Tinder Press Escape Routes Исигуро Наоми

Did you ever have a friend who made you see the world differently? • Stan did, and his name was Charlie. They crossed paths by chance one day, cycling on Goshawk Common. Fearless, clever, older, Charlie was everything Stan - bullied and adrift after his father's death - wanted to be. Charlie taught Stan to ask questions, to stand on his own two feet. But could their friendship endure in a world that offered these two boys such different prospects? • When the two meet again, as adults, the tables have turned, and while Stan is revelling in all the city has to offer, Charlie is the one struggling. But will Stan be there for the man who once showed him the meaning of loyalty?

Laura, a laundress, meets her young husband when they are both placed in service in Teignmouth in 1914. They have a baby, Charles, but his father returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave Laura a widow • As a new war looms, Charles signs up for the navy as a coder. His escape from the tight, gossipy confines of Launceston to a more colourful life in action sees him blossom, as he experiences the possibility of death, and the excitement - even terror - of a love that is as clandestine as his work

I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards • Sunday Forrester lives with her sixteen-year-old daughter, Dolly, in the house she grew up in. She does things more carefully than most people. On quiet days, she must eat only white foods. Her etiquette handbook guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is Dolly – her clever, headstrong daughter, now on the cusp of leaving home • Into this carefully ordered world step Vita and Rollo, a couple who move in next door, disarm Sunday with their charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday’s book. Soon they are in and out of each others’ homes, and Sunday feels loved and accepted like never before

Worn out by poverty, Lettie Radley and her miner husband Tommy grasp at the offer of their very own smallholding - part of a Government scheme to put the unemployed back to work on the land. When she comes down to Essex to join him, it's not Tommy who greets her, but their new neighbours. Overbearing and unkempt, Jean and Adam Dell are everything that the smart, spirited, aspirational Lettie can't abide • As Lettie settles in, she finds an unexpected joy in the rhythms of life on the smallholding. She's hopeful that her past, and the terrible secret Tommy has come to Foxash to escape, are far behind them. But the Dells have their own secrets. And as the seasons change, and a man comes knocking at the gate, the scene is set for a terrible reckoning

I am, I Am, I Am is a memoir with a difference - the unputdownable story of an extraordinary woman's life in near-death experiences. Insightful, inspirational, gorgeously written, it is a book to be read at a sitting, a story you finish newly conscious of life's fragility, determined to make every heartbeat count • A childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital. Shocking, electric, unforgettable, this is the extraordinary memoir from Costa Novel-Award winner and Sunday Times bestselling author Maggie O'Farrell. It is a book to make you question yourself. What would you do if your life was in danger, and what would you stand to lose?

The Professor lives in Brooklyn; her partner Nathan left her when she couldn't have a baby. All she has now is her dead-end teaching job, her ramshackle apartment, and Nathan's old moggy, Cat. Who she doesn't even like • The Actress lives a few doors down. She's famous and beautiful, with auburn hair, perfect skin, a lovely smile. She's got children - a baby, even. And a husband who seems to adore her. She leaves her windows open, even at night • There's no harm, the Professor thinks, in looking in through the illuminated glass at that shiny, happy family, fantasizing about them, drawing ever closer to the actress herself. Or is there?

Mallory sees the woman for the first time at her college gym and is immediately transfixed. As a naturally reserved person who is now reeling from the loss of her mother, Mallory finds herself compelled by the woman's assurance, and longs to know her better. Despite the discovery that she is a professor at the college, Mallory finds herself falling into a complicated love affair with the woman, the stakes of which she never quite understands • In the years that follow, Mallory must come to terms with how the relationship shaped her, for better or worse, and learn to become a part of the world that she sacrificed for the sake of a woman she never truly knew • In this enthralling debut novel, the complexities of influence, obsession, and admiration reveal how desire and its consequences can alter the trajectory of a life

On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Year revellers, Jake realises that things are becoming dangerous • They know nothing of one another's existence, but both Stella and Jake flee their lives: Jake in search of a place so remote it doesn't appear on any map, and Stella for a destination in Scotland, the significance of which only her sister, Nina, will understand

It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce - back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share

When Lily moves into Marcus's flat and plunges headlong into a relationship, she must contend not merely with the disapproval of flatmate Aidan, but with a more intangible, hostile presence. Could it be that Sinead, Marcus's ex, is trying to communicate with her? When Lily begins to 'see' Sinead, first about the flat, and then on the streets of London, she must question not merely her sanity, but whether the man she loves is someone she can, or indeed ought, to live with at all

The party has to end sometime • It all starts on New Year's Eve. A night that has to be a success, whatever the cost. For Joni and her friends, it'll be a party that promises all the high stakes and glamour of any other, but by sunrise they'll be dealing with something darker than the usual post-party comedown • Not that they let this stand in their way. For this is their year to revel in all that the playground of London has to offer: sneaking into places they shouldn't, breaking every rule, falling in love with the wrong people. All the while avoiding one undeniable truth: it's not if the party ends, it's how • Just For Today is a bittersweet evocation of the end of innocence, and an exhilarating celebration of having nothing to lose - until suddenly, you do

Sylvie and Gabe meet and fall in love at boarding school in Northern California when they are just teenagers. Their headmaster is the enigmatic and mysterious Dr Keller, a man obsessed with the idea that people's waking stress and trauma can be cured in their dreams. The young couple can't help but be drawn into his magnetic pull and slowly become involved in his research • Years later, Sylvie and Gabe are once again working on Dr Keller's experiments and Sylvie slowly begins to realise there is more both to her employer and her lover than meets the eye, and that the line between dreams and reality has become dangerously blurred