Without Annie, friends Catherine, Lexie and Rachel are lost. What will things be like now? How will they fill the void? Will their friendship survive?
These questions are soon overshadowed by the complexities of their own lives. Catherine is excelling in her high-flying career but struggling in her relationships, especially with her unfathomable teenage daughter. Lexie is juggling the demands of her young family and the ego of her hardworking husband, while taking the first steps to achieving her own dreams.
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life—solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.
In 1988, Kinsey takes on client Michael Sutton, who claims to have recovered a childhood memory of men burying a suspicious bundle shortly after the unsolved disappearance of four-year-old Mary Claire Fitzhugh in 1972. But Sutton has a track record of unreliability, and Kinsey must untangle and reconfigure his disjointed recountings to learn if they are truth or fiction.
Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson Cooper treasures an antique quilt called by three names--Birds in the Air, after its pattern; the Runaway Quilt, after the woman who sewed it; and the Elm Creek Quilt, after the place to which its maker longed to return.
George Bailey has been given the gift we all dream of -- the chance to live his life again. After suffering a heart attack at the age of 42, George is given the heart of a 19 year old -- and suddenly everything changes. He is a friend to his teenage son and daughter -- and not a stern Home Secretary, monitoring their every move. And suddenly he wants to change the world, just as soon as he shakes off his hangover. But George Bailey discovers that being young again is not all it is cracked up to be -- and what he actually wants more than anything in the universe is to have his old life back.
Maralinga is a story of British Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner, who accepts a twelve-month posting to the wilds of South Australia on a promise of rapid promotion; Harold Dartleigh, Deputy Director of MI-6 and his undercover operative Gideon Melbray; Australian Army Colonel Nick Stratton and the enigmatic Petraeus Mitchell, bushman and anthropologist. They all find themselves in a violent and unforgiving landscape, infected with the unique madness and excitement that only nuclear testing creates.
A novel set in China in the 1920s about Siu Sing, the daughter of a Chinese mother and the foreign devil ship's captain who rescued her from death. Raised until the age of twelve by an elderly Taoist sage who is master of the White Crane and trained as one of his last disciples, she is sold into slavery after he's assassinated. After spending her teenage years in an opium den, she begins a quest to find Ben Devereaux, the father she never knew, and to reclaim her birthright.
Pree Fincastle, daughter of impoverished British missionaries in India, is left alone and destitute when tragedy strikes. Turned away by the Church, she embarks on a journey in search of Kai, the son of her mother’s ayah, and the only person she can trust. But Kai is not the man Pree thought he was, and the secrets he holds will unlock the door to another world, another time – and, shockingly, another life.
A California town is rocked to its core when two boys and a girl stumble upon a murder victim, drawing Special Agent Tony Mendez into a search for a psychopathic serial killer called "The See No Evil Killer," but as his probe continues, he realizes that the killer may be the father of one of the boys and enlists the aid of their teacher, Anne Navarre, to uncover the truth.
One by one, children of New York's wealthiest are taken hostage. But the criminal doesn't crave money or power--he only wants to ask the elite if they know the price others pay for their luxurious lifestyles. And, if they don't, he corrects their ignorance--by killing them.
In the darkness of war and destruction, forces gather to reclaim the peace: Those immortal Guardians who still serve justice seek a means to end the devastating reign of one of their own; a hired outlander army struggles to halt the advance of the horde that has despoiled vast lands and slaughtered countless people in its murderous wake, while still guarding against a burgeoning threat from an aggressively expansionist empire; and the eagle reeves who have long been the only law enforcers of the Hundred struggle to reorganize after a devastating massacre has decimated their numbers. But even as these forces give hope to those who would live in peace, a terrible danger looms: a traitor with Imperial ambitions, the most dreaded, least anticipated threat of all.
