検索キーワード： ユーモア・風刺文学・フィクション

Trowbridge Dispatch is part of the Trowbridge, Vermont series of novels and stories, wherein I.M. Aiken draws on her roots in public safety to narrate tales of the everyday heroes that every community depends on.

Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous—two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks—while others are devastatingly poignant. In the title story, when a cosplayer, dressed as his favorite anime character, is mistaken for a violent threat the consequences are dire; in another story, a teen struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with so-called black culture.

London, July 1944. Editor Emmy Lake's career is soaring: Woman's Friend magazine is a huge success, and she is finally realizing her dream of becoming a War Correspondent. On the personal front, Emmy's husband Charles has been posted closer to home, and her good friends Bunty and Harold are planning their summer wedding in the countryside. They all know how lucky they are. But after nearly five years of war, the nation is struggling with loss, deprivation, and fear.

When a high-stakes heist goes wrong, an ex-CIA operative and a special operations pilot find themselves in the middle of a game of espionage and survival as they navigate a treacherous web of deception and shifting loyalties in a globe-spanning, action-packed thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of 2034.

Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she’s going places: she’s getting a promotion. Now thanks to her parent company Paragon’s purchase of Fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she’s on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction.

Meg is in the backyard of the house her brother Rob, Delaney, and their new baby have moved into, supervising some workmen who are using a bulldozer to start digging out a duck pond. She wants to get away from her own house, which has become the staging site for Caerphilly's first Mutt March, which will be held the next day. Meg thinks it will be more peaceful at Rob's house--and it is until the bulldozers uncover a skeleton whose skull has a hole and a bullet rattling around inside.

Enticed by advertisements for a luxury retirement home in India, a group of strangers leave England to begin a new life. On arrival, however, they discover the palace is a shell of its former self, the staff are more than a little eccentric and the days of the Raj appear to be long gone. But, as they soon discover, life and love can begin again, even in the most unexpected circumstances.

The local library is a place for community members to enjoy a cup of coffee, to read a book, to swap a book, to exchange ideas, and maybe even share a piece of themselves. It’s also a refuge for people like Hattie, looking to reconnect with her past, and Avril, trying to hide from the future, and Stuart, searching for a new purpose, and librarian Will, whose life has been spun in an unexpected direction.

Library Cat – the resident cat of Edinburgh University Library – is not like other cats. He is a thinking cat. You can tell by the canny glint in his eye, his arched, disdainful whiskers and his unrelenting interest in books and piles of paper. This is Library Cat’s story. Join him on the adventures he takes when he leaves his favourite turquoise chair in the library and his favourite food (bacon-rind) behind to go out into the big, bad world. Meet his cousins Biblio Chat and Saaf Landan Tom.

When book lover Jade Taylor applies to manage the Little Bay Book Shack on Nantucket Island over the summer, the last thing she needs is the distraction of billionaire resort owner, Liam Haven. But things take an unexpected turn when Liam becomes Jade’s boss – a man who reads nothing but contracts for pleasure…

Phil Owen has it all figured out. Or rather his character in his weekly role-playing game does. In real life? Not so much. Inviting Amy Evans to join their group’s campaign seemed like the kind thing to do when his best friend’s younger sister returned home broken hearted six months ago, but all it’s done is give her another dimension in which to tempt him. Yet when an unwelcome character from Amy’s past turns up in her present, it’s Phil’s spell level that saves the day. His prize? A three-month quest as Amy’s fake boyfriend, and a chance to turn fantasy into reality…

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist. He is best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat, which has sold over 200,000 copies in the UK, over a million in America, and has been translated into almost every language in the world. His literary friendship circle included H. G. Wells, Kipling, Mark Twain, J. M. Barrie and Bernard Shaw. This collection features dramatisations of Jerome’s key titles.

Joe Orton was among the towering geniuses of 1960s theatre. His life was tragically cut short in 1967, but he left behind him a handful of shocking and scabrous black comedies that will live on in the public imagination for years to come. Featured here are two of his lesser-known works, The Erpingham Camp and The Ruffian on the Stair, collected together as a double bill.

Rich, handsome and titled Lord Ashford has every lady in England longing for his hand in marriage. Everyone, that is, except Miss Lydia Hanworth – the only young woman Ashford wishes to marry. Pressured into accepting Ashford’s proposal, the announcement must be kept secret for ten days. Can Lydia free herself from her obligations before the engagement is publicly announced, without ruining her reputation? You can achieve an awful lot in ten days, after all…

Ronda McCann lives a quiet, careful life. She cycles to her job as a care assistant in a nursing home from her childhood home, where she lives with her widowed mother, Annie, after a failed relationship. But Ronda has a rich fantasy life. In her imagination she is brave, assertive, respected and admired … much like her sister Margo, a successful working mother and wife. However, there’s no place for a chronic day-dreamer in Margo’s world. Ronda is flung out of her dream world when her sister insists that she learn to drive.

Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored.

When Eva Moore wakes up on her fiftieth birthday, her drab middle-class life immediately starts to unravel. First, she receives an anonymous Facebook message claiming her husband is having an affair. Next, she is restructured out of her job by her obnoxiously young boss. Then, just when she thinks her life can't get any worse, her elderly parents wilfully go missing from their group tour of India. The only clues they've left behind is an increasingly bizarre series of TikTok videos.

Karriere ist Dating im Anzug Nach seinem Studium hören die Herausforderungen für Bo Martens nicht auf. Bei der Frage, wie es beruflich weitergeht, hilft ihm der exzentrische Topmanager Dr. Thomas Meermann aufs Pferd, indem er ihn mit zahlreichen voll- oder teilumfänglich hohlen Business-Weisheiten versorgt. Als Bo sich unsterblich in seine Zahnärztin verliebt, quält ihn die Frage, wie ein überdurchschnittlich durchschnittlicher Typ wie er Erfolg bei einer solchen Traumfrau haben könnte.

Nicholas has plenty of reasons to feel unstable: he’s fifteen, the child of divorced parents, living with his absent dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs, and an outsider at school. Then, one day in geometry class, he forgets how to breathe. The doctor says it’s just panic, but Nicholas suspects that his real problem might not be a psychiatric one: maybe the Greek god Pan is trapped inside his body.

Opening in the late 1980s as rave culture is born and moving into the 1990s, Men In Love reunites the Trainspotting crew for a riotous new journey. Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie leave heroin behind and seek joy, and the hope of redemption, on the dance floor. Each wants to feel alive in the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain, and they fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead. Taking in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and Paris, the group charges towards an unexpected event: Sick Boy’s wedding day.