No wait, No fuss – June’s collection

A modern classic, Elmer the colourful patchwork elephant has been a nursery favourite since his creation in 1989 and has sold over 4 million copies around the world. Elmer is not your normal grey elephant – his colourful exuberance cannot be contained for long! With his trademark cheeky humour, Elmer shows us that it’s OK to be different.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Stephen Thorne
Suitable for ages 3+

Martin Moone is fed up with being the only boy in a family of girls. With three elder sisters, he’s desperate for a sidekick to help him fight his corner. When best mate Padraic suggests getting an imaginary friend, he decides to give it a go. His first attempt is Loopy Lou, who loves practical jokes and is a dab hand at balloon-modelling. But Martin soon gets fed up with Lou’s clowning around, so selects Sean ‘Caution’ Murphy instead. Sean is much more up Martin’s street – and full of advice about how Martin should negotiate day-to-day life. But getting rid of Lou is not easy, and TWO imaginary friends is a recipe for trouble!

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Chris O’Dowd and Nick V. Murphy
Suitable for ages 8+

Today, the options and freedoms on offer to LGBTQ+ people living in the West are greater than ever before. But is same-sex marriage, improved media visibility and corporate endorsement all it’s cracked up to be? At what cost does this acceptance come? And who is getting left behind, particularly in parts of the world where LGBTQ+ rights aren’t so advanced?

Combining intrepid journalism with her own personal experience, Amelia Abraham searches for the answers to these urgent challenges, as well as the broader question of what it means to be queer in 2019. With curiosity, good humour and disarming openness, Amelia takes the reader on a thought-provoking and entertaining journey. Join her as she cries at the first same-sex marriage in Britain, loses herself in the world’s biggest drag convention in L.A., marches at Pride parades across Europe, visits both a transgender model agency and the Anti-Violence Project in New York to understand the extremes of trans life today, parties in the clubs of Turkey’s underground LGBTQ+ scene, and meets a genderless family in progressive Stockholm.

Available as an eBook and an eAudiobook
Narrated by  Amelia Abraham
Non-Fiction

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Fenella Woolgar
Fiction

Forty years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the Northside Rises and on the eerie bogs of Big Nothin’ that Bohane really lives.

For years, the city has been in the cool grip of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there’s trouble in the air. They say his old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchman is getting ambitious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight… and then there’s his mother.

City of Bohane is a unique and visionary novel that blends influence from film and the graphic novel, from Trojan beats and calypso rhythms, from Celtic myth and legend, from fado and the sagas, and from all the great inheritance of Irish literature. A work of mesmerising imagination and vaulting linguistic invention, it is a taste of the startlingly new.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Kevin Barry
Fiction

Today is the first day of the rest of your life’ is the motto on a plate in the kitchen at home, and Tess can’t get it out of her head, even though she’s in Florence for a final, idyllic holiday before university. Her life is about to change forever – but not in the way she expects. Gus and his parents are also on holiday in Florence.
Their lives have already changed suddenly and dramatically. Gus tries to be a dutiful son, but longs to escape and discover what sort of person he is going to be. For one day, the paths of these two 18-year-olds will criss-cross before they each return to England. Over the course of the next 16 years, life and love will offer them very different challenges. Separated by distance and chance, there’s no way the two of them are ever going to meet each other properly – or is there?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Anna Acton and Finlay Robertson
Fiction

It’s the summer of 1965, and the streets of Queens, New York shimmer in a heatwave. One July morning, Ruth Malone wakes to find a bedroom window wide open and her two young children missing. After a desperate search, the police make a horrifying discovery.

Noting Ruth’s perfectly made-up face and provocative clothing, the empty liquor bottles and love letters that litter her apartment, the detectives leap to convenient conclusions, fuelled by neighbourhood gossip and speculation. Sent to cover the case on his first major assignment, tabloid reporter Pete Wonicke at first can’t help but do the same. But the longer he spends watching Ruth, the more he learns about the darker workings of the police and the press. Soon, Pete begins to doubt everything he thought he knew.
Ruth Malone is enthralling, challenging and secretive – is she really capable of murder?

Available as an eBook and an eAudiobook
Narrated by Graham Halstead and Lauren Fortgang
Fiction

The great Norse myths, which have inspired so much of modern fiction, are dazzlingly retold by Neil Gaiman. Tales of dwarfs and frost giants, of treasure and magic, and of Asgard, home to the gods: Odin the all-father, highest and oldest of the Aesir; his mighty son Thor, whose hammer Mjollnir makes the mountain giants tremble; Loki, wily and handsome, reliably unreliable in his lusts; and Freya, more beautiful than the sun or the moon, who spurns those who seek to control her.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Neil Gaiman
Fiction

Lack of sleep is not just a matter of feeling tired. Recent research has shown that it is associated with serious illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. The big question is, what can we do to get more sleep? Who can we turn to for a sympathetic and knowledgeable one-to-one consultation? The answer is, to one of the world’s leading sleep experts: Professor Chris Idzikowski, who here reveals his wisdom in a down-to-earth and reassuring way.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by John Voce
Non-Fiction

Against all the odds, Dolly Rawlins and her gangland widows managed the impossible: a heist their husbands had failed to pull off – at the cost of their lives.

But though they may be in the money, they’re far from easy street.

Shocked by her husband’s betrayal, Dolly discovers Harry Rawlins isn’t dead. He knows where the four women are and he wants them to pay. And he doesn’t just mean getting his hands on the money.

The women can’t keep running. They have to get Harry out of their lives for good. But can they outwit a criminal mastermind who won’t hesitate to kill?

Available as an eBook and an eAudiobook
Narrated by Amanda Donohoe
Fiction

THEN
1976. Loo and her sister Bee live in a run-down cottage in the middle of nowhere, with their artistic parents and wild siblings. Their mother, Cathy, had hoped to escape to a simpler life; instead the family find themselves isolated and shunned by their neighbours. At the height of the stifling summer, unexplained noises and occurences in the house begin to disturb the family, until they intrude on every waking moment . . .

NOW
Loo, now Lucy, is called back to her childhood home. A group of strangers are looking to discover the truth about the house and the people who lived there. But is Lucy ready to confront what really happened all those years ago?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Kristin Atherton
Fiction

Bec Shepherd is a malaria researcher struggling to lead a good life. Ritchie, her reprobate brother, is a rock star turned TV producer. When Bec refuses an offer of marriage from a powerful newspaper editor and Ritchie’s indiscretions catch up with him, brother and sister are forced to choose between loyalty and betrayal.

Available as an eBook and an eAudiobook
Narrated by John Rafter Lee
Fiction