After an astonishing escape, Jack West Jr. regroups with his trusty team. Racing to rebuild the final pieces of the fabled "Machine," they discover an ancient inscription containing a rhyme about five mysterious unnamed warriors -- great historical figures whose knowledge will be vital to unlocking the secrets of the Machine and its long-lost "pillars." But the ancients have hidden their secrets well, and with each pillar bestowing an incredible power upon its holder, their pursuit has attracted the attention of other forces from around the world -- some who want to rule it and others who want to see it destroyed.(www.fantasticfiction.co.uk)
1326. As the threat of war hangs over England, Sir Baldwin and Bailiff Puttock must work quickly to prevent the murder of England's Treasurer, Bishop Stapledon. In France, King Edward II's estranged wife Queen Isabella shames him by refusing to return to England, and humiliates him further by flaunting her adulterous relationship with the king's sworn enemy, traitor Sir Roger Mortimer. When the king hears she has betrothed their son to the daughter of the Count of Hainault, all England fears an invasion of Hainault mercenaries. Meanwhile the Treasurer of England's life is threatened. He has made many enemies in a long political life and Sir Baldwin and Simon must do all they can to find the would-be assassin before he can strike...
Stumbling across Bessie Spooner's murdered body, comedian Corney Sage is caught in a tangle of deception and lies. He flees from his concert-room job in London's Whitechapel to a comfortable spa town, and then to a circus and music hall. But try as he might, he cannot elude the killer. And in Corney's world of theatricals, clowns and showmen, where appearances are surface deep and secrets are deadly, any one of them might be the murderer.
Jillian Perry has been found dead in the woods, leaving behind a husband of three weeks and a young daughter. The police can't determine how she died--but forensic investigator Theresa MacLean suspects foul play. To complicate matters, a former boyfriend of Jillian's unexpectedly petitions for custody of the daughter. Obsessed with Jillian, he also suspects that Jillian was murdered, and now he and Theresa believe Jillian's daughter may be in danger of meeting a similar fate.
"Englisher" Heather Lang has come to Amish country to relive fond memories of her mother and to contemplate a grave medical prognosis of her own. While in Bird-in-Hand, Heather meets Grace Byler and the two young women strike up a fast friendship, amazed by how well they click. Following the only clue they have, Grace and Heather travel together in hopes of finding Grace's mother and bringing her home. Will they find what they're looking for...or something much more?
Special Agent Holly Barker returns to her hometown of Orchid Beach, Florida, and faces off against an old nemesis--the man she brought charges against for sexual harassment, attempted rape, and rape. The army officer in question was acquitted of all charges, and is now Orchid Beach's new police chief. Will Holly return to the CIA? Or will she challenge her old nemesis for control of the Orchid Beach Police Department?
This is a saga of family secrets, heartache and happy endings. Dinah Radcliffe doesn't have much money to spend on the finer things in life but she shares a contented existence with her mother, Sarah. When Dinah meets widowed businessman Richard Haldane at the races, her life changes beyond recognition.
A deeply moving and funny portrayal of a mother and son, this humorous novel about coping with an unusual situation tells the story of a speech therapist whose mother awakes one day to find herself suddenly - for no apparent reason - speaking with a heavy French accent.
In the last years of the 9th century, King Alfred is in failing health and his heir an untested youth. The Danes who have failed to conquer Wessex smell an opportunity and Harald Bloodhair leading a Viking horde is led into a trap by the warlord Uhtred inflicting the greatest defeat ever suffered by the Vikings thus saving Alfred's Wessex.
Rumors fly of Napoleon's planned invasion of England, and British naval commander Thomas Kydd is sent to liaise with American inventor, Robert Fulton, who has created 'infernal machines' that can wreak mass destruction from a distance. Fulton believes that his inventions, namely the submarine and torpedo, will win the day for the power that possesses them, and Kydd must help him develop the devices. Despite his own scruples, believing that standing man-to-man is the only honorable way to fight, Kydd agrees to take part in the crucial testing of these weapons of mass destruction, which just may decide the fate of England.
Driven by a series of internal and external pressures, seven year-old Max leaves home, jumps in a boat and sails across the oceans to a strange island where the giant beasts reign - the 'wild things' from Maurice Sendak's visionary classic.
Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and armaments manufacturer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War I he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents.
Recently returned from Egypt, the adventurer Giovanni Belzoni enthrals Londoners with the city's first exhibition devoted to Egyptian art. As he unveils his star exhibit, a perfectly-preserved mummy, there is a collective intake of breath. The astonishing spectacle provokes an immediate scandal: a hysterical preacher demands the destruction of this pagan relic; an elderly Lord wants to feed it to his dogs; a pathologist wishes to keep the body in order to study this fascinating phenomenon. But the following night, the mummy disappears - and the preacher, the Lord and the pathologist are murdered.
