But until then she bides her time and lives quietly, her every move ruled over by an uncaring, heartless stepmother.The hope for freedom is all she has to hold onto. So close she can almost taste it. But when her stepmother’s estranged younger brother comes to stay, he presents a mystery that lures her in.The girl doesn’t understand that beneath the allure of the unknown sometimes all we find are horrors. And in searching for the truth, her heart is in danger of falling like a rock to the bottom of the deep dark sea. Beyond the Sea is a Gothic Romance set in modern times.

    But his wife, Fanny, has no desire to share their newly inherited estate with Belle Dashwood's daughters. When she descends upon Norland Park with her Romanian nanny and her mood boards, the three Dashwood girls—Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret—are suddenly faced with the cruelties of life without their father, their home, or their money.As they come to terms with life without the status of their country house, the protection of the family name, or the comfort of an inheritance, Elinor and Marianne are confronted by the cold hard reality of a world where people's attitudes can change as drastically as their circumstances.With her sparkling wit, Joanna Trollope casts a clever, satirical eye on the tales of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Re-imagining Sense and Sensibility in a fresh, modern new light, she spins the novel's romance, bonnets, and betrothals into a wonderfully witty coming-of-age story about the stuff that really makes the world go around. For when it comes to money, some things never change. . . .

    A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.

    They are attractive, rich and successful. Then Octavia discovers Tom is having an affair, and both the discovery and the affair itself have consequences that are potentially fatal. For this is no ordinary affair, but one that leads to terror and danger, and threatens to damage people's lives for ever.

    Amarrah volunteers to brave what no one has before—to end the threat or die trying.The Beast of Bitterburn has lost all hope.One way or another, Njål has been a prisoner for his entire life. Monstrous evil has left him trapped and lonely, and he believes that will never change. There is only darkness in his endless exile, never light. Never warmth. Until she arrives.It's a tale as old as time... where Beauty goes to confront the Beast and falls in love instead.

    But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty ... and what curses accompanied Cinderella's looks?Set against the backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household -- and the treacherous truth of her former life.

    In this new series, you will meet Richard Storm and his five children, and the circumstances that ripped him away from his brothers, Joseph and George Anderson. See how they finally meet. The bonds of an Anderson bloodline are too strong to keep their family apart forever.Richard Storm is saddened that his children are throwing away their lives, and offers them an ultimatum. They have two years to take a failing business and make it a success or they lose their trust funds, and are on their own. His stubborn children think he’s gone insane, but they don’t know the powerful secret that can knock them to their knees and tear their family apart. Will they come together as they should, or will self-centeredness consume their hearts, ripping their family apart forever?Crew Storm opens an exclusive resort in the Catalina Islands off the coast of California, and pride swells within him as he accomplishes the impossible. Everything is going on track until a blonde steps into his life and asks him to teach her how to be the perfect seductress.Haley Sutherland is done with her fears, done being a wallflower and done being invisible. She comes up with a brilliant idea to find the perfect person to teach her how to seduce the man she truly wants. Though, the person she’s chosen to be her teacher is Crew Storm, soon she finds she’s forgetting her first love’s name.This story will take you on a journey through the heart as Crew teaches Haley more than she ever imagined, and finds himself gaining more than he thought he needed.Reunite with the Andersons as they discover new relatives and meet this new branch in the Anderson line. Will love truly conquer all, or will stubbornness make them lose everything they never knew they had.

    A sign that she should get serious with her soccer-captain boyfriend. A sign that she’ll get the grades to make it into an Ivy-league school. One sign she didn’t expect to look for was: “Will I survive cancer?” It’s a question her friends would never understand, prompting Mia to keep her illness a secret. The only one who knows is her lifelong best friend, Gyver, who is poised to be so much more. Mia is determined to survive, but when you have so much going your way, there is so much more to lose. From debut author Tiffany Schmidt comes a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting story of one girl’s search for signs of life in the face of death.

