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One night to fall in love. One summer to change everything... Over the last few months, Connie's whole world has fallen apart. Her husband's run off with an older woman, the magazine she works for has gone bust and she's having to sell the family home. So when her beloved godmother, Lismay, begs her to help run the beautiful Château Villette, it couldn't come at a better time... No one knows the château quite like Connie. She spent a blissful summer there in her twenties, learning to cook delicious French food for the guests, ironing the lavender-scented sheets - and trying to resist the very handsome neighbour, Remy. As soon as she arrives, it's clear that the château is close to crumbling and Connie knows she's going to have her work cut out. Could it be the fresh start she didn't even know she needed - and will she find a way to save the château, before it's too late?
Hong Kong, 1941. Following the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the wealthy Tang family flee to Hong Kong. As the First Wife of the family, Mingzhu leads a sheltered - if lonely - existence overseeing her daughter Qiang and managing the household alongside her devoted maid, Biyu. But when the Japanese army invade, the three women are scattered. Mingzhu is coerced into working for a Japanese captain. Qiang and Biyu escape the island, only to be forced into factory work then separated after an encounter with the East River Column Resistance fighters. The longer the brutal occupation lasts, the more determined the women are to resist. And as war rages around the world, each is holding onto the hope that the other is alive. Beautifully told and compulsively written, When Sleeping Women Wake is an utterly transporting story of female resistance and untold bravery, at once epic and intimate, heartbreaking and hopeful. Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah.
EVERYONE IS SEARCHING FOR THEIR PERFECT HOUSE. BUT HOME IS REALLY WHERE THE HEART IS ... Janey Carter has a lot to be grateful for - a home by the sea in Carso that she renovated herself, a job as an audiologist that she loves, two great kids, and a network of kind and supportive friends. But since her husband left, her confidence has taken a nosedive. And then, out of the blue, her grumpy 30-year-old daughter announces she's moving back home. Janey loves Essie dearly but they only just made it out alive from her adolescence. And this really is going to cramp her soon-to-be-rediscovered dating style. Yes, Essie Carter is grumpy but she's just lost her job, she can't afford her rent in Edinburgh and her boyfriend isn't ready to commit. There's nothing for it but to admit defeat and hope the sea air soothes her soul. Life seems to be punching this millennial squarely in the face. Living back under the same roof brings its challenges. But a combination of rescue dogs, pub quizzes and a surprise project doing up the unloved Seagate Cottages next door slowly brings mother and daughter closer together. Meanwhile, the steady stream of people coming past the house with fabric swatches and paint brings revelations for Essie, and offers Janey a surprise second chance at love as well. 'An hilarious, endlessly heartwarming novel about mothers, daughters, houses, puppies and love.
On an ordinary morning in an ordinary house, a woman discovers a secret her husband has been keeping. It is a secret that explodes their marriage. As Dolores grapples with her new reality, she unwillingly delves into her past to work out how she got here, unpicking the seams of the relationships that have built her. She’s a sister, a daughter, a wife, a teacher. How much does her past have to influence her present? Can’t she just forgive and forget?And most importantly: what is a woman for, anyway?
Put the kettle on, there’s a mystery brewing…  Elle Cosimano Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective? Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet). But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer. Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.
AN EPIC NOVEL SET AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE 1980S SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM ABOUT THE EXTRAORDINARY LENGTHS WE GO TO LIVE AND LOVE BEYOND OUR LIMITS. In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists John Griffin and Lydia Danes; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant. Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love - this time among the stars.
FROM THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Have you ever had the sense that maybe all lives are nothing more than the chronicle of countless stinging might-have-beens that continue to haunt us? In the scorching New York heat, a hundred people wait to be selected as jurors. Paul is reading a newspaper. Catherine is reading a novel. So begins a whirlwind flirtation: over cappuccinos in Manhattan and gallery trips to Chelsea, Paul and Catherine escape into the illusion of an Italian getaway. Their feelings quickly evolve into something deeper, something - as mature adults with lives of their own - Paul and Catherine must carry on in secret, with the understanding that anything more than a casual crush is out of the question. But as the sultry summer week draws to a close, the end of their rendezvous comes into focus, and Paul and Catherine are forced to decide whether to act on their feelings or leave the fantasy of what could have been to the annals of the past.
