Survival is hard in a land where no woman can live alone Layla is just thirteen when the men with the beards and guns burn down her beloved father’s school and begin to terrorise the Swat valley region of Pakistan. She has to flee, exchanging the tranquil beauty of the Himalayas for the squalor of a camp for refugees from the Taliban near Peshawar. With her life torn apart by tragedy, Layla must choose between the old fashioned way of life with her family - or a journey into inde...
June 1944. Eighteen-year-old Ginnie Travis works in her father's furniture shop in the suburbs of East London when the continued bombing raids and her sister Shirley's untimely pregnancy force the two girls to go and stay with their aunt in Shropshire. Here Ginnie falls in love with an American, Lieutenant Nick Miller, stationed nearby. But she discovers that Nick has a fiancée back home and a heartbroken Ginnie ends the relationship. Then news of their father's death in an air raid reaches them...
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD `I cannot remember when a novel has seduced me so completely…it feels as if a trusted old friend is telling you the story, that the characters are people you know’ The Times `A terrific book . . . I loved A SONG FOR ISSY BRADLEY. It’s wry, smart, human, and rather miraculously, avoids mawkishness. And, ultimately, it’s moving and comforting in a way that makes sense even to the agnostic'. Nick Hornby, The Believer This is the story of what happens...
A debut historical novel based on the true story of a young woman in 1920s Virginia fighting to reclaim the daughter she was forced to give up, a case that culminated in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.Virginia, 1924. Ruth Ann Riley is 17 years old when she gives birth to a baby girl. Unwed and under-educated, she's deemed "feeble-minded" -- just like her own mother -- and sent to live in a state-run institution where the doctors decide she must be sterilized "for the greater good." But R...
After 50 years together Stan still adores his wife... so why is he dating again? Bonnie and Stan are soulmates. They met during the Swinging Sixties, to the soundtrack of The Beatles and the Merseybeat scene. Now they've grown up and grown old together, had children and grandchildren. They are finally building their dream home, when disaster strikes. Stan is running out of time, and can't bear the thought of leaving Bonnie alone. Alongside his teenage granddaughter Greya, he forms a plan to fi...
A fight, ended by a slap, sends Elizabeth out the door of her Baton Rouge home on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Her mother, Laura, is left to fret and worry—and remember. Wracked with guilt as she awaits Liz’s return, Laura begins a letter to her daughter, hoping to convey “everything I’ve always meant to tell you but never have.” In her painfully candid confession, Laura shares memories of her own troubled adolescence in rural Louisiana, her bittersweet relationship with a boy she loved de...
Alberta Selmer escapes from her cold, suffocating provincial life in Norway to seek out the summer riches of Paris: a city where the bohemians will never die, where there is absinthe, endless talk of cubism and the petrol engine is replacing the horse on the Champs Elysees. However, Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century is a huge sea on which Alberta and her freedoms are cast. With no connections, few work prospects and little money, Alberta is forced to become an artists model. Sh...
From the author of the Costa Prize shortlisted The Good Guy'Susan Beale's writing is alive with subtlety and flair. Her stories unspool with a confident voice, a relish for detail and deft shifts in perspective' Tessa HadleyThe Yardley family is fracturing. Eighteen years since their move to Brussels and the future is clouded with uncertainty for Neil, a Brit, American Marcy and their three Belgian-born children. Wrapped up in their own worries, Neil and Marcy fail to see how much their middle c...
BOOK TWO IN ELIZABETH GILL'S HEART-WRENCHING FOUNDLING SCHOOL FOR GIRLS TRILOGYWhen little Ella's grandmother dies, she is turned out of her home with nowhere to go. After her mother chooses her new husband over her daughter, Ella is forced to seek refuge at the Foundling School for Girls.Meanwhile, twins Julia and Ned are torn apart by their parents, sent away to different schools. They long to be reunited but will have to take matters into their own hands.In a world of hardship and betrayal, t...
In the war against Hitler every secret counts… ‘Shines a light on a part of the British war effort I’d previously not been aware of…a fascinating, informative and heartwarming novel, and I loved it’ The New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller Jill Mansell Society heiress Evelyn Brooke-Edwards is a skilled interrogator – her beauty making her a non-threat in the eyes of the prisoners. Farm girl Betty Connors may not be able to type as she c...
Don’t miss the gripping new drama from the nation’s favourite storyteller! Are some memories best forgotten? Maureen Bancroft has never learned the art of putting herself first. As a widow with a gentle temperament and humble ways, she’s been easy to take advantage of.All that changes when an unexpected windfall comes her way. Determined to make up for lost time, she decides to take a holiday and, needing a compan...
When easygoing Alex Evans meets Sarai Levy he's immediately intrigued. She's quiet. Sweet. Introverted. She's an immigrant from Israel, working on her graduate degree at a local college and so gorgeous he has a hard time keeping his eyes off her. When they're married after two months of dating, Alex is sure it's the right move, even though they barely know anything about each other. They're in love and determined to make their life together work. But when Sarai discovers she's pregnant--and then...
