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Simply Divine
by Wendy HoldenChampagne D'Vyne is a celebrity socialite with a charmed life - and a mania for men, money and fame. Jane is a journalist with an ordinary life - love stress, work stress and a spare tyre that won't go away. As their contrasting worlds become bizarrely intertwined, Jane realises that the blonde, busty and blatantly ambitious Champagne will let nothing come between her and what she wants. Least of all Jane.
Moscow Sting: A Novel (Anna Rensikov Ser. #2)
by Alex DrydenThe threat of Russia as a hostile superpower returns in this chilling spy thriller.When British spy, Finn, is brutally murdered by a Russian assassin, Adrian, chief of MI6, wants vengeance. He also wants answers - answers that can only be revealed by Finn's widow, Anna, the former KGB colonel who betrayed her country for love and has now disappeared with their child. Adrian isn't the only one desperate to find Anna. Finn accessed intelligence so confidential that the KGB are willing to kill to protect it, and now everyone wants to know what Russia is concealing beneath its veil of political cordiality.
My Last Duchess: The unputdownable epic novel of an American Heiress
by Daisy GoodwinMY LAST DUCHESS is the debut novel from Daisy Goodwin, the script writer of the epic ITV Sunday night drama VICTORIA. A rich, rewarding love story, perfect for readers of Georgette Heyer, and fans of VICTORIA, DOWNTON ABBEY and THE CROWN.'Sparkling and thoroughly engaging' Sunday Times'Deliciously classy. An intelligent pleasure, full of exquisite period detail' Kate MosseCora Cash has grown up in a world in which money unlocks every door. Her coming-out ball promises to be the most opulent of the gilded 1890s, a fitting debut for New York's 'princess'. Yet her fortune cannot buy her the one thing she craves -- the freedom to choose her own destiny. For Cora's mother has her heart on a title for her daughter, and in England -- where they are bound, to find Cora a husband. When Cora loses her heart to a man she barely knows, she soon realises that she is playing a game she does not fully understand -- and that her future happiness is the prize.
Red Leaves (Otto Penzler Book Ser.)
by Thomas H. CookThe babysitter was the last person to see 8-year-old Amy before she disappeared. The babysitter is your 15-year-old son. He says he doesn't know what happened. Do you absolutely trust him?
The Garden Party
by Sarah ChallisThe perfect family celebration requires the perfect family... Alice Dunlop knows the best things in life are free. But the approach of her 40 th wedding anniversary and 60 th birthday surely warrants a proper celebration. With visions of a glorious family gathering complete with a marquee, champagne and beautiful sunshine, Alice has big plans for the big day. Her husband David isn’t so enthused. He seems to have lost his lust for life since retiring from his job. And he’s not the only one who isn’t in the mood to celebrate. Each of Alice and David’s four grown-up children has their own problems to contend with and things aren’t going as smoothly as any of them had hoped. As Alice focuses on preparations for the party, her family begins to unravel around her. Even her husband’s sudden rise from apathy isn’t as great a blessing as it first appears. It’s only a matter of time before Alice ’s special day is at risk of disaster...
A Little Folly
by Jude MorganA witty and romantic novel of Regency love, family and appalling scandal, from one of our greatest historical novelists. Sir Clement Carnell was the most domineering and strait-laced of fathers, and his death has left his children Louisa and Valentine with a sense of release. While Valentine throws open the Devonshire estate of Pennacombe to their fashionable cousins from London, Louisa feels free at last to reject the man her father chose as her prospective husband - Pearce Lynley. Soon the temptations of Regency London beckon - including Lady Harriet Eversholt, beautiful, scandalous, and very married, with whom Valentine becomes dangerously involved; while Louisa finds that freedom of choice is as daunting as it is exciting. Will the opportunity to indulge, at last, in a little folly lead to fulfillment - or disaster?
Loving Little Egypt: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)
by Thomas McMahonIn the early 1920s, nearly blind physics prodigy Mourly Vold finds out how to tap into the nation's long distance telephone lines. With the help of Alexander Graham Bell, Vold tries to warn the phone companies that would-be saboteurs could do the same thing, but they ignore him. Unfortunately, his taps do catch the notice of William Randolph Hearst, who hires Thomas Edison to get to the bottom of them—and the chase is on!
The Gardener
by Prue LeithAfter a divorce and a great deal of soul-searching, Lotte has abandoned her successful career as an architect for a degree in garden history, and uprooted her three children to take a job as head gardener to millionaire Brody Keegan at Maddon Park in Oxfordshire. Brody is as ignorant about gardens as Lotte is knowledgeable, his tastes as loud as hers are quiet. As Lotte locks horns with her boss and his spoilt young wife, she finds herself on an emotional roller coaster. She knows what is right for the garden, but - still raw from divorce, anxious about the children and frightened of entanglement - she is less sure of what is right for her.
