Her new neighbour Trixie is eighty-four years old and a hymn-singing Salvation Army veteran. Trixie's life is one of apparent calm but beneath the surface lie not one but three different personalities. One of them is very private. And very dangerous.

    M. “Mimi” Banning has been holed up in her Bel Air mansion for years, but now she’s writing her first book in decades and to ensure timely completion her publisher sends an assistant to monitor her progress. Mimi reluctantly complies—with a few stipulations: No Ivy Leaguers or English majors. Must drive, cook, tidy. Computer whiz. Good with kids. Quiet, discreet, sane.When Alice Whitley arrives at the Banning mansion, she’s put to work right away—as a full-time companion to Frank, the writer’s eccentric nine-year-old, a boy with the wit of Noël Coward, the wardrobe of a 1930s movie star, and very little in common with his fellow fourth graders.As she gets to know Frank, Alice becomes consumed with finding out who his father is, how his gorgeous “piano teacher and itinerant male role model” Xander fits into the Banning family equation—and whether Mimi will ever finish that book.Full of heart and countless only-in-Hollywood moments, Be Frank With Me is a captivating and heartwarming story of an unusual mother and son, and the intrepid young woman who finds herself irresistibly pulled into their unforgettable world.

    Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects—the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidentally left behind—and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life’s mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.Recovering from a bad divorce, Laura, in some ways, is one of Anthony’s lost things. But when the lonely woman moves into his mansion, her life begins to change. She finds a new friend in the neighbor’s quirky daughter, Sunshine, and a welcome distraction in Freddy, the rugged gardener. As the dark cloud engulfing her lifts, Laura, accompanied by her new companions, sets out to realize Anthony’s last wish: reuniting his cherished lost objects with their owners.Long ago, Eunice found a trinket on the London pavement and kept it through the years. Now, with her own end drawing near, she has lost something precious—a tragic twist of fate that forces her to break a promise she once made.As the Keeper of Lost Objects, Laura holds the key to Anthony and Eunice’s redemption. But can she unlock the past and make the connections that will lay their spirits to rest?Full of character, wit, and wisdom, The Keeper of Lost Things is heartwarming tale that will enchant fans of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Garden Spells, Mrs Queen Takes the Train, and The Silver Linings Playbook.

    From the award-winning author of The Golden Mean.Saskia and Jenny are twins who are alike only in appearance. Saskia is a hard-working grad student whose interests are solely academic, while Jenny, an interior designer, is glamourous, thrill-seeking, capricious and narcissistic. Still, when Jenny is severely injured in an accident, Saskia puts her life on hold to be with her sister.Sara and Mattie are sisters with a difficult relationship. Mattie, the younger sister, is affectionate, curious and intellectually disabled. As soon as Sara is able, she leaves home, in pursuit of a life of the mind and the body: she loves nothing more than fine wines, sensual perfumes, and expensive clothing. But when their mother dies, Sara inherits the duty of caring for her sister. Arriving at the house one day, she finds out that Mattie has married Robert, her wealthy mother's handyman. Though Mattie seems happy, Sara cannot let this go, forcing the annulment of the marriage and the banishment of Robert. With him out of the picture, though, she has no choice but to become her sister's keeper, sacrificing her own happiness and Mattie's too. When Robert turns up again, another tragedy happens. The waves from these events eventually engulf Sara and Saskia, sisters in mourning, in a quest for revenge.Consent is a startling, moving, thought-provoking novel on the complexities of familial duty and on how love can become entangled with guilt, resentment and regret.

