorian family adrift in their rapidly changing world.

    Leo works part-time in London as an investment advisor to wealthy businessman, Paul Donaldson. The couple hope to start a family soon and life couldn’t be better.  But Leo has been stealing from Paul and Paul isn’t the sort of man you steal from.  When Leo realises that Paul knows what he’s done, he has no choice but to resort to drastic measures.  Meanwhile, after discovering she is pregnant, Kerensa can’t wait for her husband to return home so she can share her news. But she soon discovers he’s gone missing.  After receiving a threatening phone call from Paul, Kerensa realises how much trouble her family are in.   Just how far is Paul prepared to go to get revenge? And will Kerensa ever be happy or safe again?  Amanda James is also the bestselling author of novels including Another Mother and The Cornish Retribution. Dark Deception is a twisty and suspenseful psychological thriller which will appeal to fans of authors like C.L. Taylor, Claire McGowan and Louise Jensen.

    But when Richard Colman adopts his dead sister's daughter, he has no idea how tough life can be.Richard's girlfriend walks out. His business starts losing clients. And there's something terribly wrong with the little girl.Her name is Bernadette, but Richard calls her "Barney". It's a word his own father used to use... a barney, a row, a terrible racket. And Barney is well-named – she never stops screaming. She hammers her head on the floor and the walls. She's adorable, but she doesn't sleep. She cannot talk. She won't even respond to her name.Richard slowly faces the unbearable truth that his little girl is profoundly autistic. And as he prepares for a battle simply to be allowed to keep his child, he's only beginning to find out how tough life can be. Christopher Stevens, the bestselling author of A REAL BOY, draws on painful and intensely personal experiences of raising his own autistic child, to create this compelling story of a single parent who must come to terms with his beloved little girl's autism.AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a novel. The characters are fictional, though they are very real to me. Many of the events in the story did really happen to my family, following the diagnosis of my younger son with autism. I later wrote a memoir about this intensely emotional and exhausting experience: it was published as A REAL BOY. If you have read this memoir, you might recognise some of the scenes and situations in A GIRL CALLED BARNEY – and if you want to read a strictly factual account, the memoir will better suit your needs. A GIRL CALLED BARNEY is more dramatic, more tragic and less humorous than the later, non-fiction book. I used the novel to express the darker, more frightening emotions that, in real life, we hardly dare admit that we feel.Praise for A REAL BOY, Christopher Stevens's factual account of raising his autistic son:Jane Asher, President of the National Autistic Society"This wonderfully honest book tells us a great deal, not only about autism, but also about the extraordinary tolerance and unselfishness that is borne out of unequivocal love. At the same time, it reveals some uncomfortable truths about the struggle it takes to access the rights of those with disabilities in our so-called civilized society."The Sun, 15 Feb 08"incredibly moving"Daily Mail, February 26, 2008Christopher Stevens writes poignantly about life with his autistic son. It's a moving account of the boy's struggle to cope with a world that confuses him - and the extraordinary leap forward that gave them all hope.Bournemouth Daily Echo, 27th June 08By turns harrowing, humorous and inspirational.About the AuthorChristopher Stevens has been a senior sub-editor at the Observer for fourteen years and is also the author of Born Brilliant, the acclaimed biography of Kenneth Williams; Masters of Sitcom, a celebration of Galton and Simpson; and Thirty Days Has September, the bestselling reference book on Kindle.Born Brilliant was shortlisted for a "Sherry", the Sheridan Morley Theatre Biography Prize. It was adapted and broadcast as a Radio Four Book of the Week.

    She’s been married to Roy Tupkin for fifteen days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy’s wife.As stark and magnificent as Appalachia itself, If the Creek Don’t Rise is a bold and beautifully layered debut about a dusty, desperate town finding the inner strength it needs to outrun its demons. The folks of Baines Creek will take you deep into the mountains with heart, honesty, and homegrown grit.