Each has a secret, and each will stop at nothing to find freedom.Suspending Reality is a novel that asks the question - can you ever outrun consequence?

    The narrator, Steve Geddes, is a writer doing a book on collectors, especially those with "unlikely, bizarre, or exceptionally useless collections." His research leads him to the Havergals, a wealthy, eccentric couple. They "collect people"; that is, she does the "collecting" while he watches-"a bout of troilism," as Geddes calls it. By accident, Geddes learns that reclusive "cult author" Thornton McCain may have written a book that Geddes hasn't heard of. Geddes the observer becomes both obsessed collector and, for the randy Havergals, object to be collected. An insightful delight from start to finish; recommended for all fiction collections.

    I know exactly what Jolly would say: I know because I've written words to mistresses before. Hundreds of them."On the day of her 26th birthday, Jane is recently single, adrift at her job, and intrigued by why Clem - her much older, married boss - is singing to her.Meanwhile her alter-ego, the online agony aunt Jolly Politely, has all the answers. She's provided thousands of strangers with insightful and occasionally cutting insights to contemporary life's most vexing questions.When she and Clem kiss at a party, Jane does not follow the advice she would give to her readers as Jolly: instead she plunges head-first into an affair. One that could jeopardise her friendships, her career and even her life.

    Tina yearns for this new setting to bring her the zen-like inner peace she's always heard about on infomercials. Instead, she becomes a totally exasperated fish out of water, doing wacky things like stealing the shoes of a shifty delivery man, spraying local women with a bidet hose, and contemplating the murder of her new pet cricket.It takes the friendship of an elderly tai chi instructor, a hot Mandarin tutor, and several mah-jongg-tile-slinging expats to bring Tina closer to a culture she doesn't understand, the dream job she never knew existed, and the self she has always sought. Fish Heads and Duck Skin will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered who they are, why they were put here, and how they ever lived before eating pan-fried pork buns.

    By the time he ran for help, they chased him from Hemingway's Walloon Lake to the sultry sands of the Caribbean. Snubbed by the authorities, scorned by his patients, he turns to the woman of his future with ties to his past. They all had a secret to tell; they all had a secret to keep. Find out what it was. Chris Zimmerman at his unbridled best: another devilishly clever tale of revenge, adventure, and romance, set amidst northern Michigan's most familiar landmarks. Cut from the same cloth as Intentional Acts, Zimmerman's second work, The Secret-Keeper, takes you on a whirlwind ride of a Mt. Pleasant widower and his quest to avenge his wife's death.

    He is the villain of five marriages and the father of a daughter so obsessed that she has been writing a book about him for years. Hamilton Stark is a boor, a misanthrope, a handsome man: funny, passionately honest, and a good dancer. The narrator, a middle-aged writer, decides to write about Stark as a hero whose anger and solitude represent passion and wisdom. At the same time that he tells Hamilton Stark's story, he describes the process of writing the novel and the complicated connections between truth and fiction. As Stark slips in and out of focus, maddeningly elusive and fascinatingly complex, this beguiling novel becomes at once a compelling meditation on identity and a thoroughly engaging story of life on the cold edge of New England.

    The loathed customers are dealt the poor treatment they seem to deserve, bad rap music is played loudly, and The Rat is killed often enough to stem his immortality. And the insane homeless regulars -- like drunken Little Johnny Redbeard -- keep life interesting.But when a rival tricks the crew into thinking that the deli's closure is imminent, they do the only logical thing: instead of giving up, they decide to go out in a blaze of glory, handing their customers the humiliation and abuse that the pesky social contract had previously forbidden. But as insults turn to assaults and snide remarks turn to harassment and pro wrestling moves, a strange thing happens. Business goes up -- way up -- as people come back in droves, begging for more.But the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and as pop-culture welcomes the parody musical group "The Bialy Pimps" and its frivolous merchandising machine -- and as the crew pushes to see how much bad behavior society will accept -- the violent road to fame begins to feel like a runaway train, out of control and headed for destruction…The Bialy Pimps is a tale that could only be spun by the twisted, vaguely profane mind of outspoken blogger Johnny B. Truant. Combining hilarity with questions about conformity and whether the tail or the dog is the one doing the wagging, this story can't help but raise a question for the reader: If the rest of your friends decided to submit to the Face-Kicking Machine, would you do it too?

    After 5 years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up.