    Halpern’s novel is an unforgettable tale of family...the kind you come from and the kind you create.People are drawn to libraries for all kinds of reasons. Most come for the books themselves, of course; some come to borrow companionship. For head librarian Kit, the public library in Riverton, New Hampshire, offers what she craves most: peace. Here, no one expects Kit to talk about the calamitous events that catapulted her out of what she thought was a settled, suburban life. She can simply submerge herself in her beloved books and try to forget her problems.But that changes when fifteen-year-old, home-schooled Sunny gets arrested for shoplifting a dictionary. The judge throws the book at Sunny—literally—assigning her to do community service at the library for the summer. Bright, curious, and eager to connect with someone other than her off-the-grid hippie parents, Sunny coaxes Kit out of her self-imposed isolation. They’re joined by Rusty, a Wall Street high-flyer suddenly crashed to earth.   In this little library that has become the heart of this small town, Kit, Sunny, and Rusty are drawn to each other, and to a cast of other offbeat regulars. As they come to terms with how their lives have unraveled, they also discover how they might knit them together again and finally reclaim their stories.

    Pert, pithy and very New York. Full of the admirable offhand observations of an unfooled eye." Jill Neville, The London Times Literary Supplement"(Daughters is) engrossing . . . the story Baehr tells touches so deeply one is tempted to reread every page." - Chicago Tribune (Best Friends is) a pleasure to read . . . fascinating, extraordinary women…I wished they were my best friends.” Susan Isaacs, author of Compromising Positions, Shining Through“Consuelo Saah Baehr is a very talented writer. She keeps you turning the pages, heart thumping, to see what will happen next.” Rona Jaffe, author of The Best of Everything, Class ReunionProduct Description100 Open Houses is about real estate and life. It’s about the whispers from the soul hole that we barely hear. Rebecca Haas, like all of us, is being tortured to death by the sameness of her life, her thoughts, her weight, the incessant self review of life choices, her indecision, her stalled writing career. Can a change of space really change her life and finally give her the authenticity she needs? Take this trip with Rebecca through all of the open houses and the lives lived in them – is one of them yours?An excerpt from 100 Open HousesWhispers from the soul holeYou’re going along thinking everything is okay. You’re not noticeably dying or anything and even though your hair was thinning, suddenly for no reason, it stabilizes – even begins to get thicker – and you think, huh, some new kind of ‘fresh hell’ hormones must be kicking in but I’ll take it. Still every morning, in the quiet few minutes when you swing your legs out of bed and decide to get up, this voice whispers from the old brain hole or maybe it’s the soul hole and it says: Wait! If you were in an Ingmar Bergman movie and Death came and played chess with you, Death would win because you are not really living the best life you can.All through last fall and early winter I had that thought in my pocket. Maybe it accounted for a new addiction to read real estate news. Maybe I thought a change of residence would do the trick Real estate is the new drug and it’s better than crack because it only costs the price of the Sunday paper and not even that if you read it on line. But also, you can go into any Open House and see apartments and houses where you would never be invited. You can look in the medicine cabinet and in the closets and pretty much look at any damn thing you want. Then, you can say, “No thanks.”The New York Times just put out an entire magazine devoted to real estate. It’s called Key and on the cover is a stylized picture of a key with red lines radiating from it that look like the vein and capillary system inside your body. Maybe that’s the subliminal message they are trying to send: that Real Estate is the substance of your life.When I read Key magazine, I feel as if all the information has segregated me and shut me out. One of the articles tells you how much house one and a half million dollars can buy today. If you want to move to Szigetkoz, Hungary (no, I didn’t misspell it) you get a 30-acre, ten-bedroom castle. In New York City, you get a one-bedroom apartment with lava-stone kitchen countertops and the noise of the West Side Highway at your doorstep.That’s what I was going to have to do to save my life – move from my coveted idyllic village and find myself some Real Estate in New York City. I didn’t have a million dollars. I was going to have to really HUNT for a match like the innocent people in the New York Times they profile in The Hunt.

    He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list… hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.

    It’s just another day filled with chores—until her best friend Mattie arrives to help. Somehow, boredom transforms into fun and games whenever the girls are together. The innocent fun comes to an end when Billy Marquardt and his gang of friends interrupts. Katie is no prude, but she knows better than to associate with the older English boys, especially since they’re known troublemakers. Mattie has no such compunction. Thumbing her nose at the Ordnung and all of the Amish rules, she disappears into the old barn with Billy.Moments later, the Zimmerman’s barn is consumed by fire. Katie suspects Billy had something to do with the blaze, but he denies it. When the facts don’t add up, Katie begins her own investigation—and she doesn’t like what she finds. Will her friendship with Mattie survive the truth?

