A collection of gritty, darkly comic short stories that probe modern masculinity, love and sexual obsession among working‑class Scots, mixing raw, vernacular dialogue with scenes of violence, addiction and tenderness; the linked tales explore infidelity, desire, identity and the messy, often destructive consequences of intimacy, balancing bleak realism with black humour and occasional poignancy.

Four aging friends from working-class Edinburgh reunite after years apart and find their lives have taken bitterly different turns: a one-time heroin addict back from exile, a scheming bar owner, a struggling alcoholic, and a dangerously violent ex-con. Their attempt to recapture youth and settle old scores spirals into darkly comic misadventures, criminal schemes and brutal confrontations across Scotland and abroad, forcing them to face addiction, betrayal, mortality and the consequences of their past choices.

In The Sirens' Call, Chris Hayes examines how digital platforms have turned human attention into a commodity, reshaping our habits, relationships, and political life. He traces how constant notifications and algorithmic design exploit our impulses, erode boundaries between public and private, and produce social and democratic harm. Hayes offers a big-picture framework for understanding these changes and argues for ways to reclaim focus and agency.

Beautiful Days is a collection of ten stories that probe parenthood, mortality, and the strange erosion of everyday life. Through surreal, darkly comic slices of ordinary moments—parents who age while their infant remains unchanged, a worker confronted by a conspiratorial guard, an aging tour guide facing social unraveling—the book explores time, loss, and the unsettling currents beneath familiar routines.

What Napoleon Could Not Do follows siblings Jacob and Belinda Nti and Belinda’s husband, Wilder, as they grapple with hopes, belonging, and disappointment tied to the United States. Jacob, a Ghanaian programmer, fights to obtain a visa to join his wife in Virginia; Belinda has built a professional life in America; Wilder faces the realities of racism and marginalization as a Black man in the U.S. Their interwoven perspectives explore immigration, ambition, identity, and the gap between expectation and reality without giving away the plot.

A biracial photographer and wife wrestles with infertility, grief, and her place in a country marked by racial violence. As tragedy touches her community, she reevaluates marriage, identity, and what motherhood might mean for her future, exploring love and loss with clear, urgent prose.

An analysis of why liberal democracies struggle to reconcile mass immigration and cultural diversity with the need for a shared civic identity, arguing that without renewed commitments to inclusive national loyalty and institutional protections, democracies risk fragmentation and authoritarian backlash. Drawing on cases from the U.S. and Europe, it diagnoses how social isolation, economic insecurity, and political entrepreneurs exploiting identity grievances have eroded democratic norms. The book recommends reforms—stronger constitutional safeguards, fairer economic policies, civic education, and inclusive political narratives—to preserve majority rule while protecting minority rights.

A spare, often eerie collection of stories set in contemporary and near-future China that follows ordinary people as they navigate economic upheaval, surveillance, and the creep of technology and environmental change. The prose blends realist detail with subtle speculative twists, illuminating how commerce, politics, and desire reshape intimate lives and relationships. Recurring themes of displacement, aspiration, and loss create a vivid, unsettling portrait of a society in flux.

A raw, candid memoir that follows a young single mother who leaves an abusive relationship and survives by working as a housecleaner while navigating shelters, welfare bureaucracy, and the shame and stigma of poverty; through day-to-day domestic labor, parenting, and the pursuit of education, she exposes the systemic barriers, moral judgments, and quiet resilience involved in trying to build a stable life for her child.

A probing blend of cultural reporting, history and memoir that examines how appearance shapes power, opportunity and identity in the modern world; it traces the science, economics and politics behind beauty standards—from plastic surgery and cosmetics to race, gender, immigration, social media and surveillance—while weaving in the author’s own mixed‑race family experiences to show how looks are managed, commodified and governed, and arguing that who we are perceived to be has profound social and civic consequences.

A former mayor recounts the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans and uses that episode to examine the deeper history of racism, civic memory, and the politics of public symbols. Blending personal memoir, historical context, and policy prescription, the book argues that confronting uncomfortable truths about the past is necessary for racial justice, democratic renewal, and healing, and offers practical guidance for leaders and communities seeking to build more inclusive public spaces.

A candid memoir by a former White House foreign policy adviser that recounts his experience shaping and defending the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts — from the Iran nuclear deal and the Cuba thaw to interventions in Libya and the complex responses to Syria and Russia — offering behind-the-scenes accounts of policy debates, strategy, and presidential decision-making. It blends detailed storytelling of negotiations and crises with reflections on the challenges of diplomacy, the limits of power, and the consequences of choices made, while chronicling the team’s efforts to communicate American values and interests. The narrative also confronts the administration’s mistakes and the political currents that culminated in a populist backlash, arguing for the importance of principled, pragmatic engagement in a turbulent world.

Dream City traces two centuries of downtown Detroit’s rise, decline, and renewal. Conrad Kickert explores the stark contrast between a recently revitalized core and surrounding blight, showing how repeated reinventions—driven by the automobile, suburbanization, land consolidation, and powerful local actors—reshaped the urban fabric. Through original morphological maps and historical vignettes, he explains how competing visions and economic forces produced Detroit’s distinctive downtown and suggests its patterns resonate beyond the city.