Molly the Maid is used to being invisible. But it's time for her to shine in a brand new mystery... *THE SPARKLING NEW MYSTERY FROM THE MULTI-MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE MAID* Molly the maid is no stranger to secrets...She sees everything behind closed doors at the Regency Grand hotel: wiping away the dust and grime of guests passing through. But one secret lies much closer to home. An old trinket - a faux Faberge egg - is revealed to be a precious antique during an appraisal at the hotel, making Molly a rags-to-riches sensation. But no sooner has the egg shown its value than it's stolen: vanishing without a trace. Determined to crack the case of the missing Faberge, Molly begins dusting for clues - uncovering a mystery that stretches deep into the past. For in the pages of a long-forgotten diary, written by her late gran, lie the secrets that could unlock all others - and only Molly holds the key...
The new historical novel from literary legend Isabel Allende Emilia del Valle was always destined for great things. Abandoned at birth by her Chilean aristocrat father, Emilia comes of age in nineteenth-century San Francisco as an independent and fiercely ambitious young woman, decades ahead of her time. She will do whatever it takes to pursue her life’s passion for writing, even if it means publishing under a man’s name. When Emilia lands a position as a journalist for the Daily Examiner, her unwavering sense of adventure – and new-found determination to survive in her own name – leads her to seize the chance to cover a brewing civil war in Chile alongside another talented reporter. But the assignment offers Emilia more than just an opportunity to prove herself as a writer. Before long she embarks on a treacherous, life-changing journey in a homeland she never knew, to uncover the truth about her father – and herself. A masterclass in historical storytelling from Isabel Allende, My Name is Emilia del Valle is a powerful tale of love and war, discovery and redemption, told by a valiant young woman who confronts monumental challenges, survives and reinvents herself along the way. 
Recommended for mature readers only. He had everything he could've wanted . . . except her. Dangerous. Powerful. Reclusive. Vuk Markovic is notorious for shunning human interactions. The scarred billionaire rarely talks, and he has no interest in relationships outside his small but trusted circle. His only exception? Her. The beauty to his beast, the object of his obsession. He saw her first. He wanted her first. But now, she's engaged to his oldest friend-and the closer the wedding looms, the more he's torn between loyalty and desire. She should be his . . . and he might just risk it all to have her. *** Beautiful. Successful. Glamorous. To the world, supermodel Ayana Kidane leads the perfect life. Her career has skyrocketed, and she's engaged to one of New York's most eligible bachelors. What people don't know is that the engagement is only a business arrangement. He gets his inheritance when they marry; she gets the money she needs to leave her abusive agency. Pretending to be in love should be easy-until she finds herself increasingly drawn to her fiancé's enigmatic best man. Vuk thrills and terrifies her in equal measure. She knows she should stay away, but when her wedding is thrown into chaos, he's the only person who makes her feel safe... Until his past catches up with them and threatens everything they love.
Ageing is inevitable. Growing up is optional. Daphne is fiery and fabulous. She just needs to get out and meet people. But when an accident brings a teen dad, an empty nester and a has-been actor into her world, they aren't necessarily who she'd had in mind. And it soon becomes clear that they all have a story to tell. But can these new friendships survive the secrets that will be revealed?
Everyone knows Gatsby. New money. Murky past. Huge online following. Nic Carraway doesn't belong amongst the super-rich, but when she scores a cheap summer lease in Long Island, it-girl Jay Gatsby becomes her neighbour. Gatsby welcomes Nic to her opulent parties attended by the world's A-list. And in return, Nic helps Gatsby reconnect with an old flame: Nic's cousin, the ever-charming but now-married Danny Buchanan.But no one can be careless like the rich. As the summer heats up, Nic finds herself tangled in a web of longing and ambition, betrayal and deceit. In a world where everyone is lying - about and to themselves - can Nic finally tell the truth? For readers of The Paper Palace, this hot summer story genderflips and reimagines F Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel
A Good Housekeeping Good Books Spring 2025 pick Can she escape the darkness of her past in the City of Light? It's 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie's real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father and his frustrated wife is suffocating. She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to uncover the mystery of her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong. When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it's both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected...
OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD. THE SIZZLING FINALE TO THE NO 1 BESTSELLING ROMANTASY PHENOMENON!  Paedyn Gray and Kai Azer return to the Kingdom of Ilya... ? And Paedyn has a life-altering choice to make. Whatever she decides will determine her fate – and the fate of those around her – forever. ? In the ultimate battle of love and loyalty, who wins? Be swept away by the conclusion to the smash hit, dagger-to-the-throat romantasy trilogy.
Don't miss the first book in the sensational new series from the number one bestselling author Santa Montefiore! A FORBIDDEN LOVE. AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE...  When Pixie Tate is summoned to the wild Cornish coast to investigate a mystery at St Sidwell Manor she senses that something malevolent is hiding in its shadows. Over one hundred years ago, in the deepest night, a little boy vanished from his bed - and Pixie must find out what happened to him. But Pixie is no ordinary detective. She has a unique gift: she can travel through time. As she slips back to 1895, secrets are revealed, love affairs exposed and, ultimately, Pixie will be forced to make a devastating choice that will change her life forever... Shadows in the Moonlight is a sweeping and devastatingly romantic time-travel mystery, and the first book in Santa Montefiore's sensational new series.  A FORBIDDEN LOVE. AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE... When Pixie Tate is summoned to the wild Cornish coast to investigate a mystery at St Sidwell Manor she senses that something malevolent is hiding in its shadows. Over one hundred years ago, in the deepest night, a little boy vanished from his bed - and Pixie must find out what happened to him. But Pixie is no ordinary detective. She has a unique gift: she can travel through time. As she slips back to 1895, secrets are revealed, love affairs exposed and, ultimately, Pixie will be forced to make a devastating choice that will change her life forever... Shadows in the Moonlight is a sweeping and devastatingly romantic time-travel mystery, and the first book in Santa Montefiore's sensational new series. 
When coffee shop worker, Cheryl, meets handsome stranger, Dale, it seems like Cheryl's nightmares might finally be at an end. Loan sharks have been banging at Cheryl's door for longer than she cares to remember. That is, until Dale sends them running for good with just a few words. A romance soon blossoms between Cheryl and Dale, whose family has bought the house next door to hers. The relationship feels both exciting and safe. But when Cheryl meets Dale's family, it's immediately clear that they have dangerous secrets to hide. And as Cheryl uncovers the mystery of his family, it's clear that her life is in terrible danger...
Grumpy cowboys and steamy romance . . . Welcome to Chestnut Springs: the big-hitting, small-town series from TikTok sensation Elsie Silver. Perfect for fans of Devney Perry, Lucy Score and B.K. Borison. Beau Eaton is the town prince, a handsome military hero with a tortured past. I'm the outcast bartender, a shy girl from the wrong side of the tracks. He's thirty-five and all man, I'm twenty-two and all . . . virgin. He's also my fiancé. Correction: my fake fiancé. We start out as a bet. He doesn't believe that anyone holds my last name against me. So he offers me his to prove a point. It's a win-win. He gets a break from his concerned family's prying, and I get a chance to shed my family's reputation while I save up to ditch this small town. He says all I have to do is wear his ring, follow his lead, and pretend I can't keep my hands off of him in public. But it's what happens between us in private that blurs all those carefully drawn lines . . . It's what transpires behind closed doors that doesn't feel like pretending at all . . . This engagement was supposed to be for show. This agreement? It has an end date. He once told me he'd never fall in love. And yet here I am, head over heels for my fake fiancé.
Can the future be rewritten? On the verge of her second marriage, Carla Carter knows she’s finally found the one. She and her fiancé, Tom, met through Logical Love, a dating agency she founded for the pragmatically minded, and she’s confident that, together, they will dispel an old family curse claiming Carter women are unlucky in love. But Carla’s highly superstitious family insists she visit a fortune teller before her big day, and the tarot cards reveal that a different man holds the key to Carla’s happiness – someone she met while travelling during a gap year, twenty-one years ago. This startling information spurs Carla to trace and revisit the ex-boyfriends she met during that time before she walks down the aisle. From Barcelona to Amsterdam, Turkey to Paris, will Carla find her perfect match? And can a face from her past help Carla rewrite her entire family history, forever?