    What twisted, funny tales would it unleash upon the world?Each episode of Crackanory contains two 15-minute tales and is a master class in storytelling, combining some of the UK's best comedy writers and performers.Full author list: Nico Tatarowicz, Toby Davies, Kevin Eldon, Ali Crockatt, David Scott, Laurence Rickard, Jeremy Dyson, Simon Judd, Alex Carter and Holly WalshFull narrator list: Jack Dee, Sally Phillips, Rebecca Front, Kevin Eldon, Harry Enfield, Sarah Solemani, Sharon Horgan, Charlie Higson, Richard Hammond and Jessica Hynes.

    Jackson, Vivvie’s husband, was shot and killed 30 years ago, and the ramifications have splintered the family into their own isolated remembrances and recriminations.This deeply personal, hauntingly melancholy look at the damages families inflict on each other – and the healing that only they can provide – is filled with flinty, flawed and complex people stumbling towards some kind of peace. Like Elizabeth Strout and Kazuo Isiguro, Deborah Reed understands a story and its inhabitants reveal themselves in the subtleties: the space between the thoughts, the sigh behind the smile, and the unreliable lies people tell themselves that ultimately reveal the deepest truths.

    That changed on the day a tragic accident ripped her husband away from her - and shattered everything.

    For Mary Callaghan marriage has brought heartaches and disappointment. But with it have come joys, the greatest of which are her daughters, Daisy and Nell. Mary longs for them to have the one thing denied to her - a husband who will offer them kindness, security and love.But when Daisy confesses she's pregnant, the future looks grim, for the father's a rough, pleasure-loving man. As Nell watches her sister sink into bitter poverty, and as the world around her grows more uncertain, with war more likely by the day, risking all for love seems to Nell a foolish game...

    1 Kindle bestseller The Letter, comes The Secret - a heartbreaking novel of tragedy, hope and second chances. Readers who treasure the novels of Lesley Pearse and Susan Lewis will adore this author. Mary has been nursing a secret. Forty years ago, she made a choice that would change her world for ever, and alter the path of someone she holds dear.Beth is searching for answers. She has never known the truth about her parentage, but finding out could be the lifeline her sick child so desperately needs. When Beth finds a faded newspaper cutting amongst her mother's things, she realises the key to her son's future lies in her own past. She must go back to where it all began to unlock...The Secret.

    Once he gets there, what he finds is worse than his most hellish imaginings: a young woman, beaten and burned almost beyond recognition, a trauma case as terrible as any he has ever seen. What Jackson's colleagues don't know is that the victim, Allie, is actually his lover. With Allie in a coma, Jackson keeps their relationship quiet and takes part in her reconstruction, a complicated and grueling set of procedures that only the most skilled specialists can perform. But as he and the other doctors struggle to put her back together, the fractures in Jackson's own life begin to break apart dramatically. When the San Francisco Police Department's investigation of the attack leads to his door, Jackson knows the truth can no longer be suppressed."Ghost Image" is an expertly plotted, chillingly vivid, and wholly absorbing mystery, signaling the debut of an unforgettable new voice in the genre. Taking readers inside the operating room and literally under the skin of its patients, it's a story that will appeal to those fascinated by medicine and forensics. It is also a story -- like all classic crime novels -- about guilt and innocence, good and evil. But, above all, it is a story of love -- the kind of love that might prove deadly, or that might just save your soul.

    Straightforward and simple. Everyone in their places, getting along, going along...Until everything goes wrong.When it does, Gillian, Stuart and Oliver decide that it's time to talk it all over. Because although they'd all agree that the orderliness of their lives has suddenly mutated into chaos - the alarming fluctuations of love being the chief culprit - that's about all they'd agree on ("One bit of information and people are immediately off into their theories," says Stuart, a bit pedantically). And each of them is determined to be heard.What we hear are three wonderfully realized voices telling three wildly different versions of one story - presenting the protean facts of disintegrating and escalating affections, laying blame, taking blame, talking about themselves, about each other, across each other, behind each other's backs, all in an attempt to get at the endlessly elusive truth. And what they reveal is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartrending process of selective memory that deeply colors the (more or less) fine art of eyewitnessing.Once again, the brilliant author of "Flaubert's Parrot", "Staring at the Sun" and "A History of the World in 10-and-1/2 Chapters" gives us a dazzling work of imagination: witty, wry, playful and, in the end, honed to a razor-sharp emotional edge.