The Christy Miller Books 5-8


Robin Jones Gunn - 1999
    This is a boxed set containing books 5-8 in this series: 5: Island Dreamer 6: A Heart Full of Hope 7: True Friends 8: Starry Night

The Butterfly Room


Lucinda Riley - 2019
    Still living in her beautiful family home, Admiral House, set in the glorious Suffolk countryside where she spent her own idyllic childhood catching butterflies with her beloved father, and raised her own children, Posy knows she must make an agonising decision. Despite the memories the house holds, and the exquisite garden she has spent twenty-five years creating, the house is crumbling around her, and Posy knows the time has come to sell it.Then a face appears from the past - Freddie, her first love, who abandoned her and left her heartbroken fifty years ago. Already struggling to cope with her son Sam’s inept business dealings, and the sudden reappearance of her younger son Nick after ten years in Australia, Posy is reluctant to trust in Freddie’s renewed affection. And unbeknown to Posy, Freddie - and Admiral House - have a devastating secret to reveal . . . Full of her trademark mix of unforgettable characters and heart-breaking secrets, The Butterfly Room is the new spellbinding, multi-generational story from Sunday Times bestseller Lucinda Riley.

Truths I Never Told You


Kelly Rimmer - 2020
    She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.

Lucky


Alice Sebold - 1999
    What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

A Hand Me Down Heart


Becki Willis - 2019
    Even as children, Hope was always the talented one and Grace the smart one. Hope received the attention, the boyfriends, and the beautiful clothes; Grace received the hand-me-downs. The leftovers never bothered Grace, until it came to one boy. Her sister went through boyfriends and their affections like she did her clothes, carelessly tossing one aside in favor of another. Often left to stall her sister’s adoring public, Cruz Colton was the one boy Grace never objected to entertaining. As their friendship grew and Grace found herself falling for the boy with the quiet sense of humor, she began to imagine he really came to see her, and not her sister. But one fateful night changed that perception, and she realized his was only a hand-me-down heart, after all. Long ago, Grace banished thoughts of Cruz from her mind, even if her heart was reluctant to let his memory go.Ten years later, their paths cross again. Grace is living her dream as a registered nurse, Hope is a brilliant concert violinist, and Cruz has a distinguished career in the military. Recently discharged from service, Cruz checks in at Texas General Hospital where Grace works. And just like that, Grace’s heart picks up where it left off.She tells herself she’s over him. These sparks between them are nothing but leftover embers from bridges burned, a decade past. The adult Cruz is a changed, hardened man. The shadows in his dark eyes speak of hidden secrets and the horrors of war. Is Grace strong enough to help him battle his inner demons? And with Hope back in town, can Grace stand up to her sister’s domineering presence? Grace may have been content in the shadows as a girl, but she’s a woman now, and she knows what she wants. It’s time to let her own light shine, because Cruz Colton’s is definitely a hand-me-down heart worth fighting for.From the best-selling author of Texas General Cozy Cases of Mystery, The Sisters, Texas Series, and Forgotten Boxes, don’t miss this first book in the series!

What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self


Ellyn Spragins - 2006
    "Your hair matters far, far less than you think," is the wry advice that begins the letter bestselling mystery writer Lisa Scottoline pens to her twenty-year old self. And Maya Angelou, leaving home at seventeen with a newborn baby in her arms, assures herself she will succeed on her own, even if she does return home every now and then.These remarkable women are joined by Madeleine Albright, Queen Noor of Jordan, Cokie Roberts, Naomi Wolf, Eileen Fisher, Jane Kaczmarek, Olympia Dukakis, Macy Gray, and many others. Their letters contain rare glimpses into the personal lives of extraordinary women and powerful wisdom that readers will treasure.Wisdom from What I Know Now"Don't let anybody raise you. You've been raised." -Maya Angelou"Try more things. Cross more lines." -Breena Clarke"Learn how to celebrate." -Olympia Dukakis"You don't have to be afraid of living alone." -Eileen Fisher"Please yourself first...everything else follows." -Macy Gray"Don't be so quick to dismiss another human being." -Barbara Boxer"Work should not be work." -Mary Matalin"You can leave the work world--and come back on your own terms." -Cokie Roberts"Laundry will wait very patiently." -Nora Roberts"Your hair matters far, far less than you think" -Lisa Scottoline"Speak the truth but ride a fast horse." -Kitty Kelley

To Capture What We Cannot Keep


Beatrice Colin - 2016
    But back on firm ground, their vastly different social strata become clear. Cait is a widow who because of her precarious financial situation is forced to chaperone two wealthy Scottish charges. Émile is expected to take on the bourgeois stability of his family's business and choose a suitable wife. As the Eiffel Tower rises, a marvel of steel and air and light, the subject of extreme controversy and a symbol of the future, Cait and Émile must decide what their love is worth. Seamlessly weaving historical detail and vivid invention, Beatrice Colin evokes the revolutionary time in which Cait and Émile live - one of corsets and secret trysts, duels and Bohemian independence, strict tradition and Impressionist experimentation. To Capture What We Cannot Keep, stylish, provocative, and shimmering, raises probing questions about a woman's place in that world, the overarching reach of class distinctions, and the sacrifices love requires of us all.

