John Vir owns a newsagent in Southampton - the only shop that still stocks packets of petrified celery soup, drosophila-studded fruit and boxes of henna. Lucy and Paul are his favourite customers - they live across the road above Snooke's Electrical Stores, soon to become the Bluebird Café. Stencilling blue doves below the picture rails and buying stripped-pine chairs from the Oxfam furniture store Lucy works in the newly opened café whilst Paul spends his time at the Badger Centre as a volunteer. Meanwhile John Vir thinks of little else but Lucy and invites her to the cash 'n' carry, hoping of course, that it will be a prelude to something more exciting, for them both ...

Now a major motion picture starring Maggie Smith, Alan Bennett's famous and heartwarming story "The Lady in the Van," and more of Bennett's classic short-form workAlan Bennett has long been one of the world's most revered humorists. From his acclaimed story collection Smut to his hilarious and sharply observed The Uncommon Reader, Bennett has consistently remained one of literature's most acute observers of Britain and life's many absurdities.In this new collection, drawn from his wide-ranging career, you'll read some of Bennett's finest work, including the title story, the basis for a new feature film starring Maggie Smith. The book also includes the rollicking comic masterpiece "The Laying on of Hands" and the bittersweet "Father! Father! Burning Bright," Bennett's classic tale of the tense relationship between a man and his dying father.

The inimitable Alan Bennett selects and comments upon six favorite poets and the pleasures of their worksIn this candid, thoroughly engaging book, Alan Bennett creates a unique anthology of works by six well-loved poets. Freely admitting his own youthful bafflement with poetry, Bennett reassures us that the poets and poems in this volume are not only accessible but also highly enjoyable. He then proceeds to prove irresistibly that this is so.Bennett selects more than seventy poems by Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, John Betjeman, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Philip Larkin. He peppers his discussion of these writers and their verse with anecdotes, shrewd appraisal, and telling biographical detail: Hardy lyrically recalls his first wife, Emma, in his poetry, although he treated her shabbily in real life. The fabled Auden was a formidable and off-putting figure at the lectern. Larkin, hoping to subvert snooping biographers, ordered personal papers shredded upon his...

Indulge yourself in this steamy, naughty Taboo Romance between a BBW secretary and her billionaire celebrity boss.When Taylor Sullivan learns that she will be working for her long-time celebrity billionaire crush Zachary Cohen, she is over the moon. The man is not only smart and successful, but he is also sinfully sexy. Very soon, she realizes that billionaires don’t waste any time when it comes to getting what they want, including women. On her very first day on the job, Zachary requests for her to accompany him at a special event in the Hamptons and gives her a hefty bonus for her services. She soon finds out that he sees her as more than just his secretary. Taylor’s job is important to her, but will she fight the urge to give in to Zachary’s advances? Warning: contains mature themes and language. Intended for 18+ readers only.Standalone. No Cliffhangers.

Lexi grew up poor and left home early, even though she knew that it meant that she would live on the streets most of the time. Caught up in the drug scene and trying to get out, she meets Dr. Dan at the restaurant where she works. The two of them get to know each other and he always leaves her large tips to make sure that she is eating while she is at work.When Dr. Dan offers her a complete physical and a place to stay, she jumps at the chance, but finds herself tangled up in a steamy encounter with the doctor and his partner, Dr. Caleb…Warning: contains mature themes and language. Intended for 18+ readers only.

Goyen passes on traditional conventions of plot and character. The House of Breath is an address to the people and places the narrator remembers from his childhood in small Texas town, Charity. The novel is a meditation on the nature of identity and origins, memory, and time's annihilation of life. This is the restored version, going back to Goyen's originally published version from 1950 with an afterword from Reginald Gibbons, professor of English at Northwestern University and the former editor of TriQuarterly Magazine.

Tell the truth and shame the devil … All her life, Lily has been told to "loosen up" and "live a little,” but she likes her life the way it is: neat, tidy and logical. Sure, she can’t tell a lie without getting queasy and she’s picky about whom she goes to bed with, but she’s not repressed. She’s controlled. Until she meets Sebastian. With Sebastian, she feels like a different person, and she finds herself doing things she never thought she would. Plus, she can't seem to stay away from the guy - and every time she’s near him, she wants to ... well, she just wants to. There's something about him. Something not quite…human. But when events take a dark and frightening turn, will Lily figure out the secret to his out-of-this-world appeal … and if she does, what will she do about it?

A year after her husband's death in a sailing accident off Martha's Vineyard, Ellen Boisvert bumps into an old friend. In this chance encounter, she discovers that her immigrant husband of almost fifteen years was not an orphan after all. Instead, his aged mother Jo is alive and residing on the family's isolated farm in the west of Ireland. Faced with news of her mother-in-law incarnate, the thirty-nine-year-old American prep school teacher decides to travel to Ireland to investigate the truth about her husband Fintan and why he kept his family's existence a secret for so many years. Between Jo's hilltop farm and the lakeside village of Gowna, Ellen begins to uncover the mysteries of her Irish husband's past and the cruelties and isolation of his rural childhood. Ellen also stumbles upon Fintan's long-ago romance with a local village woman, with whom he had a daughter, Cat. Cat is now fourteen and living with her mother in London. As Ellen reconciles her troubled relationship with...

An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool. In Alan Bennett's new play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose. The History Boys premièred at the National in May 2004. 'Nothing could diminish the incendiary achievement of this subtle, deep-wrought and immensely funny play about the value and meaning of education .. In short, a superb, life-enhancing play.' Guardian