Summer, 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead. The assassination conspiracies have begun to unravel. A dirty-tricks squad is getting ready to deploy at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Black militants are warring in southside L.A. The Feds are concocting draconian countermeasures. And fate has placed three men at the vortex of History.
Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk—and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.
Adrian Mole is 39 and a quarter. Unable to afford the mortgage on his riverside apartment, he has been forced to move into a semi-detached converted pigsty next door to his parents, George and Pauline. His ravishing wife Daisy loathes the countryside, longs for Dean Street and has yet to buy a pair of Wellingtons; they are both aware the passion has gone out of their marriage, but neither knows how to reignite the flame. To cap it all off, Adrian is leaving his bed numerous times a night to go to the lavatory and has other alarming symptoms, leading him to suspect prostate trouble.
For amiable City trader Jimmy Corby money was the new Rock n' Roll. His whole life was a party, adrenalin charged and cocaine fuelled. If he hadn't met Monica he would probably have ended up either dead or in rehab. But Jimmy was as lucky in love as he was at betting on dodgy derivatives, so instead of burning out, his star just burned brighter than ever. Rich, pampered and successful, Jimmy, Monica and their friends lived the dream, bringing up their children with an army of domestic helps. But then it all came crashing down. And when the global financial crisis hit, Jimmy discovers that anyone can handle success. It's how you handle failure that really matters.
Turning twenty-seven may be terrifying for some, but for Alex, a struggling artist living in the mid-western United States, it is cataclysmic. Inheriting a huge expanse of land should have made him a rich and happy man; but something about this birthday, his name, and the beautiful woman whose life he just saved, has suddenly made him - and everyone he loves - into a target. A target for extreme and uncompromising violence.
In the aftermath of the Great Depression few opportunities existed for working-class boys, but at just eighteen Danny Dunn has a good deal going for him: brains, looks, sporting ability - and an easy charm. His parents run The Hero, a favourite neighbourhood pub, and Danny is a local hero.
Luck changes for Danny when he signs up to go to war. He returns home a physically broken man, to a life that will be changed for ever. Together with Helen, a woman of strength, character and intelligence who becomes his wife, he sets about rebuilding his life. It is a life tormented by personal demons, and shaped by compassion, corruption, love and power - and the gift of twin daughters, Sam and Gabby.
Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure-a year living in Kenya. Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn't know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own husband.
A British couple invites the newlyweds to join on a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya, and they eagerly agree. But during their harrowing ascent, a horrific accident occurs. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain and how these events have transformed her and her marriage, perhaps forever. (www.fantasticfiction.co.uk)
Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners – a religion devoted to the melding of science, religion, and nature – has long predicted a disaster. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women remain: Ren, a young dancer locked away in a high-end sex club, and Toby, a former God’s Gardener, who barricades herself inside a luxurious spa. Have others survived? Ren’s bio-artist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers? Not to mention the CorpSeCorps, the shadowy policing force of the ruling powers… As Adam One and his beleaguered followers regroup, Ren and Toby emerge into an altered world, where nothing – including the animal life – is predictable.
Addy and Prue Fairweather live with Nell, their widowed mother, in a flat above her shop on the Scotland Road. The sisters, however, are very different. To make matters worse, Nell makes no secret of her preference for the younger girl, increasing Addy's jealousy and resentment. On the other side of the coin, Giles Frobisher and his twin sister, Gillian, live in a crumbling mansion near the sea in Devon. The family have lost most of their money in the Depression, so Giles leaves university and joins the Fleet Air Arm. He meets the Fairweather girls briefly on a visit to Liverpool but they lose touch and when they meet again Addy and Prue are no longer children and Giles realises he is falling in love.
This stunning collection of new stories demonstrates once again why Alice Munro is celebrated as a pre-eminent master of the short story. While some of the stories are traditional, set in “Alice Munro Country” in Ontario or in B.C., dealing with ordinary women’s lives, others have a new, sharper edge. They involve child murders, strange sex, and a terrifying home invasion. By way of astonishing variety, the title story, set in Victorian Europe, follows the last journey from France to Sweden of a famous Russian mathematician. This daring, superb collection proves that Alice Munro will always surprise you.