The Birthday
by Julie HighmoreIt's easy to make mistakes. The hard part is keeping them hidden.Emily spends a few precious hours with her lover, then picks up her children and returns to normal married life. Her brother Ben's career has crashed with the banks, and suddenly he has nowhere to go. But they must both put on a brave face for their mother's sixtieth birthday.Fran doesn't feel old. Mostly, she's worried about her increasingly depressed husband Duncan, and his slightly odd behaviour. Why did he think they'd been to Florence? Who is Alexa? And she doesn't really want a fuss over her birthday, but her daughter insists they must celebrate. Holding tight to their own secrets, the family gathers around Fran, but as one small revelation follows another, no one can foresee the huge repercussions of this birthday.
Gallery Girl
by Wendy HoldenAlice loves art, but her gallery-owner boss Angelica is interested only in money. Alice also loves her boyfriend, but he's interested only in his career. Bad boy billionaire artist Zeb is interested in Alice, but then he's mainly interested in sex. Meanwhile, shy-but-brilliant painter Dan scrapes a living holding village-hall drawing classes. When bored rock wife Siobhan joins one, things get colourful. Will life for any of them be picture perfect? Or will they all make exhibitions of themselves?
I Love the 80s
by Megan CraneJenna Jenkins was getting married to her long-term boyfriend, Adam, and she was sure her life was all coming together. Until Adam left her for a twenty-three-year-old yoga instructor. To ease the pain, Jenna threw herself into her teenage memories of the late, great Tommy Seer, killed when his car crashed off a bridge in 1987, when she was just twelve, and focusing on the man who has been - and always will be - the true love of her life, however worrying that may seem to her best friend, Aimee. One day, working late, or thinking about Tommy at her office after dark, a freak accident sends Jenna back to 1987. It's a few short months before Tommy will die and Jenna's job is apparently working as his assistant. But Tommy is not the guy she imagined. He's mean and rude and obnoxious. But he is still deliciously good-looking. When Tommy takes her into his confidence, she starts to see the real him beneath the image and finds herself more in love than ever. He suspects someone is trying to kill him - and she knows it won't be long before they succeed. Why is she here? Is she meant to save his life? But how can she without revealing the bizarre, unbelievable truth?
Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in The Merchant of Venice
by Janet AdelmanIn Blood Relations, Janet Adelman confronts her resistance to The Merchant of Venice as both a critic and a Jew. With her distinctive psychological acumen, she argues that Shakespeare’s play frames the uneasy relationship between Christian and Jew specifically in familial terms in order to recapitulate the vexed familial relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Adelman locates the promise—or threat—of Jewish conversion as a particular site of tension in the play. Drawing on a variety of cultural materials, she demonstrates that, despite the triumph of its Christians, The Merchant of Venice reflects Christian anxiety and guilt about its simultaneous dependence on and disavowal of Judaism. In this startling psycho-theological analysis, both the insistence that Shylock’s daughter Jessica remain racially bound to her father after her conversion and the depiction of Shylock as a bloody-minded monster are understood as antidotes to Christian uneasiness about a Judaism it can neither own nor disown. In taking seriously the religious discourse of The Merchant of Venice, Adelman offers in Blood Relations an indispensable book on the play and on the fascinating question of Jews and Judaism in Renaissance England and beyond.
The Other Side of the Stars
by Clemency Burton-HillAn unforgettable story of a young woman striving to find herself amidst the glitz and glamour of the film world.Actress Lara Latner is enjoying a golden summer - her new play is the toast of London's West End, and she and her boyfriend Alex are setting up their first home together. But when her agent calls with an extraordinary opportunity - her potential break into Hollywood - she is plunged into turmoil. For the part, the lead in an American remake of a classic French film, is the role that made her mother, tragic actress Eve Lacloche, a legend. Lara does not know what to do. How can she bear to leave Alex, and their precious home for the months of the shoot? How can she ever hope to measure up to Eve's luminous performance? But perhaps it is only by stepping into her mother's shadow that Lara can hope to truly understand her, and to lay the past to rest.
