Weidenfeld & Nicolson Pretty Things Браун Джанелль

When someone delivers an alligator to Judge Bob Gibbs' porch, there's no shortage of suspects - hard-sentencing, womanising redneck 'Maximum Bob' is pretty much the most unpopular man in Florida • Throw into the mix the Crowe clan - about as primitive and aggressive as any alligator - a doped-up doctor on early release with a tag, quick-witted probation officer Kathy Baker, a mermaid and a long-dead slave girl called Wanda and things get a tad complicated • And inevitably, they don't work out the way you might expect

I have taken apart every panel of this, like an ornamental fan. But we stayed in the cottage for three weeks only, just three weeks, because it was cut short you see - cut short after just three weeks, when I'd left my entire life behind • When Alannah was twenty-three, she met a man who was older than her - a married man - and fell in love. Things happened suddenly. They met in April, in the first bit of mild weather; and in August, they went to stay in rural Ireland, overseen by the cottage's landlady • Six years later, when Alannah is newly married to another man, she sees the landlady from afar. Memories of those days spent in bliss, then torture, return to her. And the realisation that she has been waiting - all this time - to be rediscovered

Words are under threat • It's time to fight back • Imagine a world without words • A world in which books, libraries and newspapers are things of the past • A world where personal devices provide all you could want or need • Anana Johnson and her father, Doug, are hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed of the English Dictionary. But one evening, Doug disappears and Anana unearths a single written clue: ALICE • In the battle to save her father, Anana discovers secret societies, dark incinerator rooms and underground passages • Above all, she finds a world that faces ruin from the dark side of technology

It all began with the whale • When a young man washes up on the sands of St Piran in Cornwall, it is clear to the villagers that this is not a regular day. What has brought him here? And what is the crisis only he understands, that threatens not only their community but all of civilisation? • With a global pandemic on the horizon, and a whale lurking in the bay, the villagers of St Piran must band together to survive. Intimate, funny and heart-warming, John Ironmonger tells a compelling story about the important things that hold us together, and how hope can be found, even at the end of the world

Los Angeles - a city of scheming Malibu actresses, ruthless gang members, virulent inequality and washed-out police • Roaming the city streets is Philip Marlowe: a quiet, lonely, remarkably capable private detective, living beneath the shadow of his father - a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective now drinking his life away • Marlowe's latest client is tyrannical starlet Kendra James. Kendra's husband was fatally shot near their Malibu home, but even though that murder remains unresolved, the actress is more interested in tracking down her 17-year-old stepdaughter. But things get complicated after Marlowe lands a second missing person search from British academic Ren Stewart, whose ex-husband has kidnapped their seven-year-old son • Steeped in the richly detailed ethnic neighborhoods of modern LA, Ide's The Goodbye Coast is a bold recreation that is viciously funny, ingeniously plotted, and surprisingly tender

As a child, Devi befriends a young boy whose mother has died in tragic circumstances. Over the years, Devi and Devanna become inseparable as they go to school together and learn more about the extended family that surrounds them • However things change when Devi meets Muthi, a young man who has killed a tiger and is feted as a hero. Although she is still a child and Muthi is a man, Devi vows that one day she will marry him. It is this love that will gradually drive a wedge between her and her friend Devanna, who has been taken under the wing of a local missionary. For Devi is blind to the fact that Devanna himself has fallen for her • Devanna leaves the village to study medicine, in the hope that when he returns Devi will see his worth and return his love, but then a tragedy changes the fate of all three, with far-reaching consequences for the generations to come

Isaiah Quintabe's first love, Grace, has been kidnapped by maniacal hitman Skip Hanson, who is determined to punish Isaiah for sending him to prison • With Grace's safety at stake, Isaiah reunites with his old partner, ex-hustler Juanell Dodson, to track down Grace's whereabouts • Trouble comes in the shape of Winne Hando, a homicide detective with something to prove. Winnie sees Isaiah's involvement as a potential embarrassment: an unlicensed PI can't be seen doing a better job than a police department • As Winnie and Isaiah compete in their increasingly desperate hunt, Isaiah starts to fear that even if he can bring Grace home alive, things between them will never be the same

'You be me, and I'll be you' I whispered • As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn't even tell them apart. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role • But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years • Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli's life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl

These nine stories of queer male intimacy brim with simmering secrecy, ecstasy, loneliness and love in their depictions of what it means to be gay in contemporary Nigeria • A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn't understand then. A daughter returns home to Lagos after the death of her father, forced to face her past - and future -relationship with his longtime partner. A young musician rises to fame at the risk of losing himself, and the man who loves him • Generations collide, families break and are remade, languages and cultures intertwine, and lovers find their ways to futures; from childhood through adulthood; on university campuses, city centres, and neighbourhoods where church bells mingle with the morning call to prayer

Vera was painting the pony's hooves gold in the dining room; Janet said this was bad for him; poison would seep into his bloodstream • At the bottom of a great stone staircase, dressed in her mother's black lace evening dress, twisted in murderous death, lies Janet. So end the sixteen years of Janet's short life • A life spent in a draughty Scottish castle, where roses will not grow, and a jackdaw decides to live in the doll's house • A life peopled by prettier, smoother-haired siblings, a Nanny with a face like the North Sea and the peculiar, whisky-swigging Cousin Lila • A life where Janet is perpetually misunderstood - and must turn from people, to animals, to books, to her own wild and wonderful imagination

A thrilling story of fame, fortune, and impossible choices • Caleb Horowitz is twenty-seven, and his wildest dreams are about to come true. His manuscript has caught the attention of the literary agent, who offers him fame, fortune and a taste of the literary life. He can't wait for his book to be shopped around to every editor in New York, except one: Avi Dietsch, a college rival and the novel's 'inspiration.' • When Avi gets his hands on the manuscript, he sees nothing but theft - and opportunity. And so Caleb is forced to make a Faustian bargain, one that tests his theories of success, ambition and the limits of art

Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat and centuries-old olive groves. There Teresa spends long afternoons enveloped in a sun-struck stupor, reading her grandmother's cheap crime paperbacks • Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the masseria next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern - the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate and seemingly unassailable bond • But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers