I worked in television as a development producer for twenty years, designing game shows, reality shows, formatted documentaries, all sorts of programming. One of the prerequisites of working in telly is to watch a lot of it, and that has always been a joy for me, as I love the medium. Even after I left the profession to become an author, I’ve retained my passion for the small screen and write a regular blog on what I’m watching. So, for me, a combination of books and television is something to be savored and celebrated.
Lizzy Dent’s books nail that winning combination of funny and heartfelt. I loved Lizzy’s debut, The Summer Job, as it’s such a great mix of witty and audacious, but full of warmth too.
This book, her latest, has the same ingredients: an outrageous opening, a luscious romance, and a thorny workplace situation. Her prose is sharp, the jokes keep coming, and her characters are people you want to hang out with. Plus, the revenge really is sweet…
“I love, love, love Lizzy Dent.”—Emily Henry, author of People We Meet on Vacation and Happy Place
Bridesmaids meets Emily in Paris—in London—in this hilarious and heartfelt story of one handsome neighbor, one no-good ex, and the summer Amy Duffy makes the comeback of her life.
Her past is a mess. But her present is about to get delicious.
Amy is more than one disastrous night of drunken revenge on her boss/ex-boyfriend’s Audi—the night that tanked her rising TV producer career and led to a hasty move to London for a fresh start. She is thirty years of awesomeness. At…
I love to read children’s books as well as grown-up ones. This book is just as dark, gritty, and challenging as any adult novel and has a fantastically compelling premise. It also has a heroic and endearing protagonist in Katniss Everdeen and a wonderfully bleak backdrop in District 12.
I’m a big fan of sci-fi novels, and Suzanne Collins is such a great world-builder; everything feels plausible and timely, the stakes are dizzyingly high, and she pushes it all to the limit.
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd…
This book has one of the most magnificently assured openings I’ve ever read!
The rhythm and pace of the prose are just sublime. I was a big fan of the sitcom Bewitched, set in the same era, and I always imagined Elizabeth Zott as looking like Elizabeth Montgomery, who played Samantha. Everything is so vivid and precise in Garmus’ world, but like Bewitched, there’s magic there.
I love how she effortlessly weaves different themes, subjects, and environments - chemistry, television, rowing, and academia - without making it anything but superbly entertaining. Bonnie Garmus thoroughly deserves the success that has come her way, and I can’t wait to see how this book translates onto the small screen.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • Meet Elizabeth Zott: a “formidable, unapologetic and inspiring” (PARADE) scientist in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show in this novel that is “irresistible, satisfying and full of fuel. It reminds you that change takes time and always requires heat” (The New York Times Book Review).
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Oprah Daily, Newsweek, GoodReads
"A unique heroine ... you'll find yourself wishing she wasn’t fictional." —Seattle Times…
Nick Hornby is one of my favorite writers, and About a Boy is one of my favorite books of all time.
I love how his prose is pared down but so profound; every sentence, however simple, carries weight, and his characterization is wonderfully human. In this book, Hornby champions mainstream entertainment, something I’m passionate about, as I can’t stand cultural snobbishness.
It’s an homage to a golden age of light entertainment, and, like television comedy, this is a book that "makes us all part of something."
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER SOON TO BE A TV SERIES STARRING GEMMA ARTERTON AND RUPERT EVERETT
'Simply unputdownable' Guardian
'Hilarious' Daily Telegraph
'Highly entertaining' Sunday Times _________________
Make them laugh, and they're yours forever . . .
Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She wants to make people laugh.
So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself to London, and overnight she becomes the lead in a new BBC comedy, Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nation's hearts.
Funny Girl is the story of a smash-hit TV show and…
Enter a captivating world where science fiction and thrilling suspense converge. After plummeting from the roof of Helix Unbound, Amanda awakens to a life devoid of memories. Desperately longing to fit in, yet sensing she harbors an extraordinary secret beneath her seemingly ordinary facade, she explores the unfamiliar world in…
There was a moment when everyone I knew seemed to be reading this book, and I just had to join the club. I’m glad I did; Sittenfeld’s portrayal of working in television comedy is so gripping and cool. In fact, I enjoyed that aspect of it so much I didn’t need the romance part!
But the relationship between Sally and Noah is so intriguing; it’s a kind of fantasy played out, and I willingly suspended disbelief as a reader that someone as famous, hot, talented, funny, and kind as Noah could exist. I want Sally’s celebrity boyfriend, AND I want her job.
Clover Hendry, 46, is a mum of two with a husband, a nice house, and a successful TV career. But keeping the plates spinning is a struggle because she’s an over-anxious people-pleaser who just can’t say no, ever.
Until today. Today, things are going to be very different. Because Clover is taking the day off. She’s taking a break from… everything. Today, she’s going to do and say whatever she likes, even if that means her whole life unravels. A modern-day Ferris Bueller for mad midlife women, this is a story about putting life on pause, pleasing yourself, and getting your own back. Whatever it takes.
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career…
Riley Masterson has moved to Greenbrier, SC, anxious to escape the chaos that has overwhelmed her life.
Questioned in a murder in Alabama, she has spent eighteen months under suspicion by a sheriff’s office, unable to make an arrest. But things in gentrifying Greenbrier are not as they seem. As…
