Life is an adventure for ten-year-old Darius Frobisher. His eccentric father Rudy sells insurance four days a week. The other three days he goes on exotic journeys. Then there is Darius's scatterbrained, much-loved babysitter Miss Hastings, who throws water balloons with him and makes delicious burned toast.But when his father flies off in a hot air balloon and doesn't come back, Darius's happy, carefree life suddenly comes to an end. He is torn away from Miss Hastings and sent to live with his notoriously nasty Aunt Ida, where he has to sleep alone in a cold, damp basement. Most of his waking time is spent trying to dodge the teenage boy next door, who is home from military school and hungry to do horrible things to someone younger than himself.Darius sees a ray of hope when he finds a rusty old bicycle in the basement and begins to repair it in secret. Could this be the first step toward a reunion with Miss Hastings? Then one day he is startled to see an old man...

It is 1976 and Mikey, eight-years-old and street-wise beyond his years, is looking forward to a summer of freedom, roaming the creeks and the mud-flats of Canvey Island. But violent emotions are rumbling beneath the surface, about to destroy all that he thought he knew. When Mikey's neighbours, the Freemans, win a great deal of money, the old couple become the targets of a criminal act that leaves Peggy Freeman dead and her husband, Bert thirsting for revenge. Believing that young Mikey's family is responsible, Bert devises a highly unusual but devastatingly effective form of reprisal. But where does the guilt really lie, and will there be punishment or redemption? Told from Mikey's viewpoint with light touches of humour, A Patient Man is a gripping crime novel peopled with believable characters who are drawn inexorably in to a story that explores the effects of greed, money and the human need for retribution.

With Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis established himself as the bad boy of twentieth-century British letters. Later he became famous as another kind of bad boy, an inveterate boozer, a red-faced scourge of political correctness. He was consistent throughout in being a committed enemy of any form of "right thinking," which helped to make him one of the most consistently unconventional and exploratory writers of his day, a master of classical English prose who was unafraid to apply himself to literary genres all too often dismissed as "low." Science fiction, the spy story, the ghost story were all grist for Amis's mill, and nowhere is the experimental spirit in which he worked, his will to test both reality and the reader's imagination, more apparent than in his short stories. These "woodchips from [his] workshop"--as he called them--are anything but throwaway work. They are instead the essence of Amis, a brew that is as tonic as it is intoxicating.

Luck be a vampire tonight . . . When Nicole Phillips agreed to hire a housekeeper, she pictured someone a little frumpy and almost certainly female. Instead, she gets gorgeous, unmistakably male Jake Colson. The man is proving indispensable in the kitchen—and everywhere else. Except Jake might not be a mortal man at all. . . . and every night Who wouldn't want to be a tall, dark, powerful vampire? Jake, for one. He's barely had time to adjust to his new state before he's roped into a family favor. Still, secretly playing bodyguard to sweet, sexy Nicole is turning out to be the wildest ride of his life. First he'll put a stop to whoever's targeting her. Then he'll prove that this kind of love, and luck, happens only once in an eternity.

A character driven narrative that follows the Twist of Fate that thrusts Lexi Reed (our feisty, career driven heroine) into the role of publicist for her favourite rock band. Lexi moves half a world away to realise her dreams and through her adventures challenges her concepts of what love, life and what relationships are all about.

Meet Dottie Harris. She lived the self-indulgent lifestyle of every childless couple. Then she and her partner decided to have kids.Struggling through the issues of pregnancy and motherhood, Dottie turns to social networking. Once there to help organise her social life, she quickly becomes reliant on it, using it as a way to reach out to others and beginning to come to terms with the funny side of motherhood, whilst realising that she's not the only person to consider anything after 7am a lie in.Made up entirely of Facebook-style updates you can follow Dottie on her journey, spanning four years of her life. It includes worries, insecurities, tears and tantrums, along with the things nobody ever tells you about motherhood!Full of humour and honesty, watch Dottie as she trades in her social life for the sofa and a bottle of gin, watching her children grow older and her less enthusiastic. A book that all ages can relate to.

English professor and aspiring novelist, Grace Warner spends her days teaching four sections of "Beowulf for Cretins" to bored and disinterested students at one of New England's "hidden ivy" colleges. Not long after she is dumped by her longtime girlfriend, Grace meets the engaging and mysterious Abbie on a cross-country flight. Sparks fly on and off the plane as the two strangers give in to one night of reckless passion with no strings attached, and no contact information exchanged. Back home at St. Albans, the college rocks Grace's world when it announces the appointment of a new president, the first woman in its 165-year history. Cue Abbie—and cue Grace's collision course with a neurotic dog named Grendel, a fractious rival for tenure, and a woman called Ochre, in what very well might be Grace's last real shot at happiness. This full-length novel reimagines and expands on the short story, "Falling From Grace," which was originally published in the...