Gosport, 1941. The Bluebird Girls - Rainey Bird, Bea Herron and Ivy Sparrow - are on their way to stardom. From working mens' clubs to the glamour of the Savoy Hotel, fame and fortune beckon as the south coast's favourite singing trio work to charm their way into the hearts of the nation.But the war rages on, and reaching the top of their game will not be easy. Blonde bombshell Bea is still dealing with the fallout of a traumatic encounter last winter. Rainey is determined to live up to her moth...
The prequel to the million-copy bestseller, A Woman of Substance, where, high on the Yorkshire moors, the story of Blackie O’Neill and Emma Harte begins… Orphaned and alone, 13-year-old Blackie O’Neill must leave County Kerry to find work and put food in his mouth. His only chance of survival lies with his mother’s brother, far away in Leeds. There, amid the noise and bustle, the mills and manufactories of the clothing industry that have made Leeds one of England’s...
On the outskirts of Nuneaton stands Hatter's Hall, a dark forbidding place - home to the mentally insane. One rainy, dismal day in 1857, Maria Mundy arrives at Hatter's Hall, not as an inmate but as a worker. Here, she is ordered to care for Isabelle Montgomery, the daughter of an influential land-owner. But Isabelle is not insane. She, like many other young women confined within the solitary walls, has been banished here by her family. Hatter's Hall also serves as a place to hide unmarri...
From the author of THE THORN BIRDS, one of the biggest-selling books of all time, comes this epic saga of love, betrayal, ambition and redemption in 1920s Australia. Do bonds between sisters ever break? Edda, Grace, tufts and Kitty didn't think so. the four Latimer sisters, famous throughout New South Wales for their beauty, wit and ambition, have always been close; always happy. But then they left home to train as nurses, swapping the feather beds of their father's townhouse for the spartan b...
Jessica Patterson's comfortable, settled life seems idyllic and her marriage perfect. She met American Sheldon Patterson on holiday in Mexico and fell for him instantly. Good looking and easy going as well as financially secure, he was everything Jessie wanted in a husband. When they have a son, CJ, her happiness is complete.Jessie is besotted with her son and her life revolves around him, while his father constantly travels for his business. So when Sheldon announces one day that he is going to...
`Whoever said romance was dead has clearly never read a Nikki Moore book’ – Rachel’s Random Reads The last story in the fun & flirty #LoveLondon series from exciting new chick lit author Nikki Moore! The perfect novel for reading in the sunshine … and falling in love with London. Hot summer romance…or cold revenge? Super nanny, Zoe Harper is mad! It was bad enough discovering her ex-fiancé Greg cheating on her just weeks before their wedding. But now she’s returned home t...
A festive collection of short stories by No. 1 bestseller, Cathy Kelly. The perfect stocking filler! Lose yourself in this warm and wonderful collection of short stories from bestselling Irish storyteller Cathy Kelly. From weddings and summer holidays to Christmas with uninvited family or long-lost friends returning, this anthology captures the hopes, tears, laughter and loves of all kinds of women and their families and friends with Cathy’ s inimitabl...
One Week to Claim it All & Just for the Holidays... (Sambrano Studios)
by Adriana Herrera
Since Amy's daughter, Ruby-May, died in a terrible accident, her family have been beset by grief. One year later, the family decide to go on holiday to mend their wounds. An idyllic island in Italy seems the perfect place for them to heal and repair their relationships with one another.But no sooner have they arrived than they discover nothing on this remote island is quite as it seems. And with the anniversary of the little girl's death looming, it becomes clear that at least one person in the...
Travel Light, with the Varangs' Saga (The Naomi Mitchison Library)
by Naomi Mitchison
In her novels, Naomi Mitchison frequently tackled serious issues, war and peace, conflicts of loyalties, freedom and slavery, and of course feminism. But a very few times she allowed her work to be primarily a question of fun, or play. In Travel Light (1952) she wrote a charming fairy tale in which a king's daughter was saved from death as a baby, then successively lived with bears and dragons. It is set in a Never Land which is nonetheless gently Norse, where Odin, the All-Father, 'made men in...
In Juan Goytisolo's surreal fiction Karl and Jenny Marx sit on their sofa in Hampstead and watch a television documentary. Albanian refugees land on a private Italian beach flourishing photocopies of dollar bills in search of paradise Dallas. Find out how Karl reacts to the demise of the systems Josef Visionariovitch and Co. build on his word! Read all about the family life of the Marxes, moving upmarket from Dean Street to Highgate and beyond, yet never free of the hock shop! A resurrected Mar...
The tumultuous history of Korea unfolds in Mira Stout's debut novel One Thousand Chestnut Trees, a compelling story of a young woman's search for her Korean heritage--and her own sense of identity. In her journeys, she discovers a legacy left behind by the noble clan from which she is descended--a temple erected by her great-grandfather in defiance of centuries of invasions against Korea, and the one thousand chestnut trees that shield it from view.