Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice. Amy Key’s Isn’t Forever is a grimoire for feminine selfhood in a world where a sense of self is flimsy, elusive and unrequited. The poems in this book are obsessive in their desire to construct and breach the terms of their own intimacy. They have their own ‘narrative costume’ but are vexed with it, not quite able to master the ‘diligence of having a body’. This is a book where a tender and sabotaging shame of aloneness has taken root. Where wants clus...

When Ethel's grandmother dies, Ethel goes to live with her father, brother, and the stepmother and little siblings she has never met. She also must live with, and endure, the spitefulness of Aunt Sophie, who rules the house under a cloud of bad-temper and bitterness. Ethel’s Text is a Victorian story edited gently for a modern audience. It is a simple, heart-warming tale of overcoming grief and adversity through the guiding lights of past love, new friends and family and the words of the S...

When Ethel's grandmother dies, Ethel goes to live with her father, brother, and the stepmother and little siblings she has never met. She also must live with, and endure, the spitefulness of Aunt Sophie, who rules the house under a cloud of bad-temper and bitterness. Ethel’s Text is a Victorian story edited gently for a modern audience. It is a simple, heart-warming tale of overcoming grief and adversity through the guiding lights of past love, new friends and family and the words of the S...

'The book I've been waiting for my entire life' DOLLY ALDERTONIs it possible that life without romantic love isn't so bad?When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a...

Tucked away along a shady path towards the north-east edge of Hampstead Heath is a sign: Women Only. This is the Kenwood Ladies' Bathing Pond.Floating in the Pond's silky waters, hidden by a canopy of trees, it's easy to forget that you are in the middle of London. On a hot day, thousands of swimmers from eight to eighty-plus can be found waiting to take a dip before sunbathing in the adjoining meadow. As summer turns to autumn and then winter, the Pond is still visited by a large ...

'Every night when I turn the lights out in my sixteenth-floor living room before I go to bed, I experience a shock of pleasure as I see the banks of lighted windows rising to the sky, crowding round me, and feel myself embraced by the anonymous ingathering of city dwellers.' Set in New York, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman. Running through the book is V...

Brought to you by Penguin.When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love.Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - an album that shaped Key's expectations of ...

As a member of the integrated Women’s Army Corps, Private First Class Sarah Keys served her country as a receptionist at Fort Dix, New Jersey. When she boarded a bus home to North Carolina in 1952, she never expected to be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to move to the rear so a white Marine could take her seat. Her landmark 1955 Civil Rights victory, “Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company” not only desegregated interstate bus travel, it also provided the legal pre...

Lucy Sullivan is twenty-six and living it up (and occasionally down) in London. Hers is a life of quiet, undisciplined desperation. But when she and three friends visit a psychic for a bit of fun and the woman's predictions start coming true, Lucy is horrified. For the fortune teller insisted she'd soon be married - within the year, in fact.Not only does Lucy not have a boyfriend, but the chances of getting one are looking slim. Between the bottles of wine, anti-depressants and her addicti...

On the day she gives birth to her first child, Claire Walsh's husband James tells her he's been having an affair and now's the right time to leave her. Right for who exactly? Exhausted, tearful and a tiny bit furious, Claire can't think of what to do. So she follows the instincts of all self-respecting adults in tricky situations. . . and runs home to Mum and Dad.But while her parents are sympathetic, Claire's younger sisters are less so. Helen wants to share the new toy (baby Kate...

A SPECIAL 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION NARRATED BY THE AUTHORDiscover the deliciously dark and fantastically funny No. 1 bestseller about a woman living life rather too well and being whisked away from it all, from the No. 1 bestselling author of Grown Ups'How did it end up like this? Twenty-seven, unemployed, mistaken for a drug addict, in a treatment centre in the back arse of nowhere with an empty Valium bottle in my knickers . . .'Meet Rachel Walsh.She's bee...

The lives of four very different women have been shaped—and battered—by one charming man. . . .Ireland's debonair politician Paddy de Courcy—the "John F. Kennedy Jr. of Dublin"—has captured tabloid headlines and the imagination of his country with his charm and charisma. But the crushed hearts he's left behind him reveal more about his character than his winning, votegetting smile. Lola, Grace, Marnie, and Alicia have all suffered from his selfishness and cruelty. But with Paddy's ...