Book picks similar to
The Naughty Bunny by John Malam
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A Vintage Friendship: the most uplifting and feel-good read for 2021
Cathy Hopkins - 2020
Now in her sixties, Sara has realized – late in the day – that those women were the best friends she’d ever had and is determined to get the gang back together.Ally is a grieving widow, adjusting to life without her soul mate and Jo, after years of being chief cook and bottle washer, needs to put herself first after a health scare.None of them know what happened to Mitch. The coolest and most enigmatic of the foursome doesn’t want to be found and it seems that even after all these years, the women are still keeping a few secrets from each other…
The Magic Pot
Patricia Coombs - 1977
A demon in the guise of a magic pot outwits a greedy rich man and brings wealth and happiness to a poor old fellow and his wife.
Skyfall
Saba Karim Khan - 2020
Despite the worst of humanity every day – her madrassa running father selling her mother's body and beating her sister – Rania remains the 'Troublemaker', unable to give up on her dreams.When an Indian filmmaker encourages her to enrol in a music contest that can take her to New York, her dreams take flight. But even as she wins the hearts of her listeners, a family secret threatens to bring her life in Heera Mandi back in sharp relief, upending the new life she has built for herself.From the oppressive walls of religious hypocrisy to the orange jumpsuits of American prisons, Skyfall is a tender, piercing debut that teaches us the strength of human endeavour and our desire for love in a time of hate.
No Silver Spoon
Katie Flynn - 1999
Dympna, the only girl, adores her father Micheál. She does her best to help her English mother and the family rub along by working hard and expecting little.But beneath the smooth-seeming surface there are hidden secrets. Beatrice idolises her clever eldest son, but her attitude to her husband and to Dympna is puzzling. Yet when the family desperately needs money it is Dympna who crosses the water to Liverpool, to send money back for them.Meanwhile, in Liverpool orphaned, half-starved Jimmy Ruddock struggles to escape from his background with little success until he meets Elsie, a tough young slum-dweller who helps him to better himself. Then he starts work abroad a Fleetwood trawler, and meets up with Dympna...Set in the late 1920s and 30s, No Silver Spoon charts the pleasures and pains of life - and love - in the glorious countryside of Connemara and in the fiercely competitive streets of the Liverpool slums. It confirms Katie Flynn as one of the most beloved and bestselling saga writers in Britain.
Dancing with Einstein
Kate Wenner - 2004
She is Marea Hoffman, who, after wandering the world for seven years, has returned to New York at age thirty with the intention of starting her real life.But Marea approaches everything in her own idiosyncratic style, and she is soon seeing four different therapists simultaneously and telling her story to each in a different way. The story she reveals is about her childhood in 1950s Princeton during the age of “duck and cover” drills and McCarthyism, when fear of communism obsessed America. Marea’s father, a Holocaust survivor, worked on the Manhattan Project and later on the development of the hydrogen bomb; her mother was a confirmed pacifist.Frightened by her early exposure to the threat of nuclear annihilation, young Marea finds comfort in the company of her father’s colleague and friend, the grandfatherly Albert Einstein. Einstein charms Marea even as he provokes the wrenching moral debate that will drive her parents apart. When Einstein disappears from Marea’s life as suddenly as he entered it and her father is killed in a mysterious car accident, she is left alone with a mother she no longer trusts and with questions that won’t go away.Nearly two decades later, during the August hiatus from her four therapists, Marea takes a reluctant trip home to Princeton. There her eyes are newly opened to the past when she uncovers her father’s secret Cold War diary.Weaving back and forth between 1970s New York and 1950s Princeton, Wenner’s exploration of the impact that history can have on a young life is powerful and moving—a deeply intelligent look at the challenge of finding hope in the modern age.
The Skinning Tree
Srikumar Sen - 2012
When Sabby is sent to a boarding school in northern India, he witnesses a strict regime in which the schoolboys are beaten and brutalized by the teachers.The boys themselves take on their abusers' cruel traits, mindlessly killing animals and hanging their skins on a cactus, before their thoughts turn to even more sinister schemes. Conspiratorial whisperings and plans of revenge spiral into a tragedy engulfing Sabby in a chilling exploration of human nature's darkest facets.
How it Works: The Student
Jason A. Hazeley - 2016
. . in other words the back-to-schoolers and the university goers. __________________________________This is a student.He is leaving home for the first time.By the time he graduates, he will be grown-up: exhausted, hideously in debt and unable to imagine going to bed sober.__________________________________Reynard has brought everything he needs for his first year.He unpacks his fancy-dress costumes, his four-way extension leads, his pair of pants and all his didgeridoos.By doing front, back, inside-out front, inside-out back, and using Febreze and Imodium, he plans to make his pants last until half term.__________________________________ This delightful book is part of a series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. Featuring original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text. Other titles in the Ladybirds for Grown Ups series: How it Works: The Cat How it Works: The Dog How it Works: The Grandparent The Ladybird Book of the Meeting The Ladybird Book of Red Tape The Ladybird Book of the People Next Door The Ladybird Book of the Sickie The Ladybird Book of the Zombie ApocalypseHow it Works: The Husband How it Works: The Wife How it Works: The Mum How it Works: The Dad The Ladybird Book of the Mid-Life Crisis The Ladybird Book of the Hangover The Ladybird Book of Mindfulness The Ladybird Book of the Shed The Ladybird Book of Dating The Ladybird Book of the Hipster
The Suckers Kiss
Alan Parker - 2003
During the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, seven-year-old Thomas Moran finds himself accidentally embarking on a career in pick-pocketing. In the following years he becomes a master of his dubious craft and grows to manhood traveling from state to state across America. His picaresque journey takes him through Prohibition and the Depression; into the desperate highs of the Hootchy-Kootchy and the dying vineyards of California, accompanied by an array of richly drawn characters frantically clutching at the crumbling American Dream. Italian and Chinese gangsters, con-artists, corrupt clergy, and speak-easy bootleggers all have a part to play in Tommy's destiny, but it is Effie, the great love of his life, who offers him the chance to change his future, and tries to save him from himself. Colorfully written, engaging and richly evocative of an extraordinary period in American history, The Sucker's Kiss marks the literary debut of a master storyteller.
The Beast of Ten
Beth Brower - 2018
THE DEATH BLEAK - For centuries he has haunted the nations, taking the blood gain further than any before himTHE PYRE - His storied stronghold deep in the Forrest of Naeethe, its glory forgotten, its ancient purposes abandonedAND I, EMBER - Sent by the Lights to stop him from becoming the one thing that all nations fear the most.
Little Miss Splendid and the Princess
Roger Hargreaves - 2006
Men land . . . Until a princess moves in next door . . .