When Lightning Strikes (Missing)

ISBN: 9780689860911
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A Summer Fling

When dynamic, power-dressing Christie blows in like a warm wind to take over their department, five very different women find themselves thrown together at work. But none of them could have predicted the fierce bond of friendship that her leadership would inspire . . . Anna, 39, is reeling from the loss of her fiancé, who ran off with a much younger woman. Her pride in tatters, these days Anna finds it difficult to leave the house. So when a handsome, mysterious stranger takes an interest in her, she's not sure whether she can learn to trust again? Then there's Grace, in her fifties, trapped in a loveless marriage with a man she married because, unable to have children of her own, she fell in love with his motherless brood. Grace worries that Dawn is about to make the same mistake: orphaned as a child, engaged to love-rat Calum, is Dawn more interested in the security that comes with his tight-knit, boisterous family? When a sexy, footloose rock singer catches her eye, will Dawn have the courage to follow her heart? At 28, Raychel is the youngest member of their little gang. And with a loving husband, Ben, and a cosy little nest for two, she would seem to be the happiest. But what dark secrets are lurking behind this perfect facade, that make sweet, pretty Raychel so guarded and unwilling to open up? Under Christie's warm hand, the girls soon realise they have some difficult choices to make. Indeed, none of them quite realised how much they needed the sense of fun, laughter, and loyalty that abounds when five women become friends. It's one for all, and all for one!

ISBN: 9781847392831
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The Travelling Horn Player

Bad, mad, flame - haired cellist Stella, adulterous Jonathan and high - spirited sisters Ellen and Lydia Dent find their fates bound together through love, loss and literature in a dazzling tragicomedy. Lydia is killed in a car accident, but she returns to her bereft sister as a benign ghost, who, none the less, comes to haunt the lives of those around her in unexpected ways: Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter Stella, who, on the same day, discovers that her father has been having an affair with the gladiatorial, teasing Sonia; and Stella's genius painter - boy lover Izzy, whom she leaves behind as she flees to the arms of kindly Peregrine. Along with good stepmothers, bad mothers, strange professors and wicked monks, their lives collide in a breathtaking finale.

ISBN: 9780140260137
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The World Below

Catherine Hubbard is at a crossroads in her life. Twice divorced, she has three children who are now grown up and scattered. Then news comes that she has inherited her grandmother Georgia's home in Vermont. There, Catherine finds not only the ghosts of her own past but those of Georgia as well, whose diaries reveal a deep secret and a tragic misunderstanding.

ISBN: 9780747561446
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Designs for a happy home

ISBN: 9781408801055
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It's All About Him

Following the premature death of her parents, 19-year-old Dee Hewson puts her college plans on hold to go travelling with her boyfriend, Neil. All goes well until they reach Las Vegas, where Neil develops a dangerous addiction to gambling. After two years of their rootless, nomadic existence, Dee awakes to find Neil gone, along with her credit cards, the diamond ring he'd bought her in San Francisco and her father's watch. Devastated, Dee returns to the family home in Dublin to pick up the pieces of her old life. Still in shock at what happened, the discovery that she's also pregnant is the icing on the cake. But baby Sam turns out to be the one positive thing to come out of Dee's relationship with Neil. After trying and failing at a number of part-time jobs, Dee discovers a talent for cooking and eventually sets up her own catering business, finally daring to find love again with the steadfast Conor Fitzgerald. But the publicity generated by her success has an unwelcome side-effect: the return of the feckless Neil. Amazed and delighted to discover he's a father, Neil wants to be a part of Sam's life. Dee feels she has no choice but to agree. Surely having his dad in his life can only be a good thing for Sam. Or can it?

ISBN: 9781416521945
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Four Wives

Welcome to Hunting Ridge, home to outrageous wealth and four desperate wives…

Meet: Gayle Beck, the matriarch of Hunting Ridge society, who struggles to reconcile her picture-perfect life with a numbing sense of unfulfilment; Love Welsh, adoring mother, who battles with memories of a childhood lived in the shadow of a genius father; Marie Passeti, over-stretched divorce lawyer and mother, who has lost her passion for life and for her husband; and Janie Kirk, yummy mummy, whose quest for acceptance knows no bounds. In a world where happiness comes second to appearances, their domestic discontent spirals into an irreversible course of risk-taking, secrecy and self-destruction. For these four wives perfection is just a façade and behind closed doors infidelity, self-doubt and deceit run rife.

Author Profile

Wendy Walker is a former commercial litigator and investment banker who now works at home raising her children and writing (most of which is done between the school runs in the back of her minivan, where she has blankets, a coffee reheating device and laptop batteries to keep her going!). She lives in Connecticut, USA, and is currently working on her second novel (still in the back of her minivan). For further information visit Wendy's website: www.wendywalkerbooks.com Wendy is also the editor and contributing author of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms.

Reviews

Acutely well observed and suspenseful ... a stunning reflection of life in an affluent American suburb, where the women seem to have everything ... except happiness. A great read.,A cleverly woven, sexy debut that is a fascinating peek inside the gilded cages of suburban matrimony ... A true page-turner treat.,A fascinating read. Wendy Walker delivers a blistering dissection of modern suburban marriage. I couldn't put it down.,Walker’s first novel is a treat. It’s well written and features great characters, lots of humor, and dead-on analysis of friendship, marriage, and motherhood.

ISBN: 9780099525158
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Confetti Confidential

Four brides. One amateur wedding planner. Whose funeral will it be come the big day?

Isabel Bookbinder dreams of pearly white weddings, happy brides, handsome grooms. And champagne towers that don't topple over. She dreams of the perfect wedding. But not for herself... for her clients. It's all about bride management as far as Isabel's concerned. Even when she misplaces a couple of brides and loses her job working for wedding guru Pippa Everitt, Isabel isn't disheartened. She throws herself straight into launching Isabel Bookbinder, Individual Weddings, and with a pop starlet and a millionaire as her first clients, business is looking rosy. Unfortunately for Isabel, nothing ever goes quite according to plan...

Author Profile

Holly McQueen has wanted to be a writer ever since discovering that the nuns at her junior school would let her off maths homework if she wrote a story instead. After unexpected detours via law, magazine journalism, and even musical theatre, she began writing her first novel in 2006. Holly lives with her husband in London. She still avoids maths.

Reviews

0

ISBN: 9780099545750
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Ash And Bone

One of the best crime books you're likely to read this year' The Times

When the take-down of a violent criminal goes badly wrong, something doesn't feel right to Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch. and her uneasiness is compounded by her belief that someone is following her home... Retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder's daughter, Katherine, is running wild. Elder's fears for his daughter are underscored by guilt - it was his involvement in a case that led directly to the abduction and rape which has so unbalanced Katherine's life. Persuaded out of retirement, Elder reopens a cold case which could have devastating repercussions for the crime squad itself. Elder's investigations take place against the backdrop of his increasing concern for his daughter. He must battle his own demons before he can uncover the truth.

