- Table View
- List View
Lust
by Roald DahlPERFECT for fans of Roald Dahl.Think you know Dahl? Think again. There's still a whole world of Dahl to discover in a newly collected book of his deliciously dark tales for adults . . . We fall not in love but in lust . . .Lust, in all its myriad forms, consumes us. What won't we do to achieve our heart's desire? In these ten tales of twisted love master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how our darkest impulses reveal who we really are.Here you'll read a story concerning wife swapping with a sting in its tail, hear of the aphrodisiac that drives men into a frenzy, discover the last act in a tale of jilted first love and discover the naked truth of art, among others.Roald Dahl reveals even more about the darker side of human nature in seven other centenary editions: Cruelty, Madness, Deception, Innocence, Trickery, War and Fear.
‘Luuurve is a many trousered thing…’: Confessions Of Georgia Nicolson (Confessions of Georgia Nicolson #8)
by Louise RennisonSound the Cosmic Horn! Georgia Nicolson’s 8th book of confessions is here!
Lyric as Comedy: The Poetics of Abjection in Postwar America
by Calista McRaeA poet walks into a bar... In Lyric as Comedy, Calista McRae explores the unexpected comic opportunities within recent American poems about deeply personal, often embarrassing, experiences. Lyric poems, she finds, can be surprising sites of a shifting, unruly comedy, as seen in the work of John Berryman, Robert Lowell, A. R. Ammons, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, Natalie Shapero, and Monica Youn. Lyric as Comedy draws out the ways in which key American poets have struggled with persistent expectations about what expressive poetry can and should do. McRae reveals how the modern lyric, rather than bestowing order on the poet's thoughts and emotions, can center on impropriety and confusion, formal breakage and linguistic unruliness, and self-observation and self-staging. The close readings in Lyric as Comedy also provide new insight into the theory and aesthetics of comedy, taking in the indirect, glancing comic affordances of poetry. In doing so, McRae captures varieties of humor that do not align with traditional terms, centering abjection and pleasure as facets of contemporary lyric practice.
Lyttelton's Britain: A User's Guide to the British Isles as heard on BBC Radio's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue
by Iain PattinsonThe I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue team of Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor, in the company of their esteemed chairman Humphrey Lyttelton, have been recording their BBC radio show around the UK for longer than any of them can remember ... that's about a week - or twenty minutes in the case of Barry Cryer. At each venue Humph would present a short history of the location, written by Iain Pattinson, to the mutual delight of the audience, the team and their delightful scorer Samantha (who somehow always found time for a rewarding poke around the area's backstreets).We are privileged to present, in gazetteer form, the very best of Humph's local histories form Radio 4's multi award-winning 'antidote to panel games'. As accurate as Wikipedia and as comprehensive as Reader's Digest, this unique guide tells you everything you never knew you wouldn't ever need to know about the background and inhabitants of Britain's most prominent towns and cities. The intelligent reader will waste no time in adding it to their collection.BristolIt was from Bristol in 1497 that John Cabot set off to find a new route to the Spice Islands by sailing north-west. He instead discovered a strange, hostile world which he named 'Newfoundland', until the natives explained that they actually called it 'Swansea'.NottinghamIt's well documented in official records that the city's original name was 'Snottingham' or 'home of Snotts', but when the Normans came, they couldn't pronounce the initial letter 'S', so decreed the town be called 'Nottingham'or the 'home of Notts'. It's easy to understand why this change was resisted so fiercely by the people of Scunthorpe.BrightonA settlement is first recorded in Brighton as long as ago as 3000 BC, when Celtic Druids practised their ancient worship of oaks, mistletoe and virgins, and indeed, oaks and mistletoe are still plentiful in Brighton.
M is for Mummy: 'A funny and touching insight into music, autism and motherhood' Dawn French
by Katy Cox'A funny and touching insight into music, autism and motherhood' Dawn French'A truthful book that dives headfirst into the realities of motherhood that will make you laugh out loud and touch your heart in equal measure' Izzy Judd________________________________Your family doesn't fit the mould. So what?Since giving birth to her second child, Lucy's life is totally unrecognisable: the romance in her marriage is officially dead and so is the career it took her years to build.Instead of playing the cello behind superstars at packed-out arenas, Lucy now spends most days mopping up broccoli vomit whilst listening to her four-year-old recite facts about the gallbladder. Something needs to change.With a little help from her friends, Lucy comes up with a plan to get her life on track, claw back her career and help her extraordinary son to find his place in an ordinary world.