London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days, we follow the lives of seven major characters. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it - and party on as though tomorrow is a dream. Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this intensely realised group of people, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.
November 2032. Joe Benton has just been elected the forty-eighth president of the United States. Only days after winning, Benton learns from his predecessor that previous estimates regarding the effect of global warming on rising sea levels have been grossly underestimated. For the United States, a leading carbon emitter for decades, the prospects are devastating: thirty million coastal-dwelling citizens will need to be relocated. With the world frighteningly close to catastrophe, Benton opts to resume secret bilateral negotiations with the Chinese—the world's worst polluter. As the two superpowers lock horns, the ensuing battle of wits becomes a race against time.
Together with Ingrid, the family au pair, Alison has worked hard to create a real 'old-fashioned family life' for her six children. But beneath its postcard sheen, the picture is clouded by a distant father, Alison's inexplicable emotional outbursts, and long-repressed secrets that no one dares mention. For years, Alison's adult children have protected her illusion of domestic perfection - but as each child confronts the effects of past choices on their current adult lives, it becomes evident that each must face the truth.
When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat and through a series of developing relationships a crisis develops that could pull the twins apart.
Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father...until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.
She is an Italian accountancy student in London, and her boyfriend Eddie teaches at a language school. But the reason Immacolata Borelli came to Britain was to look after her gangster brother, wanted for murder back home in Naples. For the Borelli clan are major players in the Camorra, a crime network more close-knit and ruthless than the Sicilian Mafia. When Immacolata phones senior Carabinieri investigator Mario Castrolami to say she is prepared to collaborate with justice - to betray her own family - he knows she is setting in motion a terrifying and unpredictable series of events.
Annie and Duncan are a mid-thirties couple who have reached a fork in the road, realising their shared interest in the reclusive musician Tucker Crowe (in Duncan's case, an obsession as well as an academic career) is not enough to hold them together any more.
Once a highly regarded ophthalmologist, Jack's career took a dramatic turn after a tragic accident that destroyed his family. But that, too, is very much in the past: Jack has remarried - to longtime colleague and fellow medical examiner Laurie Montgomery - and is the father of a young child. But his renegade, activist personality can't rest, and after performing a postmortem on a young college student who had recently been treated by a chiropractor, Jack decides to explore alternative medicine. What makes some people step outside the medical establishment to seek care from practitioners of Eastern philosophies and even faith healers?
Charlotte Grey is hovering between life and death, but the weird thing is, it's taken a coma for her to finally open her eyes and see things clearly. Namely that she's made a complete mess of her short time on Earth, and don't even get started on the five precious dating years she's just wasted on the worthless, faithless James Kane.
The Chatfield family - one half living in the UK, the other in New Zealand - found out the stark realities of survival after a deadly pandemic swept across the world. Now escaping the repressive regime at Haver Hall in the UK, a group sails back to the southern hemisphere. Stopping in South Africa and then Australia, they are faced by unexpected dangers but also the hope that there might be other survivors.
In Dead to the World, Sookie Stackhouse is back to her old loneliness, having chucked her boyfriend because he had a fling with an old flame. When she rescues her ex's vampire boss, Eric, another seriously attractive specimen, Sookie is torn between her feelings for the two undead men. Unfortunately, somebody or somebodies seem to want Eric dead permanently, and Sookie is in the way.
Nobody likes The Complaints - they're the cops who investigate other cops. It's where Malcolm Fox works.
In the midst of an aggressive Edinburgh winter, the reluctant Fox is given a new task. There's a cop called Jamie Breck, and he's dirty. The problem is, no one can prove it. But as Fox takes on the job, he learns that there's more to Breck than anyone thinks. This knowledge will prove dangerous, especially when a vicious murder intervenes far too close to home for Fox's liking.