Author Profile

JOHN HARVEY is the author of the richly praised sequence of ten Charlie Resnick novels, the first of which, Lonely Hearts, was named by The Times as one of the '100 Best Crime Novels of the Century'. Flesh and Blood, his first novel featuring retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder, won the CWA Silver Dagger Award in 2004. He is also a poet, dramatist and occasional broadcaster. For more about the author, visit www.mellotone.co.uk

Reviews

‘Ash and Bone starts where Flesh and Blood left off, in every sense. Harvey once again gets everything right, jangling the nerves and plucking the heart-strings as he leads us sure-footedly through a complex plot whose disparate elements he holds in perfect balance. Another marvellous read.’,‘John Harvey is one of my favourite writers. Whenever he has a new book out it goes to the top of my reading list. And I haven’t been disappointed yet.’,Ash & Bone, like everything I've read of Harvey's, is distinguished by seriousness, sophistication and stylistic elegance.,'John Harvey continues to delight all readers who relish his hard-boiled gritty style and recognise the authenticity of his English inner city settings',‘Immaculately engineered thriller...Harvey’s book is fast, fluent and exciting, with a pace and assurance that never lets up’

ISBN: 9780099466239
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Emotionally Weird

Third novel by the bestselling author of When Will There Be Good News? - the ultimate (hilarious) 1970s campus novel.

On a peat and heather island off the west coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother Nora take refuge in the large mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories.Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear, like who her father was – variously Jimmy, Jack, or Ernie. Effie tells of her life at college in Dundee, the land of cakes and William Wallace, where she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom the Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans (more real than the Luxemburgers).But strange things are happening. Why is Effie being followed?Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?

Author Profile

Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? was voted winner of the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year. After Case Histories and One Good Turn, it was her third novel to feature the former private detective Jackson Brodie, who also makes a welcome return in Started Early, Took My Dog. She won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and has been a critically acclaimed international bestselling author ever since.

Reviews

The lustre, energy and panache of her writing are as striking as ever...Funny, bold and memorable','Beautifully written…brimming with quirky characters and original storytelling. Kate Atkinson has struck gold with this unique offering','A truly comic novel - achingly funny in parts - challenging and executed with wit and mischief…an hilarious and magical trip','Sends jolts of pleasure off the page…Atkinson's funniest foray yet…it is a work of Dickensian or even Shakespearean plenty',A truly comic novel - achingly funny in parts - challenging and executed with wit and mischief…an hilarious and magical trip,Her novels are remarkable both in and of themselves, and as evidence of an important emerging body of work from a brilliant and profoundly original writer,With just two novels, Atkinson has added new colour to the British literary landscape

ISBN: 9780552997348
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No Turning Back

They thought it would be easy. They were dead wrong . . .

Alex is failing as a father. Ian keeps dangerous secrets. Jenn wants adventure. Mitch wants Jenn. Four friends just scraping by, finding comfort in each other and the hope that things will get better. But as their twenties fade in the rear-view mirror, none of them are turning out to be who – or where – they hoped. At a time when CEOs steal millions while their employees watch savings dwindle, these four are tired of the honest approach. They’re going to stop waiting and start taking. They have a failsafe, victimless plan that will change their lives for ever. What could possibly go wrong…

Author Biography
Marcus Sakey is an award-winning thriller writer. He has also contributed to a number of short story anthologies in the thriller genre. He lives in Chicago with his wife. www.marcussakey.com

Reviews
[Leaves] readers gasping with fright and pleasure at Sakey's genius.

ISBN: 9780552160834
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Just For The Summer

Every July, the lucky owners of Cornish holiday homes set off for their annual break. Loading their estate cars with dogs, cats, casefuls of wine, difficult adolescents and rebellious toddlers, they close up their desirable semis in smartish London suburbs - having turned off the Aga and turned on the burglar alarm - and look forward to a carefree, restful, somehow more fulfilling summer. Clare is, this year, more than usually ready for her holiday. Her teenage daughter, Miranda, has been behaving strangely; her husband, Jack, is harbouring unsettling thoughts of a change in lifestyle; her small children are being particularly tiresome; and she herself is contemplating a bit of extra-marital adventure, possibly with Eliot, the successful - although undeniably heavy-drinking and overweight - author in the adjoining holiday property. Meanwhile Andrew, the only son of elderly parents, is determined that this will be the summer when he will seduce Jessica, Eliot's nubile daughter. But Jessica spends her time in girl-talk with Miranda, while Milo, her handsome brother with whom Andrew longs to be friends, seems more interested in going sailing with the young blond son of the club commodore. Unexpected disasters occur, revelations are made and, as the summer ends, real life will never be quite the same again.

Author Biography
Judy Astley was frequently told off for day-dreaming at her drearily traditional school but has found it to be the ideal training for becoming a writer. There were several false-starts to her career: secretary at an all-male Oxford college (sacked for undisclosable reasons), at an airline (decided, after a crash and a hijacking, that she was safer elsewhere) and as a dress designer (quit before anyone noticed she was adapting Vogue patterns). She spent some years as a parent and as a painter before sensing that the day was approaching when she’d have to go out and get a Proper Job. With a nagging certainty that she was temperamentally unemployable, and desperate to avoid office coffee, having to wear tights every day and missing out on sunny days on Cornish beaches with her daughters, she wrote her first novel, Just for the Summer. She has now had eleven novels published by Black Swan.

Reviews
Oh, what a find! A lovely, funny book'

ISBN: 9780552995641
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Remembrance

An unforgettable novel about World War I - and five young people whose lives will be changed for ever as a result. From a Carnegie Medal-winning author.

1915 - Scotland. A group of teenagers from two families meet for a picnic, but the war across the Channel is soon to tear them away from such youthful pleasures. All too soon the horror of what is to become known as The Great War engulfs them, their friends and the whole village. From the horror of the trenches, to the devastating reality seen daily by those nursing the wounded, they struggle to survive. Nothing will ever be the same again. REMEMBRANCE is a powerful and engrossing novel about love and war, from the Carnegie Medal-winning author Theresa Breslin.

Author Biography
Theresa Breslin is a well-respected author, popular with librarians, teachers and children. She has won the Carnegie Medal for WHISPERS IN THE GRAVEYARD and achieved critical success with her two novels about KEZZIE, set in the Second World War. Her titles include the DREAM MASTER titles for Corgi Yearling and REMEMBRANCE for Doubleday/Corgi. Author lives: Lenzie, Scotland

Reviews
An immensely readable, passionately written epic, with an involving, fast-moving plot constantly challenging readers's assumptions,Young readers will find themselves swept along with Breslin’s engaging cast into a world where duty and compassion must somehow co-exist,Breslin brilliantly weaves the themes of emancipation, class, love, propaganda and the machinations of war into the story of how these young lives are changed with a light touch that belies the seriousness of the subject.,Breslin's light touch and beautiful prose give the harrowing sights and sounds of the war a much more human feel...a novel that will stay with me for a long time,A truly epic feel...already Remembrance is being hailed as Breslin's best book yet,They will never forget...Nor will anyone who picks up this novel,"A very special book for older children . . . . Beautifully written, this is Birdsong for children ( although adults will love it too).",Theresa Breslin is simply a superb writer and I strongly recommend this novel to all readers.,'A powerful and engrossing novel.',As much a love story as a war story and everyone, boys and girls, will find it impossible to forget.,This is a very moving book

