Books published by publisher Riverrun Pr

THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE BOLLINGER SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF ENGLAND'S LANE.'There's a lot of brilliantly observed detail... it's very funny and very sharp' Michael PalinGeorge is a fashion mad Beatles fan, selfish and cruel. Why his girlfriend Dorothy loves him is a mystery to her and to his best friend Sammy. When George callously chucks her he cannot anticipate that his life, post 1964, will never be the same. And forty-four years later, when George is sixty-four, rich and successful, his past will catch up with him and his family.'Connolly unfolds a rich and compelling drama of life that is anything but everyday' Daily Mail'It is Connolly's skill to get the reader to laugh at what should make you cry or at least wince' Times Literary Supplement

The sequel to the bestselling Summer Things. A summer of lust has given way to the winter of discontent. Brian and Dotty have lost everything and are seeing in the yuletide from a caravan on their friends’ driveway. Howard and Lizzie have it all and they’re not sharing - except for a lover or two. In a spirit of neighbourly envy, adulterous love and goodwill to oneself, it might be time to learn the true meaning of Christmas - whether they like it or not.

When Emily, a successful interior designer and utter bitch, has finished throttling her startlingly dim-witted husband Kevin one morning and packed him off for a day's labour, she never expects him to achieve anything but the usual myriad incompetencies: let alone seduce a young, attractive woman in Portobello Road. And when she's done screwing her husband's best friend Raymond in his dingy office, little does she know Raymond will be consecutively screwed over by his shrewd, secretly lustful PA with a fusion of blackmail and bankruptcy. Emily's a maelstrom of malice and cares not for the mess she leaves behind. But there's only so far she can push Kevin and Raymond before the storm finally breaks. With vicious flair, Connolly hurtles his cast of thrillingly repulsive characters into a plot of adultery, sadism and revenge, speeding towards a violent climax. This is a world where pretension has the biggest price tag and reason has been stripped, revarnished and hung with a darling, fake chandelier.

His girlfriend commands that he marry her. His wife demands him home in time for tea. His blackmailer commandeers half of his secret earnings. Then he gets hit by a bus. All in all, it's not a good day for Eric. And once he's on crutches, it becomes impossible to juggle two lives, three women and one vicious gangster. Eric's double-decker life and triple-tangled lies drive him to a catastrophic collision in Joseph Connolly's wry and ingeniously plotted black comedy.

In the kitchen Gillian loads the Hotpoint and frets about letting her baby go. In the bathroom Clifford styles his hair like Cliff's and wishes for a television. In the front room Arthur smokes a pipe and plots to fend off the loan sharks. In her bedroom Annette lifts up her nightie and heads for Clifford's room. In a tour-de-force of undressed taboo, four monologues intertwine to begin the story of an ordinary family in the fifties. How their seemingly contented, simple world bubbles under with odd desires and secret pangs - how it is shaken when they come to light - and how, step by step with the dawning sixties, life for all of them is whirled into a carousel of fashion, debauchery and explosive revelation.

Dr Adam Knox returns from serving with an NGO in the Central African Republic in disgrace. His attempt to protect patients from a brutal militia ended in disaster. he's a little rougher, a little wiser, and a lot more cynical.His new clinic tends to the vagrant, vulnerable and victimized of LA's streets. It earns from the villains willing to pay for discretion.His cynicism remains, until the night a beaten Romanian woman abandons her son on his operating table. She seems to be on the run. And in trying to return the boy to her, Knox can't help but try to figure out from whom she's running. He's going to wish he hadn't.Helping other people won't help him much when his struggle to rescue the woman and her boy leads Knox into a tangle of human traffickers, Russian mobsters and directly into the cruel business of LA's most powerful family.

A fantastic writer - compassionate, funny and fearless' George Saunders'One of the US's finest writers' according to Joshua Ferris, Jim Shepard now delivers a new collection that spans borders and centuries with unrivalled mastery. These ten stories ring with voices as diverse as those belonging to Arctic explorers in history's most nightmarish expedition, the Montgolfier brothers competing to be the first man to fly, and two American frontierswomen whose passionate connection is severed by jealous husbands and a deadly snowstorm.In each case the personal is the political as these humans, while falling in love or negotiating marital pitfalls or simply coming to terms with their own failings, face the tidal wave of nature's indifference and cruelty. History has swept them from our sympathy; Jim Shepard has reached into the past and sought them out.In his first collection to be published in the UK, this celebrated master of the short story displays his formidable acuity in imagining these wildly different worlds, and what our various lives feel like in the grip of catastrophe.

CANDIDATE IN SECRET FAMILY SCANDAL! When the press uncover siblings who 14-year-old Toni never knew she had, her father's chances of election as MP plunge. Heartbroken for her family, Toni then has to cope with further revelations from her elder sister Harriet. The sudden desertion of a trusted friend brings Toni to screaming point. How can the truth be presented as a lie? How can so many friends become enemies so easily? In the midst of so much chaos, can Toni find peace within herself? Josie Goble - author of On The Lemoncurd Trail, On The Magician's Trail and Sandy's Holiday - presents another emotional journey for an everyday teenage heroine. With wraparound cover by New Zealand's David Pitman.

A fantastic writer - compassionate, funny and fearless' George Saunders'One of the US's finest writers' according to Joshua Ferris, Jim Shepard now delivers a new collection that spans borders and centuries with unrivalled mastery. These ten stories ring with voices as diverse as those belonging to Arctic explorers in history's most nightmarish expedition, the Montgolfier brothers competing to be the first man to fly, and two American frontierswomen whose passionate connection is severed by jealous husbands and a deadly snowstorm.In each case the personal is the political as these humans, while falling in love or negotiating marital pitfalls or simply coming to terms with their own failings, face the tidal wave of nature's indifference and cruelty. History has swept them from our sympathy; Jim Shepard has reached into the past and sought them out.In his first collection to be published in the UK, this celebrated master of the short story displays his formidable acuity in imagining these wildly different worlds, and what our various lives feel like in the grip of catastrophe.