When the spirit of Lara's great-aunt Sadie-a feisty, demanding girl with firm ideas about fashion, love, and the right way to dance-mysteriously appears, she has one last request: Lara must find a missing necklace that had been in Sadie's possession for more than seventy-five years, and Sadie cannot rest without it. Never mind that Lara has her own problems--which Sadie could care less about. Will this sparring duo ever find what they're after?
From the 17th century to the present day, Edward Rutherfurd tells the story of New York and of America through a cast of characters rich and poor, black and white, native born and immigrant.
East London, 1940: Francis Hancock finds the brutally eviscerated body of a woman in a derelict house. Francis' sister, Nancy, knew the victim. Then, shockingly, two more murders follow. Rumours start to spread through the East End about another Jack the Ripper. When a fourth woman is murdered, Nancy admits that she knew all of the victims, and Francis sets out to find the killer, discovering a trail of murderous resentment that goes back decades...
Meet Tony Hill's most twisted adversary - a killer with a shopping list of victims, a killer unmoved by youth and innocence, a killer driven by the most perverted of desires. Struggling with the newly-awakened ghosts of his own past and desperate for distraction in his work, Tony battles to find the answers that will give him personal and professional satisfaction in his most testing investigation yet. (Amazon)
This superlative romantic thriller from bestseller Brown features a particularly memorable villain, sociopath Creighton Wheeler, who's obsessed with re-enacting scenes from films like Strangers on a Train and Frenzy.... Multiple smash cuts (abrupt scene shifts) lead to a wonderfully frenzied finish.( Publishers Weekly)
After Iraqi insurgents kill his fellow officers, Navy SEAL Mack Bedford sets out for revenge, ultimately becoming involved in a plot to assassinate a French politician. At the same time, Mack must work out a way for his dying son to receive the costly and experimental medical treatment that may save his life.
It's going to be the biggest skyscraper in the world. One rainy night a young woman falls from an unfinished upper storey, landing on a police car. Detectives Jon McIver and Nicholas Troy think it will be a pretty simple investigation, but all is not what it seems.
The D-Day landings: the fate of two and half million men, three thousand landing-craft and the entire future of Europe depends on the right weather conditions in the English Channel on a single day. A team of Allied scientists is charged with agreeing an accurate forecast five days in advance. But is it even possible to predict the weather so far ahead? And what is the relationship between predictability and turbulence, one of the last great mysteries of modern physics? Turbulence proves more elusive than anyone could have imagined, and events, like the weather, begin to spiral out of control.
The White Queen tells the story of Elizabeth Woodville, a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition who, catching the eye of the newly crowned boy king, marries him in secret and ascends to royalty. While Elizabeth rises to the demands of her exalted position and fights for the success of her family, her two sons become central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the missing princes in the Tower of London whose fate is still unknown.
Jocelyn Minton is a woman torn between two worlds. Her mother grew up in a world of private schools and afternoon tea, but she married the local handyman. A friend, Miss Edi dies, and leaves Jocelyn all her worldly possessions, which includes clues to a mystery that started in 1941, set in a small town in Virginia that Joce had never heard of. But, because of her benefactor's notorious past, the townspeople know who Joce is, and they've plotted out her entire future, including who she is meant to marry. But Jocelyn has her own ideas about men and secrets that no one wants revealed.
This is the story of a proud Currency Lad, a beautiful gypsy and a convict artist who are thrown together by random acts of love, hate, survival and revenge and discover that the harsh beauty of Australia changes everyone, for better or worse.
When Luca Campelli dies a sudden and violent death, his son Jon inherits his second-hand bookshop. When Luca's death is followed by an arson attempt on the shop, Jon is forced to explore his family's past. Unbeknown to Jon, the bookshop has for years been hiding a remarkable secret. It is the meeting place of a society of booklovers and readers, who have maintained a tradition of immense power passed down from the days of the great library of ancient Alexandria. Now someone is trying to destroy them, and Jon finds himself in a fight for his life and those of his new friends.
In this short story collection set in the Indian city of Kittur sometime between the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and that of her son Rajiv in 1991, Adiga creates a cast of characters--from a twelve-year old boy to a Marxist-Maoist Party member--who are immersed in class struggles and their own personal denouements.