ISBN: 9780552547383
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Music & Silence

A bestselling novel from a well-loved, critically acclaimed novelist of prodigious breadth of talent

In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realises that the musicians have to perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, he understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil are waging war to the death. MUSIC & SILENCE tells a story that is both violent and tender, shocking and consoling. This is a bold, uncompromising, wildly original book which demonstrates that in the day-to-day business of living, as in a fairy tale, not everything is totally black, nor wholly white

Author Biography
Rose Tremain lives in North London and Norwich, with the biographer Richard Holmes. Her books have won many prizes including the Whitbread Novel of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Prix Femina Etranger, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Angel Literary Award and the Sunday Express Book of the Year. Restoration was shortlisted for the Booker and made into a film; The Colour was shortlisted for the Orange and selected by the Daily Mail Reading Club. Her most recent collection, The Darkness of Wallis Simpson, was shortlisted for both the First National Short story Award and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Two of her books (The Colour and The Way I Found Her) are in development as films, and she is currently working on a TV screenplay to star Sir Ian McKellen.

Reviews
Tremain weaves her web of stories with great visual flair and emotional acuity: This is a fabulous cacophony of passion and despair.,The best thing from Denmark since Hamlet.,Intricate and sparkling ... Ingenious, amusing and beautifully written.,A superb novel... a wonderful, joyously noisy book.,Tremain's achievement in Music & Silence is extraordinary ... A narrative as funny as it is compelling.,The plot is ingenious... an unforgettable tapestry of Eros and of art.,Music & Silence is a magnificent novel... a brilliant book which will repay many readings.,Lyrical, voluptuous... splendid... A sumptuous drama lit by the glamorous torchlight of the courtly past.

ISBN: 9780099268550
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Missing

THE TOP TEN BESTSELLER.

It’s an early autumn day like any other as Miles Avery drives his wife, Jacqueline, to the station. Nothing remarkable crops up in conversation, nor do either of them appear anything other than their normal selves. At the station, Jacqueline gets out, takes an overnight bag from the back seat, then turns towards the platforms. This is the last anyone sees of her. Three weeks later, Miles calls the police. Enquiries are made, but there is no evidence of her boarding a train, or even entering the station. Very soon the finger of suspicion starts to turn towards Miles, and as dark secrets from the past begin to merge with those of the present, the great love he has been trying to protect is not only revealed but thrown into terrible jeopardy...

Author Biography
Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of twenty novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day, a moving memoir of her childhood in Bristol. She lives in France. Her website address is www.susanlewis.com

Reviews


ISBN: 9780099492344
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Billy

Author Biography


Reviews


ISBN: 9780749397715
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Cunning Man

ISBN: 9780140243437
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The Flight of the Maidens

The Flight of the Maidens describes the post-war summer of 1946 - and follows the growing-up of three young women in the months between leaving school and taking up their scholarships at university: Una Vane, whose widowed mother runs a hairdressing salon in her front room (Maison Vane Glory - Where Permanent Waves are Permanent), goes bicycling with Ray, the boy who delivers fish and milk; Hetty Fallowes struggles to become independent of her possessive, loving, tactless mother; and Lieselotte Klein, who had arrived in 1939 on a train from Hamburg, uncovers tragedy in the past and magic in the present.

ISBN: 9780349114248
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Fishbowl

Allison, Jodine, and Emma discover what it truly means to be roommates when their money-making scheme to school men in the ways of women goes awry, shattering any semblance of privacy and forcing them to look deep inside themselves--a discovery that will change all of their lives forever. Original. 125,000 first printing.

ISBN: 9780373250202
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The International Gooseberry

He wants to find himself. They want to lose him. From Ben Hatch, the best-selling author of The Lawnmower Celebrity, a novel about travel and feeling green. Kerouac said that life is a dream. But International Gooseberry Kit Farley's life is definitely turning into a nightmare, as he drives across the States with his supposed 'best mate' Carlos and his neurotic, penny-pinching, Prozac-popping girlfriend, Dominique. Kit wants to explore the dusty highways, meet and sleep with beautiful women of all nations and discover that there's more to America than Arby's; Carlos and Dominique are determined to argue the merit of every dollar spent and go to bed early to read. In their tent. On the cheapest campsite they can find. Anyone who's been travelling, or thought about getting away from it all, will be laughing out loud one minute and wincing with horrified recognition the next ...

ISBN: 9780752843858
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My Latest Grievance

'When I was born in 1961, it was to instant campus celebrity.' Frederica Hatch, the charming, precocious child of sweetly bonkers parents, has an idyllic if spoilt childhood in the grounds of the small, not very good, Dewing college. Everything is perfect and then she discovers that her father has a secret. Worse still, his secret has a name: the glamorous and untrustworthy Laura Lee French, his estranged wife. And worst of all, Laura Lee's new job at Dewing is going to shatter the Hatches' little world.

ISBN: 9780755329427
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Bloodstream

In April came the rains. In August came the heat. In November came the horror. It's paying a return visit. Lapped by the gentle waters of Locust Lake, the small resort town of Tranquility, Maine, seems like the perfect spot for Dr Claire Elliot to shelter her adolescent son, Noah, from the temptations of the big city and the lingering memory of his father's death. And she's hopeful that she can earn the trust of the town as she builds a new practice. But all her plans unravel with the onset of winter when a rash of teenage violence, far more deadly than anything she'd encountered in the city, erupts in the local school.As she tries to find a medical explanation for this murderous epidemic,Claire stumbles upon an insidious evil which has blighted the town's past and threatens its future. Fearful that Noah, too, is at risk, she must race to prove her theory before everything she loves is destroyed.

ISBN: 9780006513070
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Lake Wobegon Days (Lake Wobegon Series)

A collection of humorous stories which focus on the fictional American Midwestern town of Lake Wobegon. From the author of WOBEGON BOY, LEAVING HOME and WE ARE STILL MARRIED.

A chronicle of this imaginary place, narrated by a skinny kid with wire-rimmed glasses who is raised as a straitlaced Protestant but is fascinated by the Catholic Church (he dreams of being burnt at the stake) and by the notion of a more exotic family background (he'd like to be called Keillorini).

ISBN: 9780571146338
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Amateur Marriage, The

My favourite writer, and the best line-and-length novelist in the world' Nick Hornby, Independent on Sunday

From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel, spanning three generations, about a mismatched marriage - and its consequences.-Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore, he was smitten, and in the heat of World War II fervour, they marry in haste. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayers of later years, Anne Tyler captures the nuances of everyday life with telling precision and sly humour.

Author Profile

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is her 16th novel; her 11th, Breathing Lessons, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Reviews

mesmerising,The meanings of this beautifully written novel reach far wider than Baltimore. I shed a tear as I finished the Antons' story.

