An intimate, often humorous exploration of the intertwining cycles of death, rebirth and coincidence through the eyes of an existential artist.An amazing game of mirrors. […] Original and promising.—Le Monde2014 Anton Wachter Prize for Best First Novel; Golden Book Owl Reader's Choice Award; Opzij Feminist Literature Prize; 2014 Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize; Nominated for the John Leonard Prize, National Book Critics C...

For fans of Marriage Story and Elena Ferrante's Days of AbandonmentTerri runs off with a lover, abandoning her children and her marriage of twenty-five years. Her husband, David, is left to take care of their two daughters, one of whom is falling in love for the first time. These four people start to question their identity outside the nuclear family. What remains of a disintegrated home, and what changes? Marijke Schermer’s Love, If That’s Wh...

Spending long hours in her claustraphobic office cubicle, a customer service assistant is struggling. Isolated, frustrated and lonely, she finds comfort in only one thing: the office printer. As she confides in the printer about her hopes and dreams, her fears and her past, it becomes clear to her that he is listening. But to her employees, the blossoming relationship is a worrying cry for help.Diagnosed with burnout and placed on leave, she faces severance and – worse – separation...

The hilarious international bestselling novel that has had pensioners ditching their sticks and zimmers to follow the age-defying, youth inducing antics inside The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 ¼ Years Old . . .'Terrific. This geriatric Adrian Mole made me laugh' Woman and Home'Funny and touching' BBC Radio 4Meet Hendrik Groen. An octogenarian in a care home who has no intentio...

Meet the woman whose life inspired the world's most famous tale… Lucinda, a penniless English orphan, is abused and exploited as a cinder-sweep by her aristocratic relatives. On receiving her sole inheritance—a pair of glass-beaded slippers—she runs away to France in pursuit of an officer on whom she has a big crush. She joins the baggage train of Louis XIV's army, and eventually finds her way to Paris. There she befriends the man who will some day write the world's most famous fairy tale,...

Eighty-five-year-old Hendrik Groen is fed up to his false teeth with coffee mornings and bingo.__________Along with fellow members of the Old-But-Not-Dead Club, he embarks on a wild spree of octogenarian anarchy. But the home's director will not stand for any more drunken bar crawls, illicit fireworks or geriatric romance. The good name of the care home will not be disgraced.But when Hendrik learns of a plan to close the home down he...

A sixty-ton humpback whale lies stranded, gasping for breath, on the sands of Cape Cod… and there's just one girl in the world who knows who he is. When Jessaloup is transformed into a boy, Isabel (now fourteen) has to teach him to walk, talk, and act human, so that together they can raise the alarm about a terrible natural disaster that's threatening the East Coast. With the calamity's deadline drawing near, the two teens must overcome skepticism, jealousies, misunderstandings, and even b...

Eleven-year-old Isabel is a “plain old” girl living in Provincetown, Massachusetts, who believes that she is destined to accomplish something special. When her fifth-grade class goes on a whale-watch field trip, something amazing happens: Dozens of different species of whales surround the boat, bumping the deck and sending Isabel flying into the ocean. Isabel is shocked to hear the whales speaking to her—she is a mermaid, they tell her, a “Chosen One” who has the ability to turn from a hum...

Bloomsbury presents Hard Copy by Fien Veldman, read by Sarah Slimani and James Faulkner.'A talented new voice worth paying attention to.' Irish Times'Equal parts searing intelligence and madcap sweetness. Simply brilliant.' Jenny Mustard'Many astute observations... very funny on the tedium of office life.' Irish IndependentThis is a story of girl meets printer.A customer service assistant spends her long workdays printing letters. Her one friend is the...

** THE INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON **'There are many laughs in this book but it's so much more than just a comedy. It's a story about how friendship, selflessness and dignity lie at the heart of the human experience. When I'm an old man, I want to be Hendrik Groen' John Boyne, author of international bestseller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas***'Another year and I still don't like old people. Me? I am 83 years old.'Hend...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of On the Bright Side by Hendrik Groen, read by Patrick Ryecart.Everyone's favourite octogenarian is back and - together with the Old-But-Not-Dead Club - is more determined than ever to wreak havoc.After a year mourning the death of his beloved friend Eefje, Hendrik picks up his pen once again to chronicle the goings on both inside his care home and in the increasingly confusing world outside. He may be older and a little more...

The Only Café is both a moving mystery in which a son tries to solve the mystery of his father's death and an illuminating exploration of how the traumatic past, if left unexamined, shadows every moment of the present.Pierre Cormier had secrets. Though he married twice, became a high-flying lawyer and a father, he didn't let anyone really know him. And he was especially silent about what had happened to him in Lebanon, the country he fled during civil war ...