The More You Ignore Me: A Novel
by Jo BrandTHE MORE YOU IGNORE ME IS NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING SHERIDAN SMITH, SHEILA HANCOCK, RICKY TOMLINSON AND ELLA HUNT. Jo Brand's life-affirming novel The More You Ignore Me addresses mental health issues and their impact on a family in an honest, hilarious and heartwarming way. For Alice, the big bad monster wasn't green and hiding under the bed, it sat in the kitchen saying 'bollocks' a lot. Prone to psychotic episodes, or 'on the road to bonkersville' as Alice's dad would say, Alice's mum Gina isn't easy to live with. Her unpredictable outbursts make life in their Hereford cottage eventful. As 'family' means a mentally ill mother, a hippy father and grandparents who enjoy a drink or five, Alice needs someone to help her through. Unfortunately, Alice's special someone is Morrissey of The Smiths, and the closest she's got to him so far is watching him on Top of the Pops. But that could all be about to change . . .Praise for Jo Brand's The More You Ignore Me:'A sweet, touching, tender novel' Independent'The book is littered with endearing characters . . . The last line moved me to tears' Daily Express'The most enjoyable piece of fiction I have had the pleasure of reading this year . . . Superb stuff' Now
Wicked Pleasures
by Penny VincenziAll families have secrets. In Sunday Times bestseller Penny Vincenzi's WICKED PLEASURES lies a family secret that will tear it apart. 'Penny Vincenzi is the doyenne of the modern blockbuster' Glamour. Perfect for readers of Jilly Cooper, Elizabeth Buchan, Harriet Evan's THE BUTTERFLY SUMMER.Sexy, glamorous and fun, WICKED PLEASURES is the story of a brother and two sisters who find out that they all have different fathers: none of them Alexander, Earl of Catherham, who was married to their mother for almost twenty years. It is the story of the power and the greed of the mega-rich, as the great family banking business upon which fortunes are won and lost comes to the brink of ruin, and family ties are tested to the utmost.
War Story (Sven Hassel War Classics)
by Derek RobinsonFresh from school in June 1916, Lieutenant Oliver Paxton's first solo flight is to lead a formation of biplanes across the Channel to join Hornet Squadron in France. Five days later, he crash-lands at his destination, having lost his map, his ballast and every single plane in his charge. To his C.O. he's an idiot, to everyone else - especially the tormenting Australian who shares his billet - a pompous bastard. This is 1916, the year of the Somme, giving Paxton precious little time to grow from innocent to veteran.
For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature
Fiction created by and for the working class emerged worldwide in the early twentieth century as a response to rapid modernization, dramatic inequality, and imperial expansion. In Japan, literary youth, men and women, sought to turn their imaginations and craft to tackling the ensuing injustices, with results that captured both middle-class and worker-farmer readers. This anthology is a landmark introduction to Japanese proletarian literature from that period. Contextualized by introductory essays, forty expertly translated stories touch on topics like perilous factories, predatory bosses, ethnic discrimination, and the myriad indignities of poverty. Together, they show how even intensely personal issues form a pattern of oppression. Fostering labor consciousness as part of an international leftist arts movement, these writers, lovers of literature, were also challenging the institution of modern literature itself. This anthology demonstrates the vitality of the “red decade” long buried in modern Japanese literary history.
Pitch of Poetry
by Charles BernsteinPraised in recent years as a “calculating, improvisatory, essential poet” by Daisy Fried in the New York Times, Charles Bernstein is a leading voice in American literary theory. Pitch of Poetry is his irreverent guide to modernist and contemporary poetics. Subjects range across Holocaust representation, Occupy Wall Street, and the figurative nature of abstract art. Detailed overviews of formally inventive work include essays on—or “pitches” for—a set of key poets, from Gertrude Stein and Robert Creeley to John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Larry Eigner, and Leslie Scalapino. Bernstein also reveals the formative ideas behind the magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. The final section, published here for the first time, is a sweeping work on the poetics of stigma, perversity, and disability that is rooted in the thinking of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Blake. Pitch of Poetry makes an exhilarating case for what Bernstein calls echopoetics: a poetry of call and response, reason and imagination, disfiguration and refiguration.
Baggage: An unputdownable thriller about digging up the past (Ulverscroft Large Print Ser.)
by Emily BarrToo much to take? Just leave it all behind... British travel writer and novelist Emily Barr transports readers to the Australian outback in Baggage, an unputdownable thriller about leaving it all behind. Perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lisa Jewell. 'Mixing girly infighting with insightful travellers' observations and the joys of motherhood, Barr certainly knows how to spin a yarn' - Guardian At eighteen, your closest friend commits suicide. At twenty-nine, you're backpacking in the Australian outback when you see her. She has a husband. She has a ten-year-old son. She has a baby on the way. She claims to be someone else. But you'd recognise her anywhere. Back in England you tell your journalist boyfriend. While he never knew her, he always knew of her - her name is Daisy Fraser and she was awaiting trial over the deaths of four people when she jumped off the Severn Bridge. He thinks: This could be the scoop of the century. He says: Happy Christmas - I'm taking you to Australia to find Daisy.What readers are saying about Baggage:'Gripping from start to finish and oh-so-credible' 'Truly brilliant read and one I couldn't put down' 'Another cracking novel with clever writing and fab characters... I was reading way into the night!'