ISBN: 9780099469599
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Portobello

'Psychologically acute and extremely disturbing, Ruth Rendell's work is outstanding.' The Times

The Portobello area of West London has a rich personality – vibrant, brilliant in colour, noisy, with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. An indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger. There is nothing safe about Portobello… Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father near an arcade that now sells cashmere, handmade soaps and children’s clothes. But he decided to move to a more upmarket site in Kensington Church Street. Eugene is fifty, with prematurely white hair. He is, perhaps, too secretive for his own good. He also has an addictive personality. But he has cut back radically on his alcohol consumption and has given up cigarettes. Which is just as well, considering he is going out with a doctor. For all his good intentions, though, there is something he doesn’t want her to know about… Eugene’s secret links the lives of a number of very different people – each with their obsessions, problems, dreams and despairs. And through it all the hectic life of Portobello bustles on…

Author Biography
Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with A Demon in My View; a second Edgar in 1984 from the Mystery Writers of America for the best short story, 'The New Girl Friend'; and a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986. She was also the winner of the 1990 Sunday Times Literary award, as well as the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

Reviews
With this captivating novel, the reigning queen of crime fiction establishes that an unsolved murder is not a necessary ingredient of a suspense-filled mystery … Her deft sculpturing of characters' idiosyncratic obsessions and foibles betrays a shrewdness of perception of which even the absent Wexford would be proud.,A roundabout of characters is set whirling along in an irresistibly readable, tragi-comic carnival. Dr Johnson’s dictum could be amended here: the reader who is tired of Ruth Rendell’s novel of London is tired of life,Impossible to put down … Rendell, at her most sardonic here, may view all her characters as creatures who live under stones but it is her sense of place that counts. She makes you smell the excitement and desperation. Portobello is as brilliant as anything she has ever written,Ruth Rendell is marvellous at psychological tension … Rendell is too clever and too accomplished to serve up the expected. She supplies a satisfying, rather low-key ending in which she knits all the threads together with a casual flourish that shows veteran expertise,A thriller steeped in psychological intrigue … Rendell’s prose style is as succinct and accessible as ever,Portobello is Ruth Rendell in a quiet mood with an absorbing story about strange inhabitants of Portobello Road market in London and it’s Notting Hill environs… the various misfits, with their eccentricities, interact as only Rendell can manipulate. She portrays the Portobello area, a melting-pot home to the poor and the posh, with harsh, realistic affection bordering on the elegiac.,Portobello is a rich and quirky picture of one of the most idiosyncratic areas of London ... Rendell’s evocation of Notting Hill and Portobello Road market is one of her most vivid realisations … Admirers of Rendell will quickly realise that Portobello demonstrates a markedly different approach to her previous books. The eccentricities and grotesqueries of the characters here are drawn very large; too large, in fact, to be confined within the parameters of the standard crime novel. However, if Portobello breaks out of that particular category, it is none the worse for it,In the bustling souk of Portobello Road, three characters with very different lives are brought together by Fate, greed and curiosity … each is brought to life with expert strokes, as is this chaotic, restless, deeply divided part of London. Their lives collide dangerously, almost fatally, in an intense, compelling tale, and the resolution is oddly unsettling.,Rendell’s take on Notting Hill restores some of the rawness taken away by gentrification and the saccharine stammer of the film of the same name, tapping into its former reputation for slum landlords, racial tension and nasty cops,Ruth Rendell excels in the creation of dread by bringing together disturbed psyches with the contingent and coincidental,Next to the dross that pours from the publishing industry under the ‘thriller’ heading, a truly well-written, multi-dimensional book with pulse and form becomes a gem of the highest order. So it’s always a treat when the master of her genre comes out with a new one.,A fiction whose effect on the reader is almost as addictive as the slimming sweets on which Eugene becomes so disturbingly dependent,Ruth Rendell’s sense of place and disdain for her characters elevates a sordid case of arson into an artful exploration of sinister self-delusion,She has made the city her own, and writes with both knowledge and compassion about its streets and buildings, its transport and its shops – and above all about its inhabitants … As ever Rendell writes with wry and witty authority ... It’s intelligent stuff, and very readable.,Rendell is marvellous at psychological tension, and the suspicion that these ways will be sinister is what hooks the reader. Setting out her cast with conviction, she unrolls their lives at a stately, ominous pace

ISBN: 9780099538639
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Fen

From the Top Ten bestselling author of Secrets.

Fen McCabe, just 28, has only ever been in love with one man. To her sisters' exasperation, he's a 19th-century sculptor called Julius Fetherstone. And as Fen starts a new job, dreaming of her hero and his missing masterpiece, her flatmates and family harbour a secret hope that she might just meet a living, breathing man instead. Matt Holden, turning 30, edits Art Matters magazine. Newly single, and determined to avoid commitment, he nevertheless finds himself rather attracted to Fen. James Caulfield, not quite 50, is forever fending off the advances of the women he gardens for in Derbyshire and forever fending off his bank manager. To improve his finances, he must sell his two small Fetherstones. And who better to advise than Fen McCabe? Is it possible to fall in love with two very different men at the same time? Sculpture, sexual attraction and severe indecision collide in Freya North's colourful and charming novel.

Author Biography
Freya North holds a Masters Degree in History of Art from the Courtauld institute. She has worked for the National Art Collections Fund as well as for a commercial sculpture garden and freelanced as a picture researcher before starting to write full-time. In 1996 her first novel Sally was published to great acclaim. Her next books, Chloë, Polly, Cat, Fen, Pip, Love Rules, Home Truths, Pillow Talk and Secrets have all been bestsellers. In 2008 Freya won the RNA award for 'Romantic Novel of the Year' with Pillow Talk. She lives in London with her family.

Reviews


ISBN: 9780099278368
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Ghost, The

A tie-in edition of the best-selling book, to coincide with the release of the blockbuster film directed by Roman Polanski

‘The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now…’ The narrator of Robert Harris’s gripping new novel is a professional ghostwriter – cynical, mercenary, and with a nice line in deadpan humour. Accustomed to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities, he jumps at the chance to ghost the memoirs of Britain’s former prime minister, especially as it means flying to the American resort of Martha’s Vineyard in the middle of winter and finishing the book in the seclusion of a luxurious house. But it doesn’t take him long to realise he has made a terrible mistake. His predecessor on the project died in circumstances that were distinctly suspicious, and the ex-prime minister turns out to be a man with secrets in his past that are returning to haunt him – secrets with the power to kill. The Times has called Robert Harris ‘the leading current exponent of the intelligent literary thriller’. The Ghost is his most compelling novel yet.

Author Biography
Robert Harris is the author of Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium and Lustrum, all of which were international bestsellers. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. After graduating with a degree in English from Cambridge University, he worked as a reporter for the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight programmes, before becoming political editor of the Observer and subsequently a columnist on the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. He is married to Gill Hornby and they live with their four children in a village near Hungerford.