DO NOT DISTURB. WHODUNNIT IN PROGRESS… Molly the maid sees everything at The Regency Grand Hotel. So when a renowned guest drops very dead on the tearoom floor, sullying the hotel’s five-star reputation, it falls to Molly to sweep up the clues. An unfortunate accident? Or a murderous mess? The answers to the mystery lie behind one guest’s door – and only the maid holds the key…
She'll save Christmas just to spite him... There's only one thing standing in the way of Cat King saving a small town's Christmas festival: Grumpy town manager Noah Yates. Single dad Noah takes his responsibilities seriously. When a late season hurricane turns Merry, Connecticut, into a disaster, he's left scrambling to pick up the pieces of the town he loves. At least, until home renovation expert and smoking hot reality TV star Catalina King arrives with a camera crew and a budget big enough to put the town back together again. But Noah doesn't want a celebrity diva capitalizing on their tragedy or filling his daughter's head with visions of glitz and glam. Blonde bombshell Cat is used to being underestimated, but Noah has an uncanny knack for getting under her skin. They can't be in a room together without rubbing each other the wrong way...except that time in the dark alley where the rubbing was just right. Can these enemies work together to pull off a Christmas miracle or will their fighting leave them both on the naughty list?A note from Lucy Score: These enemies-to-lovers deliver the holiday feels with a dirty-talking hero, ballsy blonde who never backs down, steamy hot break-the-dining-room-table sexy times, and a small town that still believes in the magic of Christmas.
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
From the world's number one thriller writer, twenty pulse-pounding short stories are collected for the first time in one edition, complete with an introduction from the author plus an exclusive brand new short story featuring Jack Reacher and Maggie Bird from Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen. I was the guy who always found a way. I was the guy that couldn't be stopped. A drug-dealing hit man unburdens his fears to a stranger. An overlooked rookie cop is assigned to the department's file room. A ruthless killer only kills bad guys. A methodical bodyguard quits his job when he's outsmarted. A military mission is planned to perfection. . . Meticulously plotted and utterly compelling, these are intimate portraits of humanity at its best and worst. Each story is entirely distinct. And with their economical prose and unexpected twists, each could only have been written by the creator of Jack Reacher.
THE DAZZLING NEW NOVEL FROM MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR What if the greatest writer of all time isn't who we think he is? What if he isn't even a he? Step back four hundred years and discover the female author who hid behind the mask of the man we know as William Shakespeare . . . In Elizabethan London, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her education has endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but still she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees the theatre, Emilia discovers the power of stories to beguile audiences. Secretly, she forms a plan to bring a play of her own to the stage - by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work. In modern-day Manhattan, playwright Melina Green finds a woman's voice is still worth less than a man's. But, inspired by the life of her ancestor Emilia Bassano, Melina takes a lesson from history and submits a play under a male pseudonym . . . Moving between Elizabethan England and modern day Manhattan, By Any Other Name is a beautifully written, compelling novel that explores the theme of identity and the ways in which two women, centuries apart-one of whom might just be the real author of Shakespeare's plays-are both forced to hide behind another name to make their voices heard.
The breathtaking new novel from the Booker-shortlisted, bestselling author of The Island of Missing Trees and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives - all connected by a single drop of water. In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. Arthur's only chance of escaping poverty is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, Arthur's world opens up far beyond the slums, with one book soon sending him across the seas: Nineveh and Its Remains. In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised with water brought from the holy sit of Lalish in Iraq. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon Narin and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people. In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage. Zaleekhah foresees a life drained of all love and meaning - until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything. A dazzling feat of storytelling from one of the greatest writers of our time, Elif Shafak's There are Rivers in the Sky is a rich, sweeping novel that spans centuries, continents and cultures, entwined by rivers, rains, and waterdrops: 'Water remembers. It is humans who forget.'
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