The M Word: For women who happen to be parents
by Maïa DunphyDo you find yourself fumbling through motherhood? Join the club!Babies are gorgeous, exhausting, tyrannical little bundles of joy. They demand all of our time, energy and sanity, and give us nothing but cute cuddles in return. We wouldn’t have it any other way, but sometimes you need someone to turn to, someone who understands your daily wins and worries, from pregnancy to toddlerhood. And that’s just what The M Word is here for. Read this and relax, you’re doing fine! ‘You will laugh, emphatically nod, and find solace in this wonderful book! A must read for all shattered new parents out there.’ FEARNE COTTON
Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses Of Princess Margaret
by Craig BrownThe funny and tragic, bestselling biography of The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, perfect for fans of Netflix’s The Crown. A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • A DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘I honked so loudly the man sitting next to me dropped his sandwich’ Observer
Mabel Jones and the Doomsday Book (Mabel Jones #3)
by Will MabbittWould you agree to go on a perilous TOP SECRET mission to save your best friend from the creaking gibbet?Mabel Jones is on her way to the city of Otom in search of the legendary Doomsday Book - an ancient document that might help her save the hooman race.But Otom is a dangerous place, packed with soldiers, spies and stinking rebels. Can Mabel escape with the book, or will she fall victim to the dreaded Grand Zhoul . . . ?The third adventure in the hilarious Mabel Jones series, written by Will Mabbitt and illustrated by Ross Collins.
Mabel Jones and the Forbidden City (Mabel Jones #2)
by Will MabbittMabel Jones is ready for her second unlikely adventure - another hilarious story by Will Mabbitt, illustrated by Ross Collins.What would you do if hungry vines emerged from your wardrobe and stole your baby sister?If you're Mabel Jones and afraid of nothing, you'd follow!Between Mabel and her goal is a dangerous jungle, filled with deadly monsters and poisoned jelly babies. Can she defeat the Witch Queen and rescue her sister, or is this the last we'll see of Mabel Jones . . .?This ebook has been optimised for viewing on colour devices.
Mac and His Problem
by Enrique Vila-MatasEnrique Vila-Matas’s new novel is perhaps his greatest: 'playful and funny and among the best Spanish novelists' (Colm Tóibín)Mac is not writing a novel. He is writing a diary, which no one will ever read. At over sixty, and recently unemployed, Mac is a beginner, a novice, an apprentice – delighted by the themes of repetition and falsification, and humbly armed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature. Mac's wife, Carmen, thinks he is simply wasting his time and in danger of sliding further into depression and idleness. But Mac persists, diligently recording his daily walks through the neighbourhood. It is the hottest summer Barcelona has seen in over one hundred years.Soon, despite his best intentions (not to write a novel), Mac begins to notice that life is exhibiting strange literary overtones and imitating fragments of plot. As he sizzles in the heatwave, he becomes ever more immersed in literature – a literature haunted by death but alive with the sheer pleasure of writing.Intricate, erudite and practically fizzing on the page, Mac and His Problem is a masterpiece of metafiction and a testament to the power and playfulness of great literature.
Macavity: Fixed Format Layout With Audio (Old Possum's Cats)
by T. S. Eliot'Macavity' (the mystery cat!) is one of the best-loved poems from T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - the inspiration for Cats: The Musical - beloved by generations of children and their parents. Now, Macavity is given a new life in this stunning picture book with illustrations from Arthur Robins that perfectly convey all the wit and humour of Eliot's creation.
Machine-Age Comedy (Modernist Literature and Culture)
by Michael NorthIn this latest addition to Oxford's Modernist Literature & Culture series, renowned modernist scholar Michael North poses fundamental questions about the relationship between modernity and comic form in film, animation, the visual arts, and literature. Machine-Age Comedy vividly constructs a cultural history that spans the entire twentieth century, showing how changes wrought by industrialization have forever altered the comic mode. With keen analyses, North examines the work of a wide range of artists--including Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, and David Foster Wallace--to show the creative and unconventional ways the routinization of industrial society has been explored in a broad array of cultural forms. Throughout, North argues that modern writers and artists found something inherently comic in new experiences of repetition associated with, enforced by, and made inevitable by the machine age. Ultimately, this rich, tightly focused study offers a new lens for understanding the devlopment of comedic structures during periods of massive social, political, and cultural change to reveal how the original promise of modern life can be extracted from its practical disappointment.