    However, after a painful divorce, she decides it's time to lay low for a while in her charming San Francisco apartment with her beautiful Abyssinian cat, Cleo.Everything would be wonderful, except for her utterly impossible neighbor Jack Walker. When he's not arguing day and night with his girlfriend, begging her to move in with him, he's chasing down his cat named Dog, who seems determined to get Cleo to succumb to his feline advances.Then Lacey discovers the awful truth - Cleo is in the family way and Dog's to blame. She's furious that neither Jack nor his amorous animal seem too upset about the situation.But Lacey learns that things are not quite as they seem. Jack's "girlfriend" is really his sister and his intentions toward Lacey are very honorable. And though she's not quite sure about Dog, Lacey begins to discover the tender joy of falling in love all over again.

    When Tami finds out who Scott’s accuser is, we can only watch as her whole life starts to fall apart. We see many of the events of The Rose Petal Beach through Tami’s eyes, but Beside The Rose Petal Beach will give you another perspective on the story. You’ll see how one of the minor - but important - characters in the book experiences some of the key scenes … And how he is slowly being changed by spending time with the Tami and the others.You don’t need to have already read The Rose Petal Beach to enjoy Beside The Rose Petal Beach, but if you have, it’ll hopefully add another dimension to your understanding of the book.

    It ends with a promise. On her deathbed Frances extracts it from her three daughters—the utterly capable homemaker Alice; the recalcitrant Allegra, a recovering alcoholic; and bohemian Edie, who shrinks in the face of any commitment: their promise to “look after Libba.” As if the formidable, tough-minded Libba Charles, author of ten books, a literary celebrity, needed looking after. Yet when they are summoned by Libba to Creek Cabin, their mother’s summer hideaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, they go. None of them is prepared, though, for what they will discover there—about their mother, about Libba, about themselves—in this poignant, adroit rendering of reunions and farewells.

    He is a former MP, unseated by the expenses scandal, who is now spending time abroad to recover from a major illness. The other purpose of his stay is to write his memoirs in order to demonstrate that he was unfairly pilloried for 'a minor accounting error', having valiantly served his country for 30 years. He settles into his new surroundings but soon it becomes clear that all is not as it seems. For a start Bobby seems to have no memory of the immediate past. Each time he sits down to continue his memoirs he finds only a blank page. Every morning as he comes downstairs the same scene replays itself in front of him: a young woman and her son pass him on the stairs. And what has become of his wife?

    As she was taken from me I knew I might never see my daughter again. 38 years later… ‘You were adopted’. Three short words and Sabina’s life fractures. There would forever be a Before those words, and an After. Pregnant with her own child, Sabina can’t understand how a mother could abandon her daughter, or why her parents have kept the past a secret. Determined to find the woman who gave her away, what she discovers will change everything, not just for Sabina, but for the women who have loved her all these years. From the bestselling author of Me Without You comes another touching, beautifully told story about the pain of separation and the enduring strength of love.

    What’s worse is that every time she leaves the house, she winds up in some kind of altercation. She can’t help but wonder if she’s an idiot magnet, or if she’s the smart-mouth stirring things up. Hoping for a little peace of mind, Ace gives in to the advice of her best friend and goes to see a therapist. But she quickly discovers that the road to nirvana isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. And as Ace goes from one therapeutic misadventure to another, the plus-sized spitfire becomes more determined than ever to find enlightenment—even if it means bending herself into a pretzel to do it.

    So begins Girl, Edna O'Brien's harrowing portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram. Set in the deep countryside of northeast Nigeria, this is a brutal story of incarceration, horror, and hunger; a hair-raising escape into the manifold terrors of the forest; and a descent into the labyrinthine bureaucracy and hostility awaiting a victim who returns home with a child blighted by enemy blood.