    ERIK survives and is removed from the Paris Opera House by forces beyond his control. He finds a new residence, new friends and a new love who will accept him as he is. This story takes place Epernay, France with an all new set of charactors. It is the sequel to Leroux's book, not the play, and begins where the book left off. If you are an ERIK fan, you will enjoy this sequel. The Phantom LIVES as ERIK!

    Now, with him in jail, she’s ready to start fresh in Dallas as a housekeeper for Rowan Masters—a well known lawyer and recluse.A car accident left Rowan Masters burned—both physically and emotionally. He’s spent the last twelve years hiding in his family home—and now, to keep his home he’s forced to marry.Isabeau loves the feeling of safety that Rowan’s mansion offers, and he needs a wife. When a marriage of convenience turns into something more, can they leave behind the nightmare of the past and find the beauty in loving each other?

    But someone is sending Emily mysterious missives about Hugh Morton's past and she discovers a buried story that simply has to be told…One winter's day in 1948, nineteen year old Isabel Barber arrives at her Aunt Penelope's house in Earl's Court having run away from home to follow her star. A chance meeting with an East European refugee poet leads to a job with his publisher, McKinnon & Holt, and a fascinating career beckons. But when she develops a close editorial relationship with charismatic young debut novelist Hugh Morton and the professional becomes passionately personal, not only are all her plans put to flight, but she finds herself in a struggle for her very survival.Rachel Hore's intriguing and suspenseful new novel magnificently evokes the milieux of London publishing past and present and connects the very different worlds of two young women, Emily and Isabel, who through their individual quests for truth, love and happiness become inextricably linked.

    Hetty doesn't mind; at least she can be miserable in private. But 'private' is a relative term in a village which revolves around the big house. Particularly when you are expected to thwart Great Uncle Samuel's awful heir, and his nefarious plans for his inheritance.Pitchforked into the community's fight to save the manor, Hetty has no time to wallow. And once she has shared her troubles with one neighbour (Caroline: a very understanding shoulder, despite her glamorous appearance and impossibly long legs), and cast an appreciative eye over another (Peter: equally long-legged, but offering rather more practical help), she wonders if her heart is irretrievably broken after all...

    She listens but never talks about herself. She’s friendly but doesn’t have many real friends. She’s become good at keeping people at a distance ever since she left home at eighteen and never looked back.But when Violet is forced to return home to care for her estranged mother Glenys, she quickly finds out that life as a carer isn’t easy. Feeling overwhelmed, she’s forced to turn to the other local carers, including childhood friend Adam, for help. Although returning home still feels like a mistake, maybe it will help Violet right some wrongs. After all, she can’t keep running from her past forever, and in learning to look after others, perhaps Violet can start to finally love herself.

    Eight years ago, she left the land that nine generations of gifted healers had tended, determined to distance herself from the whispers about her family’s strange legacy. But when her beloved grandmother Althea dies, Lizzy must return and face the tragedy still hanging over the farm’s withered lavender fields: the unsolved murders of two young girls, and the cruel accusations that followed Althea to her grave.Lizzy wants nothing more than to sell the farm and return to her life in New York, until she discovers a journal Althea left for her—a Book of Remembrances meant to help Lizzy embrace her own special gifts. When she reconnects with Andrew Greyson, one of the few in town who believed in Althea’s innocence, she resolves to clear her grandmother’s name.But to do so, she’ll have to decide if she can accept her legacy and whether to follow in the footsteps of all the Moon women who came before her.

    Until Isobel MacLeod - caught in his steely embrace one fateful night - shatters his world with her Scottish temper, her pride, and her courage.Isobel, by her own admission a woman of too much brain and too little beauty, is a spinster devoted to keeping her wayward family out of trouble. To Nathan, however, she is beauty, hope, and salvation in one tempestuous package, and he is not above blackmail to coerce her into his world.Shaken by Nathan's raw passion and fierce determination, Isobel's own defenses and stubborn pride begin to crumble. But can she trust this enigmatic man enough to give him what he wants most dearly of all . . . her love?