British Problems

Hildy Good is a townie. A lifelong resident of a small community on the rocky coast of Boston's North Shore, she knows pretty much everything about everyone. And she's good at lots of things, too. A successful real-estate broker, mother, and grandmother, her days are full. But her nights have become lonely ever since her daughters, convinced their mother was drinking too much, sent her off to rehab. Now she's in recovery—more or less.

Cheltenham is meant to cure delicate lungs, not finish off guests behind a pianoforte. Miss Verity Sedgewick, Lady Dowager Barham’s overworked social secretary, can organise a drawing room with a card tray and a smile. Unfortunately, someone has organised a death the same way: neatly, quietly, and with the sort of poison that leaves everyone insisting it must have been a faint. Deputy coroner and surgeon Gideon Wainwright refuses to call murder “unfortunate”; Verity refuses to let the town invent a prettier story. Together they sift calling cards, stolen names, and poisoned tea, while...

The forces behind an economic crisis in the making A “problem of twelve” arises when a small number of institutions acquire the means to exert outsized influence over the politics and economy of a nation. The Big Three index funds of Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock control more than...

GUARDIAN'S TOP BOOK ON THE UK HOUSING CRISIS 'An essential read about a broken housing market.' – Peter Apps, Inside Housing If paying rent feels like a second tax — and saving for a deposit feels impossible — you’re not imagining it. Across the UK housing market, millions of people are stuck in the rent trap: high rents that can exceed mortgage payments, tiny and poorly maintained flats, insecure tenancies, deposit battles, and the constant stress of being forced to move with little notice. Generation Rent is Chloe Timperley’s razor-sharp, eye-opening investigation into ...

What makes the English English? Is it their eccentricity, their passionate love (or, indeed, hatred) of Marmite – or is it something less easily defined? Beginning at the top of a muddy Gloucestershire slope at the Coopers Hill cheese-rolling contest and traversing a landscape of lawns and...

BEFORE I DIE: A Pact What would you do differently if you knew that in one year you were going die? This is the dilemma best friends Renata, Saffron and Charlotte face, after making a pact to end the discontent in their lives. Ending the pain is simple: after their proposed last year on Earth they plan to take a plunge off Deadman’s Cliff. Their reasoning is even simpler: if a person hasn’t sorted her life out by age thirty out chances are she never would. Renata, Saffron and Charlotte were simply over days that spun around like a broken record. They could choose to spend the next fifty...

JUST A LITTLE BREAK What’s a girl to do when she’s had twelve lovers and the love of her life has only bedded two? Serena Adams, sexy makeup artist to the stars, is certain that her life is perfect – great job, devoted man and the silent promise of a ring on her finger. So when her boyfriend Markie attempts to shatter it by leaving her due to their “numbers” issue she is determined to do anything to keep him. No longer able to cope with Serena’s impressive sexual history (twelve one-night stands versus his two longstanding ex-lays) Markie sees splitting up as the only solution. ...