Jessica Ford is a smart, quiet, and ambitious young lawyer working for one of the largest firms in Washington, D.C. Her boss, John Davenport, is a high roller in politics and good friends with the First Lady, Annette Cooper. When he can’t make it to a bar where Annette is hiding from her Secret Service detail, he calls Jess and sends her over to bundle Annette into a cab. The next thing Jess knows, she’s the sole survivor of a fiery car crash. As the country mourns the First Lady, Jess begins to think the car crash was a cover-up for more than just a drug deal. Suddenly she and Secret Service agent Mark Ryan are on the lam and unsure of whom they can trust.
Angel Blakely leads the perfect life. With a handsome husband in the form of a famous rugby league star, a newly decorated million-dollar apartment in Sydney's sought-after Eastern Suburbs, and a gorgeous baby son, she is the envy of many. But her glamorous life is not all it seems. Beneath the money and the status that go with football at its highest level lies a dark world of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual misbehaviour and violence.
The Cold War is going badly for President Reagan's administration. Support in Europe for the Soviet Union is on the rise, while acceptance of the new US intermediate range nuclear missiles is waning. Enter Roy Garret, a bright young NSA analyst with a plan. It goes into effect on the morning of 1 September 1983 when Korean Air Lines commercial passenger flight 007 takes off from Anchorage, Alaska, heading for Seoul. The airliner rendezvous with a US spy plane over the Bearing Sea, overflies a top secret Soviet submarine base and is then shot down off Sakhalin Island... Or is it?
Jack Ryan has a man’s fists, a boy’s mind, and the cunning of an ex-con. Nancy Hayes has a woman’s sleek moves and the instincts of a shark. Now, in a Michigan resort town, a rich man wants Jack gone and Nancy for himself. For Ryan the choice is clear: Nancy’s promises of pleasure, her crazy, thrill-seeking schemes of breaking into homes, shooting guns, and maybe stealing a whole lot of money are driving him half mad. But there’s one thing Ryan doesn’t know yet: his new playmate is planning the deadliest thrill of all.
Sarah's grandfather was a horseman of rare talent - only the exceptional are allowed into France's elite riding academy, Le Cadre Noir. But life took an unexpected turn, and now from a council estate in east London, the Captain hopes to train his granddaughter towards a better life. Natasha is a lawyer whose job is to represent the best interests of children. Her confidence in her judgement has been shaken and her marriage has died - but an encounter with Sarah may lead to Natasha learning all she needs to know about life from a fourteen-year-old girl and a large horse named Boo.
They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer...Simon is Molly's oldest, bitchiest, best friend. Since they high-kicked out of university, keen to taste life, Molly has become a jobbing musical theatre actress, while Simon is on the cusp of fame as his caustic, bitter alter-ego: Genita L'Warts, a drag queen with a talent for abusing audiences. They'd always vowed no man would ever come between them, but Simon can't resist his fatal attraction to straight men. When his endless pursuit of Mr Right Now leads to a devastating betrayal, Molly is left broken-hearted and their friendship seems fractured beyond repair.
Money certainly changes Jenner Redwine’s life when she wins a lottery jackpot. Her father rips her off and disappears, her fortune-hunting boyfriend soon becomes her ex, and friends-turned-freeloaders give her the cold shoulder when she stops paying for everything. Jenner can’t imagine ever finding a place in the world of the wealthy. Luckily she finds an ally in shy, kind-hearted heiress Sydney Hazlett, who quickly becomes Jenner’s confidante and surrogate sister. When Sydney invites Jenner on a charity cruise aboard a luxury liner, Jenner reluctantly agrees. Taken hostage by a menacing stranger, Jenner must cooperate in a mysterious cloak-and-dagger scheme–or else.
It's official. Angela Clarke is in love -- with the most fabulous city in the world. Fleeing her cheating boyfriend and clutching little more than a crumpled bridesmaid dress, a pair of Louboutins and her passport, Angela jumps on a plane, destination - NYC. Holed up in a cute hotel room, Angela gets a New York makeover from her NBFJenny and a whirlwind tour of the city that never sleeps. Before she knows it, Angela is dating two sexy guys. And, best of all, she gets to write about it in her new blog (Carrie Bradshaw eat your heart out). But it's one thing telling readers about your romantic dilemmas, it's another figuring them out for yourself ! Angela has fallen head over heels for the big apple, but does she heart New York more than home?
