Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in City Life

Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Constant-Reader and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver.

In 1992, on his thirtieth birthday, Artie Anderson meets the man who will change his life. Artie spends his days at a tedious advertising job, finding relief in the corner of New York City he can call his own, even as the queer community is still being ravaged by HIV. But when his birthday celebration brings Artie and his friends to his favorite bar, a chance encounter with Abe, an uptight lawyer and Artie’s opposite in almost every way, pushes Artie to want, and to ask for, more for himself.

Clover Brooks has always felt a stronger connection with those at the end of their life than in the middle of it. She dedicates herself to ushering people peacefully though their final days, working as a death doula in New York City. Her client's last words are collected in three treasured notebooks, neatly labelled: ADVICE, CONFESSIONS and REGRETS. Then she meets Claudia: a woman who has had the kind of life that Clover hasn't dared imagine for herself.

The millions of listeners of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages.

Piglet is judging the contents of your shopping trolley. She is listening to what you order for lunch and is observing whether the dessert you serve is homemade or snatched from a packet. There isn't another 31-year-old that takes food more seriously. And who could blame her, with a childhood nickname like that? In just over a fortnight, she is marrying Kit. Kit and his tasteful family present an opportunity for reinvention - when she had been growing up in Derby, this life, this man had been beyond her imagination.

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence. 

When Abbie and Tom cross paths traveling home after a night out, their eyes meet across a crowded carriage and their connection is unmistakable. What they don't know is that moments later they will both be caught up in an event that will change them forever. It's one that will bring them together. But it will also tear them apart. A lot can happen in seven seconds. A lot can happen in seven years. Can they find their way back to each other?

Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. Every day, she sees the same people and makes assumptions about them, even giving them nicknames. But they never speak. Obviously. Then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist-Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Suspiciously-Nice-New Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction. With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don't match reality.

Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood behind and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked beauty dazzles. As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their arms, she gains entrée into a world filled with bootleg bourbon, wailing jazz, and money to burn. She thinks her biggest problem is choosing between them until the truth comes out. Her two lovers are really mobsters from rival gangs....

On the precipice of Y2K, unpaid intern Lily Chen is attempting to live the American dream in New York City. But her scientist parents imagined so much more for her when they fled Mao's cultural revolution, hoping for a better life. Despite the glamour of her media job, Lily can barely make rent - until she falls into the arms of Matthew. This young financier can give her a fairy tale life of luxury, and for the first time her dreams appear within reach.

Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial family and has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest, doomed to haunt the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo.

In a city graveyard, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet between two graves. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby appears quite suddenly, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. In a snowy valley, a father writes to his five-year-old daughter about the number of people who attended her funeral. And in the Jannat Guest House, two people who've known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another as though they have only just met.

When Another Country appeared in 1962, it caused a literary sensation. James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit.

If I Had Your Face plunges us into the mesmerising world of contemporary Seoul - a place where extreme plastic surgery is as routine as getting a haircut, where women compete for spots in secret 'room salons' to entertain wealthy businessmen after hours, where K-Pop stars are the object of all-consuming obsession and ruthless social hierarchies dictate your every move. Navigating this cutthroat city are four young women balancing on the razor edge of survival.

Most nights, you’ll find Alison Hunter at The Venue, the kind of sweaty Nashville spot that’s on the circuit for bands like Bon Iver and Death Cab. Sounds glamorous—but not for Al, who stamps hands at the door with Julien, the quiet coworker who treats her like a little sister. When she can sneak off, she bums drinks from the tattooed bartender and watches the bands, wondering if she’ll ever finish a song of her own after her disastrous attempt to play in public.

Mona is the eccentric Lady of Easley House, running a bed and breakfast to keep her inherited English manor afloat. Wilfred is Mona's 26-year-old adopted son who spends his weekends in London, looking for love in the gay bars of Soho while pining after his pen pal, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver. The current guest of the manor is Rhonda, a straight-laced southern belle who has left her abusive husband and has no idea what to do next, especially in the company of the free-spirited Mona and Wilfred.

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a charming young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom's awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming's orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he's already mapped out their future together. But, shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.

Lucy is uprooted from her life in New York City and reluctantly goes into lockdown with her ex-husband, William, in a house on the coast of Maine. Strout's new novel is a miraculous work of fiction. A brilliantly sharp evocation of the period we have just lived through, it is a novel that both resonates deeply and consoles us, too.

One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbours gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants—some of whom have barely spoken to each other—become real neighbours.