This warm and lyrical semi-autobiographical first novel by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen charts the coming of age of Lawrence Breavman, the only son of a Jewish Montreal family. 'Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the world is made flesh.' Lawrence Breavman seeks two things: love and beauty. Beginning with the innocent games of delicious misadventure with first love Lisa and the absorbing wanders through Montreal with best friend Krantz, Breavman's tale is a distant echo of 'Catcher in the Rye' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' - injected with 1960s aesthetics and Cohen's unique poetry. As Breavman grows into a young man, the emerging writer continues his quest for beauty and love, finding himself in the arms of Shell and a burgeoning realisation of his own talent for appreciating majesty in the grotesque. Semi-autobiographical, the angst and beauty of Cohen's voice deftly channel the painful confusion of the journey into adulthood, and the friendships, wars and lovers that are our guides.

Number one best-seller Jane Green - author of The Beach House and Spellbound - explores changes in relationships when a family member is struck with illness in her heartbreaking novel The Love Verb . Love means being there - through everything. Everyone in Callie's family is busy; her sister is a free-spirited Manhattan chef, her best friend Lila is coping with the vitriol of her new man's ex-wife, and her parents, Walter and Honor, have rich though separate lives. But when Callie discovers the breast cancer she thought she'd beaten has returned, they all find that their lives shift to focus on caring for Callie. 'A beautifully written and intensely sad lesson in what it really means to love someone you know you're going to lose' Daily Telegraph 'Stylish, wickedly insightful . . . family, friends and love is truly, heartwrenchingly tested' Mirror 'A moving account of a family faced with a heartbreaking situation. I defy anyone to get through to the end without crying' Sunday Express Jane Green's internationally best-selling novels, including The Other Woman , Jemima J. , Babyville , The Patchwork Marriage (published as Another Piece of My Heart in the USA) Girl Friday ( Dune Road ), Life Swap ( Swapping Lives ), Second Chance , Straight Talking , Mr. Maybe , and Bookends , are moving and true to life. The Love Verb is published as Promises to Keep in the USA.