Reviews
A master of the intelligent thriller…The Ghost is Harris back on sparkling form,Truly thrilling,Robert Harris’s latest thriller is more than a fun read: it is a super-duper, double fun bag-sized read thanks to his masterful plotting,Harris has written a remarkable thriller… He knows how to tell a story,The Ghost is arguably the finest novel yet to have emerged from the so-called Age of Terror… This is an important book about the major issues of our time,Absorbing… Compelling reading,A masterpiece of observation, interpretation and analysis,Robert Harris’s bullet-paced thriller… [It’s] impossible to put this book down,An elegant and highly readable thriller,A cracking good yarn… His writing is taut with wit and cleverness,Harris’s feel for political manoeuvring is buttressed by a strong sense of place and good fast pacing which the craftsman sustains to the final page,Intelligent, perceptive and enormous fun

ISBN: 9780099525127
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The Last Time They Met

When Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes meet at a writers' festival in Toronto, it is the first time they have seen each other for twenty-six years. Theirs is a story bound by the irresistible pull of true passion - a love which begins in Massachusetts in the early 1960s, is rekindled in Kenya in the 1970s, and which is about to play out its astonishing final episode . . .

ISBN: 9780349113609
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Pale Horseman

Continuing the outstanding success of The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman is the second installment of Bernard Cornwell's fantastic series, following the fate of Alfred the Great ,and the forging of Britain.It is the lowest time for the Saxons. Defeated comprehensively by the Vikings who now occupy most of England, Alfred and his very small group of surviving followers retreat to the trackless marshlands of Somerset. There, forced to move restlessly to escape betrayal or detection, using the marsh mists for cover, they travel by small boats from one island refuge to another, hoping that they can regroup and find some more strength and support. Only Uhtred remains resolute. Determined to discover the enemy's strategies, he draws once again on his Viking upbringing, and attempts to enter the Viking camps. His plan is to become accepted by their leaders, and to sit in their councils and uncover their plans. But once there, the attractions of his many friends among the Vikings coupled with his disillusion with the Saxons' leadership and anger at Alfred's criticism of his own conduct, draws him back again to his allegiance to the Vikings.The Pale Horseman, an even more powerful and dramatic book than The Last Kingdom, brings both Uhtred and the Saxons' dilemmas vividly to life.

ISBN: 9780007149933
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Intrigue in the Village

There is a mystery surrounding the invitation by Craddock Fitch to the Big House. It is billed as a celebration of his business, but when everyone is assembled, they find that it is a lavish wedding reception for two very surprising people.With these festivities over, the inhabitants of Turnham Malpas are thrown into preparations of a different nature. It is the 150th anniversary of the village school and Kate, the head teacher, is arranging a big event. She enthusiastically starts making plans, but there is one problem of which she is unaware. In asking the previous head teachers to attend she has unwittingly placed the rector and his wife Caroline in an impossible situation . . .

ISBN: 9780752859101
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Sacred Hearts

1570 in the Italian city of Ferrara, and the convent of Santa Caterina is filled with noble women who are married to Christ because many cannot find husbands outside. Enter sixteen-year-old Serafina, ripped by her family from an illicit love affair, howling with rage and hormones and determined to escape. While on the other side of the great walls, counter-reformation forces in the Church are pushing for change, inside, Serafina's spirit and defiance ignite a fire that threatens to engulf the whole convent. SACRED HEARTS is a novel about power, creativity and passion - both of the body and of the soul. Hidden history brought alive by a wonderful storyteller, renowned for her Italian Renaissance novels.

ISBN: 9781844083305
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Midwives

With a suspense, lyricism, and moral complexity that recall To Kill a Mockingbird and Presumed Innocent, this compulsively readable novel explores what happens when a woman who has devoted herself to ushering life into the world finds herself charged with responsibility in a patient's tragic death.The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if - as Sibyl's assistant later charges -the patient wasn't already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her?As recounted by Sibyl's precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except for the fact that all its participants are acting from the highest motives - and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.

ISBN: 9780099268062
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Strictly Love

Guilty feet have got plenty of rhythm âSKick off your shoes and snuggle up with this warm and witty new novel from the author of the bestselling Pastures NewLawyer Emily promised her late father that she'd devote her life to good causes. So how comes she spends her days defending Z-listers, desperate to prolong their 15 minutes of fame?Katie is obsessed with being the perfect wife and mother - unlike her own one. In which case, why is husband Charlie permanently AWOL these days?Dentist Mark is licking his wounds after his wife walked out on him and desperately missing his kids. Can he cope with becoming a singleton again - on top of a devastating legal case against him?Meanwhile, happy-go-lucky Jack the Lad Rob is hiding a secret tragedyâSIsabella's dance classe give the four the perfect opportunity to forget their troubles and re-invent themselves. They can be whoever they want to be - they'll just let their feet do the talking.Over the weeks, as they foxtrot, tango, waltz and cha-cha-cha their way into each other's lives, they discover the truth about each other - and themselves. But will they like what they learn?

ISBN: 9781847560162
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Filthy Rich

When nbsp;Mary meets Monty , heir to a stately pile, happiness seems assured. But as the mansion crumbles, passion wanes along with the heating . Banker's wifeBethswaps Notting Hill for weekends at a bijou cottage. They only offered asmidgeonover the asking price. So why don't the locals like them? nbsp; Eco-harridanMoragis the terror of the village, with her objections to everyone and everything. nbsp; C ber -WAGAlexandraneedsnbsp;a footballer's mansion and fast. There must be aHello!-tastic country pile with spa, champagne bar and parking for six SUVssomewhere? nbsp; Ambitions clash when the village launches an allotment project and no one escapes the bitter struggle over sex, power and money which threatens to blight more than everyoneas carrots.

ISBN: 9780755325139
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Breaking the Trust

Jack Palmer appears to be the archetypal patriarch, but when he dies his three middle-aged children learn that he has an older, illegitimate son, Titus, conceived in his first year of marriage to their mother Clattie. Of his legitimate children, Ralph and Pippa are furious. But ambitious Mark, the youngest, has something to prove to his dead father. When he finds that Titus owns some potentially lucrative business premises in London, he sees it as an opportunity to fulfil a life-long dream to run a restaurant. But Titus is part of the deal and the two men are forced into partnership. Mutual misunderstanding leads to a breakdown in communications between them, and the rest of the family watch the disintegration of their relationship with its inevitable consequences for them all. Only the wives can see the situation clearly and it is their actions that finally bring the two men to their senses. Lucy Clare has written another highly entertaining novel about the worst -- and the best -- in family relationships.

ISBN: 9780751531589
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The Day of the Storm

Only when Rebecca's mother is dying does she reveal the existence of relatives Rebecca has never met. Boscarva, in Cornwall, is home to artist Grenville Bayliss — Rebecca's grandfather. When she seeks him out, she finds more than just a family home; she finds a family.

ISBN: 9781444735406
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Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch

'It is wonderfully peaceful to sit in bed with Iris reassuringly asleep and gently snoring. Half asleep again myself I have a feeling of floating down the river, and watching all the rubbish from the houses and from our lives - the good as well as the bad - sinking slowly down through the dark water until it is lost in the depths. Iris is floating or swimming quietly beside me. Weeds and larger leaves sway and stretch themselves beneath the surface. Blue dragonflies dart and hover to and fro by the river bank. And suddenly a kingfisher flashes past.'