The Woman Before Wallis


Bryn Turnbull - 2020
    For Thelma, the daughter of an American diplomat, her new life as a member of the British aristocracy is like a fairy tale—even more so when her husband introduces her to Edward, Prince of Wales.In a twist of fate, her marriage to Duke leads her to fall headlong into a love affair with Edward. But happiness is fleeting, and their love is threatened when Thelma’s sister, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, becomes embroiled in a scandal with far-reaching implications. As Thelma sails to New York to support Gloria, she leaves Edward in the hands of her trusted friend Wallis, never imagining the consequences that will follow.Bryn Turnbull takes readers from the raucous glamour of the Paris Ritz and the French Riviera to the quiet, private corners of St. James’s Palace in this sweeping story of love, loyalty and betrayal.

A Disturbance in One Place


Binnie Kirshenbaum - 1994
    Rootless, bouncing from bed to bed, she knows she is pure of heart. If only she could find where her heart got lost. Irreverent and achingly honest, she points to the small but infinitely deep cracks in our masks, drawing the reader into her world of misadventure -- erotic, comic, and deeply unsettling. Juggling four men -- her husband, "the hit man," "the multimedia artist," and "the love of her life" -- she can't decide whether she is out to prove or disprove the Talmudic wisdom: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

Islands


Anne Rivers Siddons - 2003
    What she has never had is a real family. That changes when she meets and marries Lewis Aiken, an exuberant surgeon fifteen years older than Anny. When they marry, she finds her family—not a traditional one, but a group of Charleston childhood friends who are inseparable, who are one another's surrogate family. They are called the Scrubs, and they all, in some way, have the common cord of family.Instantly upon meeting them at the old beach house on Sullivan's Island, which they co-own, Anny knows that she has found home and family. They vow that, when the time comes, they will find a place where they can live together by the sea.Bad things begin to happen—a hurricane, a fire, deaths—but still the remaining Scrubs cling together. They are watched over and bolstered by Camilla Curry, the heart and core of their group, always the healer. Anny herself allows Camilla to enfold and to care for her. It is the first time she has felt this kind of love and support.

Heart and Soul


Maeve Binchy - 2008
    Her daughters Adi and Linda were no problem during the usually turbulent teens. Now Adi is always fighting for or against something: the environment or the whale or battery farming; while Linda lurches from one unsatisfactory relationship to the next. As if this wasn't enough, Clara, a senior cardiac specialist, has a new job to cope with - and now her ex-husband wants something from her...For Ania, meeting Clara Casey is a miracle. She never intended to leave Poland - but perhaps a new job in a new country will mend her broken heart? Declan is looking forward to joining the clinic - but what should have been a straightforward six-month posting brings him far more than he expected.Then there's Father Brian Flynn, whose life is turned upside down when his reputation is threatened; and the beautiful, cheerful nurse, Fiona, who can't leave her troubled past behind...

Back When We Were Grownups


Anne Tyler - 2001
    Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s?On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms.Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.

All I Want Is You


Martina Reilly - 2007
    Then overnight she loses it all – her home, gym membership, expensive car, regular trips to the beauty salon – because her husband’s business partner has disappeared with the company profits.As she attempts to rebuild her family, Poppy leaves Dublin for the suburbs. There she acquires a mother-in-law from hell, a father she hardly knows, a new job, a new friend, a better insight into parenting and a new life. Will it match up to the old one? Or might it just be better?

I Was Amelia Earhart


Jane Mendelsohn - 1996
    And she tells us about herself.There is her love affair with flying ("The sky is flesh") . . . .There are her memories of the past: her childhood desire to become a heroine ("Heroines did what they wanted") . . . her marriage to G.P. Putnam, who promoted her to fame, but was willing to gamble her life so that the book she was writing about her round-the-world flight would sell out before Christmas.There is the flight itself -- day after magnificent or perilous or exhilarating or terrifying day ("Noonan once said any fool could have seen I was risking my life but not living it").And there is, miraculously, an island ("We named it Heaven, as a kind of joke").And, most important, there is Noonan . . .

Harry: The Unauthorized Biography


Danny White - 2021
    From his childhood and his journey to fame on the X-Factor to releasing solo music and becoming fashion royalty, this book gets you closer to Harry than ever before. From the start of his career we follow the roller coaster of emotions as One Direction broke up, and we learn how Harry reinvented himself. Free from the shackles of being in a boyband he was able to be the rock star he had always dreamed of being and conquer the US by himself.Not content with being one of the world's biggest popstars, Harry has also cultivated a career as a film and television star, featuring in box-office hits like Dunkirk as well as presenting Saturday Night Live. He's also making a name for himself as fashion royalty – presenting the fashion event of the year, the Met Gala, with Serena Williams and Lady Gaga and regularly modelling for iconic brand Gucci. He has even partnered with the meditation app Calm to record a story designed to help listeners drift off. This is a book that gets you to the heart of a very modern pop star – a must read for all of Harry's fans.