Kate Long Livres

Katherine Millar is eighteen and desperate to be less fat, less swotty and to have cooler friends. But most of all she wishes she had two parents, instead of one grandma, Poll. Poll is pushing seventy, half blind and utterly poisonous. She has looked after Katherine since she was a baby, when her father was killed in a car crash and her mother vanished. Poll's ambition is for things to stay exactly the same for ever, and for Katherine never to leave their pit village of Bank Top. Katherine has other ideas, and she can feel change is coming; the omens are all around her. In the meantime, she cleans up after Poll, revises for her exams, watches daytime television and surfs the net at the library trying to find out how to be bulimic. What she doesn't quite realize yet is that life won't always wait for you to catch up with it. Swallowing Grandma is a perceptive, vivid and painfully funny novel about the ties of love and loathing, and the ways in which our versions of the past can thwart our visions for the future. In Katherine and Poll, Kate Long has created two unforgettable characters locked in an epic battle over whose side of the story will prevail. 'Wise, warm and witty . . . Will keep you reading until the very last page' Red, Book of the Month

The new novel from the author of the number one bestselling novel The Bad Mother's Handbook.

The long-awaited sequel to the number one bestselling The Bad Mother's Handbook.

Freya is torn between her two mothers. Liv, her adoptive mother who nurtured and raised her, is earthy, no-nonsense. The total opposite to Melody: with her vibrant, explosive personality and extensive, brightly coloured wardrobe, Freya's birth mother is still apt to find herself thrown out of Top Shop for bad behaviour. Hard as it has been for Freya to try to reconcile her two families, it has been harder for her mothers. Proud of her mature and sensible adoptive daughter, Liv fears Melody's restless influence. Meanwhile, forced to give up her baby when she was just a teenager herself, Melody now craves Freya's love and acceptance - but only really knows how to have fun. Then tragedy strikes, and the bonds of love that tie these three women together will be tested to the max. Can they finally let go of the past, and pull together in order to withstand the toughest challenge life could throw them?

The bestselling book is now a prime-time TV special featuring Catherine Tate.

Ally is a good working class girl who has moved to a more upmarket neighbourhood, Ally is obsessed with her beautiful, self-assured neighbour and friend, Juno. Juno seems to have it all. The handsome husband, the beautiful home, and a cultural life unlike any Ally has ever known. When Juno makes the rash decision to appear on 'Queen Mum', a programme not unlike Wife Swap, Ally is drawn into the glamour of it all, and even gets a spot on television when the replacement mum, Kim, invites her around, first for lunch and then, in a brilliant scene of manipulation and sheer cold-bloodedness, to save a dying bird. It's only when the programme airs that we realise that things in Juno's household are not as Ally believes, and that she and Juno are more alike than she ever imagined

Carol married young -- to philandering Phil; and became a mother young -- to highly-strung Jaz. Carol put up with Phil's infidelities: suffer in silence and keep the family together was her mantra. Not so Jaz. The moment she discovers her own husband Ian's errant ways -- with a woman he barely knew -- she throws him out of the house, changes the locks and bans him from seeing their toddler son Matty. In so many ways independent and strong, where her daughter is concerned Carol is a coward. When Jaz finds out that her mother has enlisted the support of Ian's father David to try to get her back together with Ian, Jaz is beyond furious and disappears with Matty. With a deft lightness of touch -- and a dash of unexpected romance -- Kate Long takes us into the heart of this mixed-up but utterly recognisable family who fight for what they believe in, even if it puts the closest members on opposing sides.

From the No.1 bestselling author of The Bad Mother's Handbook