ISBN: 9780349114293
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Of Love & Life

A readers digest collection of three popular books: Glamour by Louise Bagshaw; Love out of Season by Ray Connolly; The Matchmaker of Perigord by Julia Stuart

ISBN: 9780276442223
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Marabou Stork Nightmares

Severe intense prose from one of Britain's best writers.

Roy Strang is engaged is a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission is to eradicate the evil predator-scavenger bird, the marabou stork, before it drives away the peace-loving flamingo from the picturesque Lake Torto. But behind this world lies another: the world of Roy's bizarre family, the Scottish housing scheme in which he grew up, his mundane job, a disastrous emigration to Aftrica, and his youthful life of brutality with a gang of soccer casuals. As one world crashes into the other, this potentially charming story of ornithological goodwill mutates into a filthy tale of violence, abuse and redemption.

Author Profile

Irvine Welsh is the author of eight previous works of fiction, most recently Crime. He lives in Dublin.

Reviews

A superbly talented writer-anarchic and entirely invigorating,A wonderful success: a funny, cleverly composed, genuinely exciting and assured leap of a novel,Extremely funny-as clever as Alasdair Gray, as elegant as Jeff Torrington, as passionate as James Kelman, Welsh has got it all,Mind-bendingly good,Our most vital of contemporary authors

ISBN: 9780099435112
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Running In Heels

ANNA MAXTED'S TRADEMARK MIX OF LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY AND POIGNANCY WORKS ITS MAGIC ONCE AGAIN IN HER MOVING, WARM AND TRUTHFUL SECOND NOVEL

'To say that Babs is my closest friend is rather like saying that Einstein was good at sums. And if you've ever had a best friend, you'll know what I mean. Babs and I had such a beautiful relationship, no man could better it. And then she met Simon.' Now Babs, noisy, funny Babs, is getting married. And Natalie, 27, is panicking. What happens when your best friend pledges everlasting love to someone else? As the confetti flutters, Nat feels her good-girl veneer crack. She teeters into an alluringly unsuitable affair that spins her crazily out of control and into trouble - with her boss, Matt, and with Babs. Caught up in the thrill of bad behaviour, Nat blithely ignores the truth - about her new boyfriend, her best friend's marriage, her mother's cooking and the wisdom of inviting Bab's brother Andy - slippers and all - to be her lodger. But perhaps what Nat really needs to face is the mirror - and herself...

Author Profile

Anna Maxted lives in London with her husband Phil and their three sons Oscar, Conrad and Casper. Anna read English at Cambridge and works as a freelance journalist. She is also the author of the international bestsellers, Getting Over It, Running in Heels, Behaving Like Adults, Being Committed and A Tale of Two Sisters.

Reviews

Funny and inspiring, you'll be turning the pages 'til the small hours,Powerful without being didactic, moving without being sentimental, riotously comic without being superficial. Accomplished, well-written chick lit,Warmth, humanity, and a great dollop of sympathetic humour

ISBN: 9780099410195
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Colour, The

The Colour is a gripping drama of sacrifice and greed set during the mid-nineteenth-century gold rush in New Zealand.

This is a writer whose breadth of imagination and supple prose transcend the genre: she is one of the finest writers in English' Daily Telegraph. Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek he is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the seductive dreams of 'the colour', are violently rushing to their destinies. By turns both moving and terrifying, it is a story of the quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of love and in the process discover the sacrifices to be made in the pursuit of happiness.

Author Profile

Rose Tremain is an internationally acclaimed, prize-winning author of novels, short stories and screenplays. Her most recent novel, the bestselling Music and Silence, won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer Richard Holmes.

Reviews

Tremain has produced her own wondrous piece of gold,Brilliantly detailed and textured,Tremain is a magnificent, buttonholing storyteller with an enormous story to tell,The Colour is the produce of a large and generous talent, generous in its giving of enjoyment,This is a beautifully crafted book - at once a gripping adventure story and a compelling portrayal of human emotion at its bravest and its most vulnerable,A fabulous work, bravely imaginative, deeply moving, surprising, invigorating and satisfying,An engrossing novel, an adventure story with a sensitive side,The Colour is a measured book, a diligent, painstaking book,She is a magical storyteller - it is as an artist that she excels

ISBN: 9780099425151
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Digging to America

Another gem from the incomparable Anne Tyler, sparkling with diamond-sharp wit and observation, glowing with the warmth of her characters' multifaceted, flawed, resilient humanity

Friday August 15th, 1997. The night the girls arrived. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. First there are the Donaldsons, decent Brad and homespun, tenacious Bitsy (with her 'more organic than thou' airs, who believes fervently that life can always be improved), two full sets of grandparents and a host of big-boned, confident relatives, taking delivery with characteristic American razzmatazz. Then there are the Yazdans, pretty, nervous Ziba (her family 'only one generation removed from the bazaar') and carefully assimilated Sami, with his elegant, elusive Iranian-born widowed mother Maryam, the grandmother-to-be, receiving their little bundle with wondering discretion. Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as tiny, delicate Susan, wholesome, stocky Jin-ho and, later, her new little sister Xiu-Mei, take roots, become American. While Maryam, the optimistic pessimist, confident that if things go wrong - as well they may - she will manage as she has before, contrarily preserves her 'outsider' status, as if to prove that, despite her passport, she is only a guest in this bewildering country. Full of achingly hilarious moments and toe-curling misunderstandings, Digging to America is a novel with a deceptively small domestic canvas, and subtly large themes - it's about belonging and otherness, about insiders and outsiders, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right, about striving for connection and goodness against all the odds. And the end catches you by the throat, ambushes your emotions when you least expect it, as only Tyler can.

Author Profile

Born in Minneapolis in 1941, Anne Tyler lives in Baltimore where her novels are set. She is the Pulitzer-prize winning novels of Breathing Lessons and other bestselling novels, including The Accidental Tourist, Saint Maybe, Back When We Were Grownups and The Amateur Marriage.

Reviews

This wise and funny novel, for all its unwavering focus on the everyday, constitutes a multidimensional exploration of what it means to belong, not only to a family but also to a nation,Warm and optimistic, this story about adoption raises issues of belonging and identity,Anne Tyler draws a comedy that is not so much brilliant as luminous - its observant sharpness sweetened by a generous understanding of human fallibility. So sure is her tone, so graceful her style, that the reader absorbs without literary indigestion a narrative constructed almost entirely of grand set pieces of domestic comedy …Articulated in her fine- grained prose, the pure kindliness of her finale expresses something of the forgotten goodness of the American dream,The view from America may be darkening, but Anne Tyler’s new novel sheds a warm light on the ordinary human needs and actions that shore up American ideals of ethnic integration, neighbourliness and family values,A small exquisitely painted canvas. Don’t miss it,A return to form by a great writer,Keen-eyed and funny,Out of this everyday material she spins gold: stories so achingly truthful, so achingly funny, so sad and so real that you can only marvel…her trademark blend of observant comedy and tragedy, and her window into the human heart, are gloriously apparent,There is so much truth here, as Tyler strips away the issue of ethnic difference to reach the heart of her complex and compelling matter,Digging to America is another superb novel, warm-hearted and funny,Deliciously funny and sharply observed,Tyler possesses a remarkable ability to render the ordinary extraordinary, which makes reading her work like tucking into tea and cake on a cosy Sunday afternoon,Full of excruciatingly comic set-pieces, this is an immensely satisfying, yet subtle, read,Tenderly observed and lifted by humour, Digging to America is a complex novel that asks if anyone can ever truly fit in. In answering that question Ms Tyler has woven her magic once again

