Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101873019
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 117

Book Description
An all-new, never-before-published original short novel by the bestselling author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, about a hapless American tourist’s larger-than-life comical trip to Ireland. Shortlisted for the 2015 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction Cornelius P. “Fatty” O'Leary and his wife, Betty, plan a vacation in Ireland for his fortieth birthday, where they will tour his ancestral homeland and relax in the countryside. Almost immediately, things go terribly wrong: the seats in economy class on the plane are too small; the country hotel’s dinner spread and bathroom fixtures leave much to be desired; and the down-to-earth O’Learys find their fellow guests are more than a little snobbish. In this amusing and touching portrayal of a kindly, misunderstood soul, McCall Smith has created yet another memorable character who will become an instant favorite to his many fans. An eBook short.

Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Polygon
ISBN: 9781846974519
Category : Humorous stories
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
It takes a lot to get under the skin of Cornelius 'Fatty O'Leary, but then there is a lot of skin to get under. The heroically proportioned Fatty can normally take life as it comes. Right at home in easy-going Fayetteville, Arkansas, he is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Betty, and likes nothing better than the company of good friends Tubby O'Rourke and Porky Flanagan. But when Fatty and Betty head off to Ireland on the trip of a lifetime, they find that they have left their comfort zone far behind. Calamity and mayhem ensue as one mishap after another befalls the beleaguered couple. Can Fatty's broad shoulders take the strain or will he suffer one indignity too many? Will he get his just deserts, or just dessert?

The Forever Girl

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1405516038
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
Clover has loved James for as long as she can remember, since before she knew what what love was. But fate seems determined to keep them apart. As children, Clover and James played beside a turquoise sea under cloudless skies, their Caribbean island home a place of pleasure and privilege, of lush lawns and tennis parties. In such a paradise nothing should obstruct the kind of happiness Clover dreams of, except that, as she discovers, true love is often harder than paradise allows for. And when Clover's mother falls out of love with her husband, a web of complications is woven that may take Clover a lifetime to unravel. If she ever can . . . Tender and true, The Forever Girl traces love's unpredictable path to maturity with style, wit and feeling.

Trains and Lovers

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307908550
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Book Description
The rocking motion of the train as it speeds along, the sound of its wheels on the rails . . . There’s something special about this form of travel that makes for easy conversation, which is just what happens to the four strangers who meet in Trains and Lovers. As they journey by rail from Edinburgh to London, the four travelers pass the time by sharing tales of trains that have changed their lives. A young, keen-eyed Scotsman recounts how he turned a friendship with a female coworker into a romance by spotting an anachronistic train in an eighteenth-century painting. An Australian woman shares how her parents fell in love and spent their life together running a railroad siding in the remote Australian Outback. A middle-aged American patron of the arts sees two young men saying goodbye in a train station and recalls his own youthful crush on another man. And a young Englishman describes how exiting his train at the wrong station allowed him to meet an intriguing woman whom he impulsively invited to dinner—and into his life. Here is Alexander McCall Smith at his most enchanting, exploring the nature of love—and trains—in a collection of romantic, intertwined stories. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

The Perfect Hamburger

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141927844
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 77

Book Description
A funny and poignant children's story from one of the world's most prolific and popular authors Alexander McCall Smith. It's all about hamburgers! Joe has just created the yummiest, juiciest, most delicious hamburger ever - and his friend Mr Borthwick wants to sell it in his hamburger shop to try and win back customers from the new fast-food place across the road. But there's a problem - Joe has completely forgotten the recipe... A pinch of this, a touch of that and a spoonful of something else...the race is on for Joe to remember!

Bitterhall

Author: Helen McClory
Publisher: Polygon
ISBN: 9781846975493
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
Bitterhall is a story of obsession told between three unreliable narrators. Daniel, Órla and Tom share a flat and narrate the intersections of their lives, from future-world 3D printing technology to the history of the book, to a stolen nineteenth-century diary written by a dashing gentleman who may not be entirely dead. A Hallowe'en party leads to a series of entanglements, variously a longed-for sexual encounter clouded by madness, a betrayal, and a reality-destroying moment of possession.

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307374009
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Book Description
Professor Dr. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of the highly regarded Portuguese Irregular Verbs (200 LTD copies sold!) and a pillar of the Institute of Romance Philology in the proud Bavarian city of Regensburg, finds that life is very difficult these days. His academic rival (and owner of a one-legged dachsund) Detlev-Amadeus Unterholzer has been winning undeserved recognition. With help from the matchmaking Ophelia Prinzel, he stumbles towards a romance with Frau Benz, a charming widow who owns her very own Schloss and a fleet of handsome cars. While on the annual student study retreat in the Alps, von Igelfeld fearlessly plunges 3,000 feet into mountaineering history, only to suffer the ignominy of giving inspirational lectures about the experience. And at a dinner party, he is the only kind soul who can aid the aforementioned unfortunate dachshund, whose sticky wheels are in need of lubrication.

Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large

Author: Walter Mosley
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 1101973536
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 110

Book Description
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Young journalism student Felix Orlean is in over his head. Against his better judgment, he is temporarily under the employ of the mad yet charismatic anarchist detective Archibald Lawless, a witness to murder, and under investigation for the theft of millions of dollars in red diamonds. Caught in an impossible predicament, Orlean plunges into an underworld populated by shady denizens. With Lawless, he unravels a big-money conspiracy involving cold-blooded assassination, hide-away real estate in Manhattan, a network of international criminals, a lethal siren named Lana Drexel, and the richest man in Canada. A brilliant, absurdist novella and a biting work of political commentary, Walter Mosley’s “Archibald Lawless” is a masterpiece of contemporary American crime fiction. An ebook short.

A Conspiracy of Friends

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307907244
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
CORDUROY MANSIONS - Book 3 In the Corduroy Mansions series of novels, set in London’s hip Pimlico neighborhood, we meet a cast of charming eccentrics, including perhaps the world’s most clever terrier, who make their home in a handsome, though slightly dilapidated, apartment block. It seems the universe itself is conspiring against the residents of Corduroy Mansions, as they all find themselves struggling with their nearest and dearest. Oedipus Snark’s mother, Berthea, is still at work on her scathing biography of her son—the only loathsome Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament; literary agents Rupert Porter and Barbara Ragg are still battling each other for first crack at the manuscript of Autobiography of a Yeti; fine arts graduate Caroline Jarvis is busy exploring the blurry line between friendship and romance; and William French is still worrying that his son, Eddie, may never leave home, even though Eddie’s got a new wealthy girlfriend. But uppermost in everyone’s mind is William’s faithful terrier, Freddie de la Hay—without a doubt the only dog clever enough to have been recruited by MI6—who has disappeared while on a mystery tour around the Suffolk countryside. Will Freddie find his way back to Pimlico? Is Corduroy Mansions starting to crumble? Readers will be captivated once again by McCall Smith’s genius for storytelling, his insight into his beautifully crafted characters and his eye for the quirky details of modern life.

California 1901

Author: Clifford Jackman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101970286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Book Description
A Vintage Shorts Original The explosive companion piece to Clifford Jackman’s The Winter Family: when a burned man appears on a farm in rural California, looking for work and somewhere to die, the good folks there take him in. But the burned man has a past, and it’s about to catch up with him. “California 1901” captures the old West in its death throes—a psychotic Pinkerton agent searching for oil, a sharpshooter with his hands tied, a gambler lost in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and a burned man, not quite dead and not who he says he is, bracing for one last fight. In a new century, on the edge of America, a final reckoning awaits. An eBook short.