Russia 1915 - Aged 16, Georgy Jachmenov steps in front of an assassin's bullet intended for a senior member of the Russian Imperial family. He is proclaimed a hero and soon becomes bodyguard to Tsar Nicholas II's son. 65 years later, visiting his dying wife in hospital, memories of the life they had together flood his mind.
Grace's mother Eileen is a great list maker, so when Grace walks into Eileen's kitchen to drop off a postal package and sees her garish 'To Do' pad on the counter, she thinks nothing of it, until she sneaks a look. There, at No 8, ranked in importance well below bread, telephone bill and bins is 'Tell G I have ovarian cancer, probably terminal'. Grace goes into shock, primarily at the thought that her mother is dying, but also at the fact that her mother simply couldn't tell her to her face. Is their relationship really so bad?
When fresh-faced college student Chelsea Hart is found murdered in East River Park, her wavy blond hair brutally hacked off, NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher catches the case--and finds herself under the watchful eye of a psychopath eager to add the prideful young female detective to his list of victims.
Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.
Ethan Gage, the hero of Napoleon's Pyramids and The Rosetta Key, just wants to enjoy the fruits of victory after helping Napoleon win the Battle of Marengo and end an undeclared naval war with the United States. But a foolish tryst with Bonaparte's married sister and the improbable schemes of a grizzled Norwegian named Magnus Bloodhammer soon send Ethan on a new treasure hunt on America's frontier that will have him dodging scheming aristocrats and hostile Indians.
Josh Goldin is a happily married TV airtime salesman with an eight-month-old son. When baby Zack is treated twice for mysterious and life-threatening symptoms, the head of a pediatric ICU, Dr. Darlene Stokes, tells Child Protective Services that she thinks Josh's wife, Dori, suffers from Munchausen syndrome, whereby the afflicted injure their children deliberately to draw attention to themselves. The Goldins' ensuing battle to keep Zack provides grist for public debate about issues ranging from parents' rights to race.
Madam, mistress and Gangster's moll. Now she's Annie Carter, and she taking over the East End. Someone has snatched her husband and child. Now there's a score to settle, and it's being settled Annie Carter style!
When Frank and Ellie Benton lose their only child, Benny, to a sudden illness, the perfect life they had built is shattered. Filled with wrenching memories, their Ann Arbor home becomes unbearable, and their marriage founders. But an unexpected job half a world away offers them an opportunity to start again. Life in Girbaug, India, holds promise—and peril—when Frank befriends Ramesh, a bright, curious boy who quickly becomes the focus of the grieving man's attentions. Haunted by memories of his dead son, Frank is consumed with making his family right—a quest that will lead him down an ever-darkening path with stark repercussions.
Sun kissed beaches, palm trees, the warm breeze on a clear sea. Maui is a paradise island and the perfect location for a glamorous, glossy magazine photo shoot. But all is not as it seems and the tranquillity is shattered when a series of beautiful swimwear models start to go missing. When their bodies are discovered, one after another, each more brutally murdered that the last, the hunt is on for the perpetrator of these violent killings.
Mikael Blomkvist—crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium—has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government. On the eve of publication, the two reporters responsible for the story are brutally murdered.
The scarecrow is Connelly's 21st book (20th novel) and the second featuring as the main characters Jack McEvoy, a reporter now living in Los Angeles, and FBI agent Rachel Walling. As a result, it is a sequel to the events in Connelly's 1996 novel The poet although another Connelly novel, The narrows was published in 2004 as the official sequel to The poet. (from Wikipedia)
A panoramic cavalcade of a novel, The Children’s Book spans a quarter of a century from 1895 to the aftermath of the first world war, crisscrosses Britain and Europe, follows the intersecting fortunes of four families and swarms with vivid subsidiary characters, from real-life figures such as Oscar Wilde, Auguste Rodin and Marie Stopes to an invented cast of late-Victorian and Edwardian writers, artists, anarchists, City financiers, Fabian progressives, potters, puppeteers, dons, debutantes, New Women, suffragettes, soldiers, philanthropists and philanderers. (from The Sunday Times)
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