The Movie: Career Girls, The Movie, Tall Poppies
by Louise BagshaweEleanor Marshall, Roxana Felix and Megan Silver are from very different worlds. But they all have something the other could use. Eleanor Marshall, just made president of Artemis studios, is one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. When she’s offered the chance to make a movie with two sure-fire stars, one of them queen-of-the-catwalk Roxanna Felix, she knows it’s an opportunity too good to miss. Roxana may be a model rather than an actress, known for her devastating beauty and acid tongue, but she has the on-screen magnetism Eleanor needs. And when Megan Silver, waitress and struggling writer, appears with a dynamite script, it looks like they have all the ingredients for a runaway success…
Fire and Sword: (Revolution 3) (The Wellington and Napoleon Quartet)
by Simon ScarrowFIRE AND SWORD is the unputdownable third novel in Simon Scarrow's bestselling Wellington and Napoleon Quartet. A must read for fans of Robert Harris.1804. Napoleon Bonaparte is Emperor of France, his ultimate aim: to rule Europe. After defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar, he wins a glorious victory against Austria at Austerlitz. He then deposes the Spanish king and places his own brother on the throne. But he is yet to triumph over his most hated enemy: Great Britain.Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) throws himself into the British campaign in Europe. After glory in Portugal, he commands the army in a series of triumphant battles across Spain. For those living reluctantly under French rule, his victories suggest that Napoleon's progress is not inexorable: freedom can be restored...
Phantoms of Breslau: An Eberhard Mock Investigation
by Marek KrajewskiBreslau, 1919: the hideously battered, naked bodies of four sailors are discovered on an island in the River Oder. As he pieces together the elements of this brutal crime, Criminal Assistant Mock combs the brothels and drinking dens of Breslau and is drawn into an insidious game: it seems that anyone he questions during the course of the investigation is destined to become the next victim. At the same time, he is haunted by appalling nightmares; only nights spent drinking and carousing can keep his demons at bay.Dark, sophisticated and uncompromising, the distinctive Breslau series has already received broad critical acclaim. Phantoms of Breslau confirms Eberhard Mock as the most outrageous and original detective in crime fiction.
The Medieval Invention of Travel
by Shayne Aaron LegassieOver the course of the Middle Ages, the economies of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa became more closely integrated, fostering the international and intercontinental journeys of merchants, pilgrims, diplomats, missionaries, and adventurers. During a time in history when travel was often difficult, expensive, and fraught with danger, these wayfarers composed accounts of their experiences in unprecedented numbers and transformed traditional conceptions of human mobility. Exploring this phenomenon, The Medieval Invention of Travel draws on an impressive array of sources to develop original readings of canonical figures such as Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Petrarch, as well as a host of lesser-known travel writers. As Shayne Aaron Legassie demonstrates, the Middle Ages inherited a Greco-Roman model of heroic travel, which viewed the ideal journey as a triumph over temptation and bodily travail. Medieval travel writers revolutionized this ancient paradigm by incorporating practices of reading and writing into the ascetic regime of the heroic voyager, fashioning a bold new conception of travel that would endure into modern times. Engaging methods and insights from a range of disciplines, The Medieval Invention of Travel offers a comprehensive account of how medieval travel writers and their audiences reshaped the intellectual and material culture of Europe for centuries to come.
Signal Red: Empire Of Sand, Death On The Ice, And Signal Red (The\great British Heroes And Antiheroes Trilogy Ser. #3)
by Robert RyanThe inspiration behind BBC One's thrilling new drama, The Great Train Robbery.Sunday Times bestseller Robert Ryan brings the most ambitious heist of the twentieth century to gripping and vivid life.1963: an unarmed gang led by the dapper Bruce Reynolds holds up a Royal Mail train at a remote bridge in Buckinghamshire, escaping with millions. The group lay low in a nearby farm but, panicked by the police closing in they clear out, leaving behind numerous fingerprints. Outraged by the gang's audacity and under political pressure for quick arrests, the police move into top gear. As huge quantities of money start to turn up in forests and phone boxes, dumped by nervous middlemen, Scotland Yard begin to track down the robbers, one by one...
Monday's Child
by Louise BagshaweAccording to the old rhyme, ‘Monday’s child is fair of face’ - but life isn’t always so simple. Gorgeous goddesses seem to surround script-reader and wannabe movie-maker Anna Brown - from her deranged glamour-queen boss to her perfect, pouting flat-mates - for Anna, being less-than-beautiful is very hard to bear. In fashion-and-beauty-crazed London, perhaps being talented just isn’t enough. Enter Mark Swan, Britain's hottest director. Rugged, reclusive and powerful, he could be Anna's ticket to the top, but how can she ever hope to snag such a big star? Fed up of being downbeat and dowdy, Anna decides to chase her dreams and, with a little help from her friends, embarks on a madcap scheme to get just what she’s after...