ISBN: 9780099499398
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Mill House, The

A powerful tale of passion and betrayal and a woman’s determination to find out the truth about her past, whatever it costs - from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Just One More Day

How far would you go to hide the truth? Julia Thayne is a valued and loving wife, a successful mother and a beautiful woman. She is everything most other women strive to be. But beneath the surface is a terrible secret that threatens to tear her perfect world apart. Joshua is Julia’s husband – a dynamic, devastatingly handsome man with great style, charisma and humour. He is utterly devoted to his wife and children, but as the ghosts of Julia’s past begin to move into their marriage, he finds himself losing the struggle to keep them together. Then two telephone calls change everything. Julia moves from London to a remote mill house in Cornwall, determined to break free from the past and save her fractured relationship with Josh. But it is here that she makes her own fatal mistake, and once more her marriage is rocked to its very foundation …

Author Profile

Susan Lewis is the author of eighteen bestselling novels. She is also the author of the top ten bestselling memoir, Just One More Day. She lives in France. Her website address is www.susanlewis.co.uk

Reviews

0

ISBN: 9780099502258
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Found Wanting

The bestselling new thriller from the master of the clever twist

The car jolts to a halt at the pavement’s edge, the driver waving through the windscreen to attract Richard’s attention. He starts with astonishment. The driver is Gemma, his ex-wife. He has not seen or spoken to her for several years. They have, she memorably assured him the last time they met, nothing to say to each other. But something has changed her mind - something urgent… Immediately Richard is catapulted into a breathless race against time that takes him from London, across northern Europe and into the heart of a mystery that reaches back into history - the fate of Anastasia, youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs. From that moment, Richard's life will be changed for ever in ways he could never have imagined…

Author Profile

Robert Goddard was born in Hampshire and read History at Cambridge. His first novel, Past Caring, was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. His first Harry Barnett novel, Into the Blue, was winner of the first WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award and was dramatized for TV, starring John Thaw.

Reviews

Sure to have the reader unable to leave the armchair until every page has been turned. A fantastically engaging read,Goddard writes and plots with accurate, correct precision; you feel he knows every setting and was witness to every scene,Fast-paced and full of twists, it's an involving page-turner,Robert Goddard is the master of mystery, and in his latest novel he proves just how good he is at getting a reader hooked...This is Goddard at his best and will keep his legions of fans happy and eager for more,This is pulse-racing stuff, delivered with all the panache that we have come to expect from Goddard,This seasoned thriller-writer pulls no punches as he entices us into an aristocratic intrigue

ISBN: 9780552159852
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Gentlemen & Players

The eagerly awaited new novel from the bestselling author of CHOCOLAT

The place is St Oswald’s, an old and long-established boys’ grammar school in the north of England. A new year has just begun, and for the staff and boys of the school, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork and Information Technology rule the world and Roy Straitley, Latin master, eccentric, and veteran of St Oswald’s, is finally – reluctantly – contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs. And a bitter grudge, hidden and carefully nurtured for thirteen years, is about to erupt. Who is Mole, the mysterious insider, whose cruel practical jokes are gradually escalating towards violence – and perhaps, murder? And how can an old and half-forgotten scandal become the stone that brings down a giant?

Author Profile

Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat (made into a major film starring Juliette Binoche), Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, Jigs & Reels, Sleep Pale Sister, Gentlemen & Players and, with Fran Warde, The French Kitchen: A Cookbook and The French Market: More Recipes from a French Kitchen. She lives in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, with her husband and daughter.

Reviews

[A ] gripping psychological thriller... Harris is one of our most accomplished novelists and GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS, with its pace, wit and acute observation, shows her at the top of her form' DAILY EXPRESS,'[A] delicious black comedy ... the plot is so cleverly constructed, the tension so unflagging, you'd think she'd been writing thrillers all her life' DAILY MAIL,'With a lightness of touch, Harris illuminates just how resentment of privilege and exclusion can lead to violent resolutions... Marvellously mischievous' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING,'[A] clever story of obsession and revenge... Ms Harris has scored another success' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH,'A classic whodunnit with the characters carefully crafted and the tension at a knife edge' SUNDAY EXPRESS TOP TEN FICTION 2005,'A terrific and absorbing suspense novel, with a cast of characters you come to really care about and enough twists and turns to keep you on your toes' PETER ROBINSON,'Book groups of the world, watch out' GUARDIAN,'A wonderfully clever book, rich in atmosphere, crawling with fascinating characters, and packing a terrific surprise as well' ELIZABETH GEORGE,'[A] literary gobstopper with an aniseed heart... wildly entertaining' THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY,'A diverting and absorbing story which will delight her legions of fans' THE SCOTSMAN,'A perfectly plotted lesson in murderous retribution ... pitch perfect' GLAMOUR,A delicious black comedy... a clever story of obsession and revenge, with a spectacular final twist,This is a satisfying and absorbing read from a best-selling author and mistress of her craft.,This gripping page-turner is Joanne Harris at her best.,A spooky, twisty spine-chiller

ISBN: 9780552770026
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Poppy's War

A compelling debut saga set in the Second World War by a wonderful new talent.

August 1939: Thirteen-year-old Poppy Brown is evacuated to a village in Dorset. Tired and frightened, she arrives with nothing but her gas mask and a change of clothes to her name. Billeted at a grand country house, Poppy is received with cold indifference above stairs and gets little better treatment from the servants. Lonely and missing the family she left behind in London, Poppy is devastated when she hears that they have been killed in the Blitz. Circumstances soon force Poppy to move to the suburbs and into the company of strangers once more. Earning a meagre income as a hospital cleaner, as the war continues to rage, Poppy longs to do her duty. And as soon as she is able to, she starts her training as a nurse. While the man she loves is fighting in the skies above Europe, Poppy battles to survive the day-to-day hardships and dangers of wartime, wondering if she’ll ever see him again…

Author Profile

Lily Baxter lives in Dorset. Poppy's War is her first novel. She also writes under the name of Dilly Court.

Reviews

0

ISBN: 9780099550983
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Lustrum

The stunning new novel from the No. 1 bestselling author of Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium and The Ghost.

Rome, 63 BC. In a city on the brink of acquiring a vast empire, seven men are struggling for power. Cicero is consul, Caesar his ruthless young rival, Pompey the republic’s greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath, Clodius an ambitious playboy. The stories of these real historical figures – their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and their crimes – are all interleaved to form this epic novel. Its narrator is Tiro, a slave who serves as confidential secretary to the wily, humane, complex Cicero. He knows all his master’s secrets – a dangerous position to be in. From the discovery of a child’s mutilated body, through judicial execution and a scandalous trial, to the brutal unleashing of the Roman mob, Lustrum is a study in the timeless enticements and horrors of power.

