Narrative theme: Sense of place

Showing 81–96 of 117 resultsSorted by latest

  • Orbital

    £9.99

    Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the Earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from Earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it.

  • August blue

    £9.99

    ‘If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? That summer, the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries’. Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live? Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm. A vivid portrait of a long-held identity coming apart, ‘August Blue’ expands our understanding of the ways in which we seek to find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.

  • The last devil to die

    £9.99

    You’d think you would be allowed to relax over Christmas, but not in the world of the Thursday Murder Club. On Boxing Day, a dangerous package is smuggled across the English coast. When it goes missing, chaos is unleashed. The body count starts to rise – including someone close to the Thursday Murder Club – as our gang face an impossible search and their most deadly opponents yet. With the clock ticking down and a killer heading to Cooper’s Chase, has their luck finally run out? And who will be ‘the last devil to die’?

  • Before we say goodbye

    £10.99

    The fourth novel in the sensational ‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’ series featuring cafe regulars, with the same time-travelling offer, back in the Tokyo cafe – if customers follow the rules.

  • Happy place

    £9.99

    Harriet and Wyn are the perfect couple – they go together like bread and butter, gin and tonic, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Every year for the past decade, they have run away from their lives to drink far too much wine and soak up the sea air with their favourite people in the world. Except this year, they are lying through their teeth. Harriet and Wyn broke up six months ago. And they still haven’t told anyone. But this is the last time they’ll all be together here. The cottage is for sale, and since they can’t bear to break their best friends’ hearts, they’ll fake it for one more week. But how can you pretend to be in love in front of the people who know you best?

  • Before your memory fades

    £10.99

    The third novel from the author of the phenomenon Before the Coffee Gets Cold: tales from a little cafe in Hakodate, Cafe Donna Donna, where customers may travel through time – if they obey the rules. For fans of The Guest Cat and If Cats Disappeared from the World.

  • The bullet that missed

    £9.99

    It is an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal. Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A local news legend is on the hunt for a sensational headline, and soon the gang are hot on the trail of two murders, ten years apart. To make matters worse, a new nemesis pays Elizabeth a visit, presenting her with a deadly mission: kill or be killed. While Elizabeth grapples with her conscience (and a gun), the gang and their unlikely new friends (including TV stars, money launderers and ex-KGB colonels) unravel a new mystery. But can they catch the culprit and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?

  • The Paris Apartment

    £10.99

    *The brand new thriller from Lucy Foley – THE MIDNIGHT FEAST – is available to buy now*

    *The No.1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller*

    Discover the electric thriller from the No.1, million-copy bestseller, Lucy Foley

  • The Enchanted April

    £10.99

    Elizabeth von Arnim’s much-loved novel about four women sharing a castle in the Italian Riviera.

  • The Lincoln Highway

    £10.99

    In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. With his mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett plans to pick up his eight-year-old brother Billy and head to California to start a new life. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car. They have a very different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take the four of them on a fateful journey in the opposite direction – to New York City.

  • The Man Who Died Twice

    £9.99

    It’s the following Thursday. Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He is being hunted and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very big mistake. As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a killer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn’t that be a bonus? But this time they are up against a ruthless murderer who wouldn’t bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can the Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before the killer finds them?

  • The Paper Palace

    £9.99

    Before anyone else is awake, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the glorious freshwater pond below ‘The Paper Palace’ – the gently decaying summer camp in the back woods of Cape Cod where her family has spent every summer for generations. As she passes the house, Elle glances through the screen porch at the table from the dinner the previous evening; empty wine glasses, candle wax on the tablecloth, echoes of laughter of family and friends. Then she dives beneath the surface of the freezing water to the shocking memory of the sudden passionate encounter she had the night before, up against the wall behind the house, as her husband and mother chatted to the guests inside. So begins a story that unfolds over 24 hours and across 50 years, as decades of family legacies, love, lies, secrets and one unspeakable incident in her childhood lead Elle to the precipice of a life-changing decision.

  • The Island of Missing Trees

    £10.99

    1974, on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows. In ‘The Island of Missing Trees’, prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.

  • Still Life

    £9.99

    THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

    Over 500,000 copies sold internationally
    A BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick
    A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime
    Winner of Dymocks Book of the Year

    ‘Sheer joy’ GRAHAM NORTON

  • The four winds

    £9.99

    An epic, sweeping tale of love and loss set in the midst of the Great Depression in 1930s America, by the multi-million-copy global bestseller Kristin Hannah.

  • It Happened One Summer

    £10.00

    Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar – in Washington. Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather – and the hot, grumpy local – that she’s more than a pretty face. Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan.