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Show Don't Tell: The Sunday Times bestseller

  • Writen by Curtis Sittenfeld
  • Publisher Penguin UK
  • ISBN 9781529925906
  • Publication Date 2025


In this compulsive collection of twelve witty stories, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels, as she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends.

In ‘The Patron Saints of Middle Age,’ a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In ‘A for Alone,’ a married artist embarks on a project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in ‘Lost but Not Forgotten,’ Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a new window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an awkward school reunion.

Witty, confronting and full of tenderness, Sittenfeld peels back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.

READERS CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF CURTIS SITTENFELD:

'Small windows into modern life and as such highly entertaining. Curtis, you're a star!' *****

'Sittenfeld understands women so well, it’s like having someone look straight into your soul'*****

'Devoured! You'll recognise yourself and others in these pages' *****

'No-one else writes with such precision and amusement' Red Magazine

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An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...'

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which women use to wax their legs while men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends Leila made at each key moment in her life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her. .

Ravaged by years of war and civil conflict, Britain has changed its name to Airstrip One and become part of Oceania – one of the three totalitarian blocks dominating the world – ruled by a mysterious leader called Big Brother who keeps the population in thrall through strict surveillance and brutal police repression. In a society where the individual is suppressed and turned into an “unperson” for not conforming, and where not only personal thought, but also historical record and language itself are constantly being manipulated by the ruling regime, Ministry of Truth worker Winston Smith tries to make sense of the rebellious thoughts and passions that are stirring inside him, and finds himself impotent against the inexorable machine that surrounds him and threatens to crush him at any time.

Arguably the greatest dystopian novel of all time and the most influential post-war work of fiction – which enriched the English language with words such as “Newspeak”, “doublethink” and “thoughtcrime” – Nineteen Eighty-Four is a riveting read and a groundbreaking exploration of mass surveillance, censorship and mind control, which has a deep resonance with the world we live in.

990 EGP

FRIEND REQUEST by Laura Marshall and I AM WATCHING YOU by Tessa Driscoll.

Give me one name. One person. And I will make them disappear . . .

When Sarah rescues a young girl in trouble, she expects nothing in return. But her act of bravery puts a powerful and dangerous man in her debt. He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid - in the only way he knows how.

He offers Sarah a way to solve a desperate situation with her intolerable boss. A once-in-a-lifetime deal that will make all her problems disappear.

No consequences. No comeback. No chance of being found out.

All it takes is a 29 second phone call.

BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS A NAME TO GIVE. DON'T THEY?

Praise for T. M. Logan, the master of the everyman thriller

'Assured, compelling, and hypnotically readable - with a twist at the end I guarantee you won't see coming' Lee Child

'A tense and gripping thriller' B A Paris, bestselling author of BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

'So gripping I genuinely found it hard to put down' KL Slater, bestselling author of BLINK

'A compelling, twisty page-turner, and that's the truth' James Swallow, bestselling author of NOMAD