Birthday Stories

During a time of great turmoil, Gustave Flaubert created literature's most scandalous heroine: Madame Bovary. He then poisoned her with arsenic.

But what if, 175 years later, Emma – and the women history overlooked – could seize the quill from his hands and tell a different story?


In One Brief Moment All Eternity is a luminous reinvention of an iconic male writer, told through the eyes of the women – real and fictional – who shaped him: a devoted nursemaid, an Egyptian dancer and a passionate, jealous lover who refuses to be forgotten. Through their voices, visionary author Elif Shafak creates both an intimate portrait of a great artist and an epic meditation on storytelling itself: who gets remembered, who gets erased, and how can literature endure through political upheaval, war and injustice?

When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances "Frankie" McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California's idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl.


But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.


As green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. But Frankie will also discover the true value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause.

This story is about what it was like to be a woman during World War II, when women’s stories were all too often forgotten or overlooked . . .

Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals and passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path towards survival, love and freedom in war-torn France.

When mysterious postcards from Japan arrive out of the blue, Samuel—a university lecturer who is profoundly disillusioned with life—doesn't know what to think. At around the same time, Samuel's girlfriend splits up with him, and he is heartbroken.


Samuel's good friend Meritxell suggests he takes a holiday to Japan—he can recover from his heartbreak and maybe discover who sent the postcards and why. When he arrives in Japan, he is so taken with the food, the scenery, the people, the temples, that he almost forgets to look for the sender of the postcards.

Written centuries before the time of Shakespeare and even Chaucer, The Tale of Genji marks the birth of the novel-and after more than a millennium, this seminal work continues to enchant readers throughout the world.

Lady Murasaki Shikibu and her tale's hero, Prince Genji, have had an unmatched influence on Japanese culture. Prince Genji manifests what was to become an image of the ideal Heian era courtier; gentle and passionate. Genji is also a master poet, dancer, musician and painter.

Famed goalkeeper Noah Wilson doesn't do relationships or complications. The only thing the grumpy single dad wants is to do his job and spend more time with his daughter.


Unfortunately, his bachelor status has made it impossible to find the right nanny for her. With the World Cup looming and a string of fired nannies in his wake, he has no choice but to hire the last person he wants close to his orbit.
She's too stubborn and far too appealing for her own good, but she's also a natural with his daughter.

And the way his heart skips a beat whenever she's around? That's nothing more than a coincidence. He's sure of it.

Beginning one morning in December, WE DO NOT PART traces the path of a young woman, Kyungha, as she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalised following an accident, Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird, who will otherwise die.

Kyungha takes the first plane to Jeju, but a snowstorm hits the island the moment she arrives, plunging her into a world of white. Beset by icy wind and snow squalls, she wonders if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold which envelops her with every step. As night falls, she struggles her way to Inseon’s house, unaware as yet of the descent into darkness which awaits her.

The incredible first memoir from the Booker-winning radical icon Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things

For rising stars Kai Laramie and Juniper Castillo, being cast in the buzzy biopic Andy Warhol Never Gets Old is the opportunity they’ve both been waiting for. Soon the movie is blowing up, and so are their lives – in exciting, but also terrifying, ways.


John Green artfully blends a behind-the-scenes Hollywood love story with an examination of the private cost of a public life, in this masterful tale of two young people figuring out who they are, both together and alone.

I never anticipated Charlie Florek. But Charlie Florek changed my life.

Good things happen at the lake. That's what Alice's Nan always says. And it's true. It's where Alice took that photo, the one that catapulted her career.


But when Nan falls, Alice puts down her camera and heads back to Barry’s Bay. No camera. No deadlines. Quiet… until he shows up.

Charlie Florek. He was nineteen when she accidentally photographed him. Now he’s back - taller, hotter, and somehow even more unforgettable.

Bo is determined to live his own life in his own way. But his son has other ideas...

Bo lives a quiet existence in his small rural village in the north of Sweden. He is elderly and his days are punctuated by visits from his care team and his son.

A song without any answer in it?
That's the sound of waiting.
Livia Bohusz misses her brother, Cyrus.
Unmoored by his death, and the stifling silence of the family farm, eleven-year-old Livia has no choice but to survive.
Her only solace: music, an escape in the quiet rapture piano practice brings.
The promise of a new life her talent offers, intoxicating.
So when Livia starts her college music scholarship it feels as if a new life might begin. Immersing herself in her passions in a world where she excels, even as she struggles to fit in with more urbane classmates, she glimpses the possibilities of a life beyond the farm and her parents.