A searing diagnosis of national decline that argues corporate capitalism, militarism, and a corrupt political class have hollowed out democratic institutions and civic life; through reporting from deindustrialized towns, veterans, addicts, and displaced workers, it portrays social fragmentation, cultural decay, and the rise of authoritarian impulses, and calls for moral resistance, community rebuilding, and radical dissent to avert further collapse.

After a devastating childhood trauma, a young girl is taken to live with her reclusive grandmother on a remote Australian flower farm where she learns the secret language and healing power of plants; as she grows, she uncovers family violence and buried secrets, confronts grief and loss, and ultimately seeks belonging, strength and renewal through her deepening connection to the land, its flowers and the people who tend them.

In 1914 Oxford, twin sisters Peggy and Maude work in the university press bindery—Peggy yearning for education and Maude content with the steady work. As World War I brings Belgian refugees to the city and upends daily life, Peggy's hopes, relationships and responsibilities are tested. The novel follows the sisters' bond and examines who has access to knowledge in a changing society.

A moving collection of portrait photographs and candid first‑person stories gathered from people around the world that captures intimate moments, personal struggles, humor and everyday life; the images and brief narratives reveal shared humanity, resilience and vulnerability, connecting readers to diverse lives through powerful, often surprising glimpses into ordinary people’s experiences.

Ein phantastischer Roman, in dem ein auf einer geheimnisvollen Insel voller Leuchttürme gestrandeter Erzähler auf skurrile Bewohner, seltsame Kreaturen und rätselhafte Geheimnisse trifft; in surrealen, oft humorvollen Episoden entfaltet sich ein labyrinthartiges Geflecht aus Geschichten, Intrigen und metafiktionalen Wendungen, das Fragen nach Sprache, Erinnerung und Identität stellt und zugleich Gesellschaftssatire mit fantasievoller Abenteuerlust verbindet.

A fresh, YA reimagining of the Robin Hood legend that follows a fiercely independent young woman who rejects the limited life laid out for her and becomes a force in Sherwood’s outlaw world. Trained in archery and deception, she stages daring raids, navigates shifting loyalties and romantic tension, and confronts what leadership, identity, and justice truly demand. The novel mixes action, political intrigue, and emotional stakes as she transforms from a sheltered life into a symbol of resistance.

A consolatory letter addressed to his mother that reframes exile and misfortune through Stoic reason, arguing that external hardships are small compared with the inner freedom of virtue; it counsels patience, courage, and acceptance of nature’s course, rejects dependence on fame, wealth, or pity, and offers philosophical perspectives to transform grief into steady endurance and moral dignity.

Marnie Sellick takes a job at the coveted beauty brand rytuał and is drawn into the glamorous world of its charismatic founder, Luna Peters. As she grows closer to Luna and the all-female staff, Marnie becomes entangled in the brand’s seductive, cult-like culture and must confront how far she’ll go for belonging, beauty, and identity.

A dark, intimate novel that follows a woman's obsessive, sometimes destructive relationship as it unfolds over recurring Januaries, using fragmented time and spare, lyrical prose to explore grief, memory, and how desire can warp identity; the story moves between past and present to reveal the emotional consequences of choices and the ache of trying to hold on to a person and a moment that won’t stay still.

A lyrical, evocative celebration of the winter solstice that traces how people across cultures mark the year’s darkest day with small rituals of light — fires, candles, evergreens, music and gatherings — and reminds readers that in honoring these ancient practices we acknowledge nature’s rhythms and kindle hope as the days begin to lengthen.

(Alternate cover edition of ASIN B09418JQMK.) 𝑨𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒔, 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒔𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒔, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒌𝒆𝒓 𝒓𝒐𝒐𝒎 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔... 𝑮𝒆𝒕 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒚!𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙔Marymount girls are good girls. We’re chaste, we’re untouched, and even if we weren’t, no one would know, because we keep our mouths shut.Not that I have anything to share anyway. I never let guys go too far. I’m behaved. Beautiful, smart, talented, popular, my skirt’s always pressed, and I never have a hair out of place. I own the hallways, walking tall on Monday and dropping to my knees like the good Catholic girl I am on Sunday.That’s me. Always in control. Or so they think. The truth is that it’s easy for me to resist them, because what I truly want, they can never be. Something soft and smooth. Someone dangerous and wild. Unfortunately, what I want I have to hide. In the locker room after hours. In the bathroom stall between classes. In the showers after practice. 𝑀𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑠𝑤𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝑀𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑢𝑝 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑘𝑖𝑟𝑡. For me, life is a web of secrets. No one can find out mine. 𝙊𝙇𝙄𝙑𝙄𝘼I cross the tracks every day for one reason—to graduate from this school and get into the Ivy League. I’m not ashamed of where I come from, my family, or how everyone at Marymount thinks my skirts are too short and my lipstick is too red. Clay Collins and her friends have always turned up their noses at me. The witch with her beautiful skin, clean shoes, and rich parents who torments me daily and thinks I won’t fight back.At least not until I get her alone and find out she’s hiding so much more than just what’s underneath those pretty clothes. The princess thinks I’ll scratch her itch. She thinks she’s still pure as long as it’s not a guy touching her. I told her to stay on her side of town. I told her not to cross the tracks. But one night, she did. And when I’m done with her, she’ll never be pure again. *TRYST SIX VENOM is a standalone, new adult, bully romance suitable for readers 18+. It will release directly into Kindle Unlimited!