Mack The Life: The Autobiography
by Lee MackHave you ever wondered where comedians come from? Why is it that one person is a funny bloke down the pub while another actually makes a living by standing up in front of an audience telling jokes? And where does all that material come from? Well, young Lee McKillop used to wonder that too.Growing up in his parents’ pub, small and wiry in a world of bigger and chunkier specimens, Lee quickly learned that cracking jokes was a way to get attention. After a somewhat random series of jobs, which included being Red Rum’s stableboy and a bingo hall barman, it was as a Great Yarmouth holiday camp entertainer that he had his first crack at telling jokes on stage. It got him some laughs, the sack and a punch in the face.*Now, as Lee Mack, he’s one of our best loved and most successful comedians, both as a live stand-up and on television. In Mack the Life, Lee tells the story of how he got there and gives extraordinary insight into what really makes comics tick. Hilarious and brilliant, it’s the kind of book which reminds you why you learned to read in the first place.*Nearly.
Mack The Life: Enhanced Edition
by Lee Mack*Special enhanced edition featuring exclusive video and audio captions plus clips from Lee Mack's TV shows*Have you ever wondered where comedians come from? Why is it that one person is a funny bloke down the pub while another actually makes a living by standing up in front of an audience telling jokes? And where does all that material come from? Well, young Lee McKillop used to wonder that too.Growing up in his parents’ pub, small and wiry in a world of bigger and chunkier specimens, Lee quickly learned that cracking jokes was a way to get attention. After a somewhat random series of jobs, which included being Red Rum’s stableboy and a bingo hall barman, it was as a Great Yarmouth holiday camp entertainer that he had his first crack at telling jokes on stage. It got him some laughs, the sack and a punch in the face.*Now, as Lee Mack, he’s one of our best loved and most successful comedians, both as a live stand-up and on television. In Mack the Life, Lee tells the story of how he got there and gives extraordinary insight into what really makes comics tick. Hilarious and brilliant, it’s the kind of book which reminds you why you learned to read in the first place.*Nearly.
Mad: 2018's Hottest Beach Read (Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Trilogy)
by Chloé EspositoWhat if you could take the life you'd always wanted?Alvie has always been in the shadow of her glamorous sister Beth.So when she's invited to her identical twin's luxurious Sicilian villa, Alvie accepts.Who wouldn't want seven days in the sun?With Beth's hot husband, the cute baby, the fast car and of course, the money.The thing is it's all too good to let go . . . and her sister Beth isn't the golden girl she appears.It's Alvie's chance to steal the life that she deserves.If she can get away with it.'The must-have beach read' Telegraph'Sizzlingly glamorous' Guardian'A fast-paced tale of sex, lies and murder' Stylist________________Can't get enough of Alvie? Why not read her next book, Bad?
Mad about You
by Mhairi McFarlaneAnd now, pre-order Mhairi’s brilliant new romcom, BETWEEN US, coming spring 2023!
Mad about You
by Mhairi McFarlaneAnd now, pre-order Mhairi’s brilliant new romcom, BETWEEN US, coming spring 2023!
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: The Extraordinary Exploits of the British and European Aristocracy
by Karl ShawThe alarming history of the British, and European, aristocracy - from Argyll to Wellington and from Byron to Tolstoy, stories of madness, murder, misery, greed and profligacy.From Regency playhouses, to which young noblemen would go simply in order to insult someone to provoke a duel that might further their reputation, to the fashionable gambling clubs or 'hells' which were springing up around St James's in the mid-eighteenth century, the often bizarre doings of aristocrats. An eighteenth-century English gentleman was required to have what was known as 'bottom', a shipping metaphor that referred to stability. Taking part in a duel was a bold statement that you had bottom. William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne certainly had bottom, if not a complete set of gonads following his duel with Colonel Fullarton, MP for Plympton. Both men missed with their first shots, but the colonel fired again and shot off Shelborne's right testicle. Despite being hit, Shelborne deliberately discharged his second shot in the air. When asked how he was, the injured Earl coolly observed his wound and said, 'I don't think Lady Shelborne will be the worse for it.' The cast of characters includes imperious, hard-drinking and highly volatile Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who is remembered today as much for his brilliant scientific career as his talent for getting involved in bizarre mishaps, such as his death as a result of his burst bladder; the Marquess of Queensberry, a side-whiskered psychopath, who, on a luxury steamboat in Brazil, in a row with a fellow passenger over the difference between emus and ostriches, and knocked him out cold; and Thomas, 2nd Baron Lyttelton, a Georgian rake straight out of central casting, who ran up enormous gambling debts, fought duels, frequented brothels and succumbed to drug and alcohol addiction.Often, such rakes would be swiftly packed off on a Grand Tour in the hope that travel would bring about maturity. It seldom did.
Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Shooting Cartoons by Bryn Parry
by Bryn ParryBryn Parry (1956–2023) was one of Britain's best-known countryside cartoonists. This re-issue of Mad Dogs and Englishmen is a superb collection of Bryn's shooting and dog cartoons. It gives an insight into a world that can really only be understood by a participant for whom it is more than a sport; it is a way of life.
Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts
by Ben PobjieNed Kelly’s tin helmet looms large over Australia’s bushranging past, but what about all the unsung outlaws of the Australian bush? What about Black Caesar, who escaped his tyrannous British overlords four times and indeed invented the great Australian tradition of bushranging? Or Mad Dog Morgan who set out to write his name in blood on history’s ledger, the dynamic Captain Thunderbolt and his loyal wife Mary Ann Bugg, bushranging’s greatest queen, and Matthew Brady, the gentleman bushranger, who showed us all the cilivised side of armed robbery? In Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Ben Pobjie celebrates the derring-do and revolutionary passion of all the wild colonial boys and girls who raided our towns and stole our hearts, all while wearing sensible headgear.
Madame Bovary of the Suburbs
by Sophie DivryThe story of a woman's life, from childhood to death, somewhere in provincial France, from the 1950s to just shy of 2025. She has doting parents, does well at school, finds a loving husband after one abortive attempt at passion, buys a big house with a moonlit terrace, makes decent money, has children, changes jobs, retires, grows old and dies. All in the comfort that the middle-classes have grown accustomed to. But she's bored. She takes up all sorts of outlets to try to make something happen in her life: adultery, charity work, esotericism, manic house-cleaning, motherhood and various hobbies - each one abandoned faster than the last. But no matter what she does, her life remains unfocussed and unfulfilled. Nothing truly satisfies her, because deep down - just like the town where she lives - the landscape is non-descript, flat, horizontal.Sophie Divry dramatises the philosophical conflict between freedom and comfort that marks women's lives in a materialistic world. Our heroine is an endearing, contemporary Emma Bovary, and Divry's prose will remind readers of the best of Houellebecq, the cold, implacable historian who paints a precise portrait of an era and those who inhabit it and in doing so renders existence indelibly absurd.Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
Maddie Fortune's Perfect Man: Maddie Fortune's Perfect Man Her Wickham Falls Seal Reunited With The Sheriff (The Fortunes of Texas: The Rulebreakers #5)
by Nancy Robards ThompsonThere’s trouble afoot among the Houston Fortunes…
Made for You (The Best Mistake #2)
by Lauren LayneSome mistakes are worth making... Will Thatcher is exactly the type of sexy playboy good girls like Brynn have always avoided. And yet there was still something about him she just couldn't resist. When Will moved across the country three years ago, Brynn vowed it was time to put him behind her. She never thought Will might have other plans . . . Back in town, Will intends to get what he's always wanted-gorgeous, unforgettable Brynn. For years, he tormented the untouchable ice princess in a desperate bid for her attention. Now he has a new plan, and he'll do anything to rewrite their stormy past. This time, he's out to show Brynn that the imperfect man might be the best mistake of her life . . .
Made In America: An Informal History of American English (Bryson #10)
by Bill Bryson‘Funny, wise, learned and compulsive’ - GQ Bill Bryson turns away from travelling the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and Notes from a Big Country, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture.In Made in America, Bryson tells the story of how American arose out of the English language, and along the way, de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn’t won, why Americans say ‘lootenant’ and ‘Toosday’, how they were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up - as well as exposing the true origins of the words G-string, blockbuster, poker and snafu.‘A tremendously sassy work, full of zip, pizzazz and all those other great American qualities’Will Self, Independent on Sunday
Made in Chelsea: Life and Style Essentials: The Official Handbook
by Made In ChelseaCan’t afford a townhouse in London’s most illustrious neighbourhood? Well this is the next best thing – your ultimate and official guide to all things Made in Chelsea.· Lucy gets up in your grill· How to get Millie and Rosie’s SW3 style· Discover Binky’s secret London hang-outs· Pardy with the bois in the world’s most exclusive hot spots· Mark Francis and Victoria reveal their fashionista dos and don’ts· Everything you wanted to know about Spencer, but were afraid to ask· And Binky’s mum provides the voice of reason …Keep calm and carry on...you’re in Chelsea, darling.