Book picks similar to
Kolya by Zdeněk Svěrák


adult-fiction
anglicky-precteno
czech
film

Chasing Nirvana


Rafaa Dalvi - 2021
    The heady mix of human depravity, humour, satire, tragedy, revenge and drama makes these stories an essential cocktail of emotions.Review:“Breezy, Flippant, Poignant... Tales of pleasurable wickedness.”-Salil Desai, author of Inspector Saralkar Mystery Series“Although not all sugar and sunshine, Dalvi's voice is an important one, because he chooses to tell stories that others would normally shy away from. There's a serene resignation in his tales, one that is completely devoid of both hope as well as regret. I thoroughly enjoyed the stories.”-Bhaskar Chattopadhyay, author of Patang, Penumbra, Here Falls the Shadow, The Disappearance of Sally Sequeira and Best Served Cold“Gripping short-stories by Rafaa Dalvi. I am both intrigued and scared by his plot-twists. Thrilled to have read this book.”-Sanhita Baruah, author of The Art of Letting Go and The Art of Healing“Some of the best stories I have read so far. Rafaa has a gift of telling complex stories in a very intuitive and straightforward and are easy to read. This book is the best thing that has come out during these current circumstances.”-S. G. Kabe, author of Everything is Normal“Rafaa Dalvi is a flash fiction expert.”-T.F. Carthick, author of Carthick’s Unfairy Tales and More Unfairy Tales“Taut, propulsive and riveting, Rafaa’s mesmerising stories pack a big punch. Chasing Nirvana has been carefully crafted for maximum impact. A highly compelling read.”-Vivek Banerjee, author of ‘The Long Road’ and ‘The Other Side’

A Christmas Crime


Tara Lyons - 2019
    But instead of enjoying mince pies and mistletoe, their happiness is threatened by old secrets and someone harbouring a grudge. When the truth is finally revealed, can the couple enjoy the festivities with their family, or is their marriage doomed from the start? This short story is the perfect mystery to keep you guessing this holiday season, so why not enjoy it with a glass of mulled wine while sat next to a roaring fire. "A Christmas Crime is a Christmas pleasure to read. A wedding, snow, and revenge. Loved it, five stars recommended.” - Anita Waller, bestselling author of 34 Days and the Kat and Mouse Murder Mysteries

The Rebuilding of Tom Cooper


Spencer Brown - 2019
    A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy about life, love and contemporary manhood, Tom Cooper is a male Bridget Jones for our times.  ‘A gloriously self-aware, satirical romp through the terrors of relationships, family life and survival.  Philip Roth meets Cold Feet!’ Helen Lederer (Absolutely Fabulous, Losing It (P.G.Wodehouse Award nominee))   ‘Spencer Brown is endlessly inventive and delightfully, dependably silly, like a joy-seeking missile’ Richard Ayoade (The IT crowd, Submarine, The Crystal Maze) ‘An aspirational figure for the men of today’ Omid Djalili (Live at the Apollo, The Infidel) ‘Very funny. Peep Show combined with Outnumbered.  But you know.  In a book.’ Josh Howie (Josh Howie’s Losing it, BBC Radio 4) ‘Hilarious and heart-warming’ Andi Osho (Live at the Apollo, Curfew) Tom Cooper’s life has fallen apart. His wife has left, he’s stuck in an accountancy job he hates and he can’t even call on the grandparents for support – they’re too busy – after all, a Scrabble trophy doesn’t engrave itself. But when a creative position opens up at the advertising agency he works for, he sees the opportunity to turn things around. All he has to do is pitch a product to a new market, convince Maestro J he is sufficiently finger-clickingly ‘creative’, beat his weaselly co-worker/nemesis John to the job, and try not to fall for his new mentor, Amanda. Oh, and try to blend in with people 10 years younger than him, survive the office obstacle course using his imaginary agility and stop accidentally turning up to work in the exact same outfit as Doug. The Rebuilding of Tom Cooper is a laugh-out-loud comedy about life, love and 21st century manhood. 
 About the author Spencer Brown cut his teeth in the Cambridge Footlights alongside John Oliver and Matthew Holness, before becoming an internationally acclaimed stand-up comedian and TV presenter on shows including Lip Service which he hosted with Holly Willoughby. He has also appeared in cult comedies including Nathan Barley and Garth Merenghi's Darkplace, as well as starring in the films 'Shed of the Dead' and the upcoming 'The Devil went down to Islington'. He is also an award winning film maker, having written and directed The Boy with a Camera for a Face, which won multiple prizes including the Oscar qualifying Best of Fest at SLIFF.

The Farm - Free Preview (first 25 pages)


Tom Rob Smith - 2014
    But with a single phone call, everything changes. Your mother...she's not well, his father tells him. She's been imagining things - terrible, terrible things. She's had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital. Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I'm not mad... I need the police... Meet me at Heathrow.Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother's unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father.

Exercise Bike


Carlton Mellick III - 2017
    It is made from flesh and bone. It eats and breathes and poops. It was once a billionaire named Darren Oscarson who underwent years of cosmetic surgery to be transformed into a human exercise bike so that he could live out his deepest sexual fantasy. Now Tori is forced to ride him, use him as a normal piece of exercise equipment, no matter how grotesque his appearance. Set in a health food dystopia, "Exerice Bike" is an absurd horror tale of domination and submission, power and obedience, desire and desperation, from Wonderland Book Award winner Carlton Mellick III.

The Quiet Spectacular


Laurence Fearnley - 2016
    wild' while showcasing women's strength and purpose, and the power of friendship and laughter.Loretta is a school librarian, who embarks on compiling The Dangerous Book for Menopausal Women while waiting to collect her son from after-school activities.Chance is a teenager, who discovers an unusual creative outlet to offset the strain of her controlling mother.Riva is dedicated to the wetlands sanctuary she created, who is seeking a way to fulfil her promise to her dying sister to do something 'absolutely spectacular'.Within a clearing in the woods by a lake stands a den, a secret sanctuary and eventual meeting place for all three women . . .

28 Days Later: The Aftermath


Steve Niles - 2007
    Two idealistic scientists unwittingly developing the deadliest virus the world has ever known...A family making desperate choices as they struggle to survive the Infection's initial outbreak...A lone gunslinging survivor battling the Infected in a decimated London...Four original tales chronicling the greatest horror humanity has ever faced come together in a bloody conclusion as terrifying as the Rage Virus itself.Written by horror master Steve Niles (creator of the classic 30 Days of Night) and illustrated by three of the most terrifyingly talented illustrators working in comics today, 28 Days Later: The Aftermath begins before the hit movie—and ends with a shocking revelation that leads into the events of the sequel, 28 Weeks Later.

Paper Airplanes


Tabitha Forney - 2021
    Erin O’Connor has everything she’s ever dreamed of: good friends, a high-powered career at a boutique Manhattan firm, and a husband she adores. They have plans for their life together: careers, children, and maybe even a house in the country. But life has other plans. Daniel is a trader who works on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center.Erin is drinking margaritas on a beach in Mallorca, helping her best friend get over a breakup, when she hears a plane has crashed into Daniel’s building. On a television at the smoky hotel bar, she watches his building collapse. She makes her way home with the help of a stranger named Alec, and once there, she haunts Ground Zero, nearby hospitals, and trauma centers, plastering walls and fences with missing-person flyers. But there’s no trace of Daniel.After accepting Daniel’s death, Erin struggles to get her life back on track but makes a series of bad decisions and begins to live her life in a self-destructive fog of booze and pills. It’s not until she hits rock bottom that she realizes it’s up to her to decide: Was her destiny sealed with Daniel’s? Or is there life after happily ever after?

A Place Called Sorry


Donna Milner - 2015
    Addie-as her grandfather Chauncey Beynon Beale affectionately calls her- believes that everything she could ever want or need is to be found on his cattle ranch, the place her family calls home, or in the little town twelve bush miles away, a place called Sorry. After tragedy strikes her family, Addie holds her sorrows close to her heart. Only later will she learn that her grandfather too has lived with his own secret torment for more than seventy years. It will take his slipping into blindness and dementia before the dark spectre from his past emerges, leaving her the one responsible for its consequences. And when that day arrives, when Chauncey Beale's past intersects with Addie's present, it will change her future in ways that she, and those she loves, could never have imagined.

The Fountain


Emily Grayson - 2001
    Suddenly, standing in her back yard by the fountain is Will Combray, the man she once deeply loved and was engaged to marry, yet who jilted her on her wedding day. Older and wearier now, yet still handsome and unpredictable, Will tells Casey that he's come back in order to try and piece together his own life, which has been a series of emotional failures. He knows in his heart that everything went wrong for him the day he left her. Will's reappearance throws chaos into Casey's ordered life. Her marriage to the kind and faithful Michael Becket, who has been her best friend since childhood, has been a source of great comfort, if not passion. Tugged in one direction by faithfulness and honour, and in another by pure desire, Casey Becket must relive her own troubled history to discover which choice will satisfy her heart.

Escape


Lorena McCourtney - 1984
    So when a double tragedy leads to their deaths at the height of the Great Depression, a brokenhearted Beth steps forward to keep her vow.However, Joey is also the grandson of Nat Wilkerson, a dangerous and wealthy tycoon, who will stop at nothing to gain sole custody of the child, sending his son Guy to find the child. Beth and her beloved nephew Joey escape by train into the night, but to her dismay, Guy follows-though not for the reasons she suspects.Previously published by Palisades, Escape has sold 50,000 copies.

Ethan Frome and Summer


Edith Wharton - 1911
    Set in frigid New England, both deal with sexual awakening and appetite and their devastating consequences. This text includes newly commissioned notes.

Flip Side of the Game


Tu-Shonda L. Whitaker - 2004
    Born on the flip side of the hustler's game, she is the child of a fifteen year old drug addict who places her in a trash dump, with a note that read, please forgive me... my mother`s only fifteen... Well that is of little consolation to Vera as she lives her gold diggin' life full speed ahead, only to come to a crashing halt when she realizes that she can run but she can't hide; and facing up to the Flip Side of the Game is the only way she will survive.

The Arcade


Judy Turner - 1992
    But a terrible event changes everything for her. Marj cooks and waits tables at the wine bar, under the watchful eye of Martin, a chef of undoubted genius, despite his passion for women. Why has he never noticed Marj, though?As the shopkeepers struggle to make a living, each of them finds their life changing over the course of one eventful year.

The Chronicle of Golgotha Days


Sujith Balakrishnan - 2019
    Every day is a new hell for her, oscillating between torture and death, with a quickly dimming flicker of hope that one day she will find her way back home. But will she? What does home really mean to a fractured soul? In anguish, it appears the whole world delights in schadenfreude, while God lies in wait. In wait for what, no one knows. ***A provocative concoction of realism, mystery and myth in a dystopian tone. Throughout the reading, a sense of pain carries forward till the end and it endures. A disturbing impactful debut novel - The New Indian express Will leave a deep impact on the readers. The details and tone of the story are haunting. Incredible writing - The news up About the Author: Sujith Balakrishnan was born in Kerala, India. An engineer by profession, he lives in UAE. This is his Debut Novel. He can be contacted at - sujithwriter2018@gmail.com