Author Biography
Robert Harris is the author of Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium and The Ghost, all of which were international bestsellers. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. After graduating with a degree in English from Cambridge University, he worked as a reporter for the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight programmes, before becoming political editor of the Observer and subsequently a columnist on the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. He is married to Gill Hornby and they live with their four children in a village near Hungerford.

Reviews
Harris is the master. With Lustrum, [he] has surpassed himself. It is one of the most exciting thrillers I have ever read,Harris communicates such a strong sense of imperial Rome – the book is awesomely well-informed about the minutiae of everyday life,Thoroughly engaging … The allure of power and the perils that attend it have seldom been so brilliantly anatomised in a thriller,Harris never makes his comparisons between Rome and modern Britain explicit, but they are certainly there. And that’s the principal charm of his ancient thrillers – their up-to-dateness,Magnificent … Better than Robert Graves’s Claudius novels,A read to be savoured,Lustrum… was a fascinating world, a world of subtle political machinations and fine oratory and nuanced debate, and complex legislation, and intrigue, and an extremely absorbing one.,It is a tribute to Harris's deftness of touch that this book feels so fresh … he has a lovely dry, debunking style … Harris writes about the life of politics with an insight rare among historical novelists … It is as a pure thriller … wry, clever, thoughtful, with a terrific sense of timing and eye for character.,Lustrum offers a great insight into the psychology of political calculation. The story of Cicero’s fall from power to the point where even sworn allies close their doors on him offers little consolation over the next few months for our own leader.,What a storm it is. The five year period covered by the novel, the ‘lustrum’ of its title, has some claim to be the most thrilling in the entire span of classical history… Remorseless it may be; but it is also, as one would expect of Harris, thrillingly paced and narrated. The excitements of a classic thriller, however, are almost the least of the novel’s virtues: virtues which derive in large part, from Cicero himself. What grips most about Lustrum is the seriousness with which the political issues at stake are taken, and the vividness of the characterisation: both of which, in large part, reflect the closeness of Harris’s reading of his hero’s speeches and correspondence.,Robert Harris brings the cut-throat republic to life... He understands politics and how to dramatise them.

ISBN: 9780099406327
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Truth About Melody Browne, The

The wonderful new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Ralph's Party.

When she was nine years old, Melody Browne’s house burned down, taking every toy, every photograph, every item of clothing and old Christmas card with it. But not only did the fire destroy all her possessions, it took with it all her memories – Melody Browne can remember nothing before her ninth birthday. Now in her early thirties, Melody lives in a council flat in the middle of London with her seventeen-year-old son. She hasn’t seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but Melody doesn’t mind, she’s better off on her own. She’s made a good life for herself and her son and she likes it that way. Until one night something extraordinary happens. Whilst attending a hypnotist show with her first date in years she faints – and when she comes round she starts to remember. At first her memories mean nothing to her but then slowly, day by day, she begins to piece together the real story of her childhood. Her journey takes her to the seaside town of Broadstairs, to oddly familiar houses in London backstreets and to meetings with strangers who love her like their own. But with every mystery she solves another one materialises, with every question she answers another appears. And Melody begins to wonder if she’ll ever know the truth about her past…

Author Biography
Lisa Jewell was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Her first novel, Ralph's Party, was the bestselling debut of 1999. She is also the author of Thirtynothing, One-Hit Wonder, Vince & Joy, A Friend of the Family and 31 Dream Street, all of which have been Sunday Times bestsellers.

Reviews
For anyone who hasn’t picked up a Lisa Jewell novel since her chick-lit classic Ralph’s Party, it might be time for a re-acquaintance … Jewell’s writing proves as punchy and fresh as ever. Her lively depiction of inner-city London living and dating still rings true,Lisa Jewell’s writing is like a big warm hug and this book is a touching, insightful and gripping story which I simply couldn’t put down.,Lisa Jewell’s novel is just the thing…an enthralling mystery…a fast-paced, thrilling and tragic journey…The term unputdownable is bandied about all too often, but having devoured this one cold Sunday afternoon we reckon it’s completely justified in this instance,Lisa’s best book yet. I loved it.,The Truth about Melody Browne perfectly illustrates the truth about Lisa Jewell. She writes like a dream, creates characters that you really care about and tells a story so compelling that it will still be with you long after you’ve read the last page.,Classic storytelling,Lisa Jewell writes the tale so beautifully that the words just dance off the page and sweep you up in a literary waltz ... stunning.,Full of heart and humour, this will move you to tears. An absolute must-read.,What is revealed is a network of rewardingly complex characters, a dramatic, suspense-filled explanation of how [Melody] ended up where she did, and a family tragedy that is profoundly moving.,A refreshing departure from the usual girl-in-search-of-boy template…Jewell has a convincing eye for detail, and throws in a roller-coaster-worth of attention-grabbing twists and turns.,Sincere and engaging with a great plot and believable characters.,This will make you laugh, cry – then tell all your friends about it.,Moving and dark,Easy and uplifting,Fancy some chick-lit, but not in the mood for the usual girl-meets-boy drama? Lisa Jewell’s novel is just the thing…an enthralling mystery…a fast-paced, thrilling and tragic journey…The term unputdownable is bandied about all too often, but having devoured this one cold Sunday afternoon we reckon it’s completely justified in this instance,A few cuts about your average chick-lit. In fact it’s a pacy, inventive mystery rather than your usual winsome romance. Go Lisa!,An intricately plotted, easy-going novel from a buoyant writer, with a warm touch

ISBN: 9780099533672
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Drama Comes to Prior's Ford

There are new arrivals at Priors Ford—Meredith and Genevieve Whitelaw—who are determined to shake things up. Meanwhile, Alastair Marshall finds he is missing Clarissa Ramsay, now traveling the world to recover from the shock of her husband's affair, more than he would like to admit. At Tarbethill Farm, the McNair family is struggling to make ends meet, and face the prospect of losing the livelihood that has been in their family for generations. And Jenny Forsyth is to be reunited with her stepdaughter Maggie—but Maggie is now a precocious teenager very unhappy at the idea of country life, and determined to cause trouble.

ISBN: 9780751539622
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The Village Show: Tales from Turnham Malpas

Newcomer to the village Craddock Fitch is keen to make a splash by holding a village show - the best ever - in the grounds of his large house. Committee secretary and co-ordinator of the show Louise Bissett is the spoilt daughter of Sir Ron and Lady Sheila. Although a brilliant organiser, Louise is in deep personal trouble - and her growing obsession with Peter Harris, the married rector, can only end in tears.As the weeks roll by into summer and nerves tighten in anticipation of the great day, romances heat up and then cool down, tempers flare and misunderstandings multiply ... all relayed daily in the gossipy atmosphere of Jimbo Charter Plackett's village store.

ISBN: 9780752815497
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