DANGEROUS WATERS - Tragedy seems to follow Jeanne Le Page around . . . Can she really go through it again and survive? She is lucky to be alive … at sixteen Jeanne was almost killed in a boating accident which brought heart-breaking family tragedy. Now, fifteen years later, Jeanne returns reluctantly to the island of Guernsey following the death of her beloved grandmother. Struggling for breath as the ferry nears the island; she is overwhelmed by a dark foreboding as hazy memories of that terrible day resurface… Only returning to sell her inheritance - her grandmother’s old cottage - Jeanne has no intention of picking up her old life. But the cottage holds a secret, dating back to World War II and the German Occupation, and Jeanne becomes drawn into discovering more. Then, soon after her arrival, a chance meeting with an old teenage crush leads her to thoughts of love. Jeanne is forced to face her demons, reliving the tragedy as her lost memory returns. When the truth is finally revealed, her life is endangered for the second time… FINDING MOTHER - Three women. Three generations. Sacrifices for love… Who is she really? Nicole is about to find out as she searches for her real mother; the woman who gave her away at birth. With her marriage in tatters, she sets out from England: travelling to Spain, Jersey and Guernsey before the extraordinary story of her real family is finally revealed. Nicole becomes an unwitting catalyst for change in that family. Two women are forced to reveal long-buried secrets. One going back as far as the Second World War. Lives are transformed as choices have to be made and the past laid to rest… GUERNSEY RETREAT - Two violent deaths. Separated by time, but with a fatal connection… A man loses his father. A young woman loses her mother. Both in tragic circumstances that lead, when they meet, to surprising revelations from the past. Louisa needs to find the father she has never known, to warn him of possible danger - for them both. Her search takes her from England to Guernsey. Malcolm's journey is more complicated: conceived in Guernsey, his bereaved mother emigrates with him to Canada. Many years later he arrives in India, and from here he is led back to Guernsey to open a health centre at La Folie. This was his father's home and where he was killed at the start of the Second World War. At the heart of the two deaths lie stolen jewels. Valuable enough to kill for. Twice. Finding her father brings Louisa more than she bargains for, and her life is transformed, while Malcolm learns that life is, after all, for sharing… REVIEWS "I regard Anne Allen's Guernsey novels as an indulgent treat: they're seriously easy to read, with some great characters and a brilliant island location which is used to full advantage: you really feel as though you're there. Allen has a subtle insight into the dynamics of dysfunctional families - the ones with quirks in their history - and the independent people they give birth to." Bookbag "The island of Guernsey is so vividly evoked, one feels as if one is walking its byways. An atmospheric and tantalising read." -- Elizabeth Bailey, author of The Gilded Shroud. "A sensitive, heartfelt novel about family relationships, identity, adoption, second chances at love… With romance, weddings, boat trips, lovely gardens and more, Finding Mother is a dazzle of a book,

    But when he retires, his Irish-born wife, Mary, wants to leave America and go home -- where the ocean is near and the butter has flavor.Somewhat grudgingly, Lyle agrees, but during their years in Galway, they discover that the surprises of life are not over. Going home is more complicated than butter and the bay, and thirty content years does not mean that a couple is immune to romantic intrigue. In this new life, while Mary and Lyle are rediscovering each other and building a richer life together, an unexpected event forces Lyle to decide where his home truly is.Told in "quiet stories with emotions like old stepping-stones that have sunk beneath the surface" (Christian Science Monitor), Beth Lordan's evocative and heartfelt novel explores the complex emotional terrain of mature marital relationships.

    Instead, she's a teacher, a mum and wife to Julian, a very English husband. When disaster befalls her best friend, Karina feels forced to question the very foundations of her existence.

    Deasy quietly explores the ties that bind, and the evolution of a heart that everyone will recognize, and root for" -- Jane McCafferty, author of "One Heart" --- Ransom Seaborn is an astonishing literary debut in the spirit of Gatsby and Holden Caulfield.

    

    Lowri is pregnant, looking forward to a new life with her lover, Simon. But her plans are shattered. She finds herself alone, her face scarred, her future uncertain Her estranged husband, Jack, proposes they “settle” for each other, and raise Lowri’s unborn child on the Isle of Wight, in the idyllic village of Elmstone. Lowri is befriended by Carina, the beautiful Italian woman living in Elmstone Manor, and Heather, the popular local café proprietor. However, she soon discovers that no-one is the person they appear. What dark secrets is Heather hiding from her family and from the village? Why is Carina desperate for Lowri to fail in her new life and prepared to go to increasingly desperate lengths to destroy her? As she confronts her own insecurities, and faces another devastating loss, will Lowri find the courage to be proud of the person she is hiding behind the smile? Will she find true love amid the confusion and intrigue?

    The fall of Malaya and Singapore and the bombing of Darwin—what looked like the invasion of Australia—ebb and crash over a man’s long search to find a home and a woman’s determination to keep hers, connected by old memories and new betrayals. It is a thriller and a romance, a story of earth and water, air and metal—an unforgettable ride through the most precarious time in our region's recent history. Garry Disher writes: ‘Past the Headlands came from the same World War 2 research as The Stencil Man. I was struck by the power of two documents. The first was a letter written by a woman alone on a cattle station near Broome in 1942, at the time the Japanese were overrunning Malaya and Singapore and bombing areas of northern Australia. One day she found herself giving shelter to Dutch colonial officers and their families, who were fleeing Sumatra and Java ahead of the Japanese advance (many people like them lost their lives when Japanese planes shot up their waiting seaplanes in Broome Harbour in March, 1942). This woman stuck in my head (the isolation, the danger, the efforts to communicate, her bravery, etc). The second document was a war diary written by an Australian army surgeon who escaped Singapore ahead of the Japanese and was stuck in Sumatra, trying to get out. Here he treated many of the civilians (and Australian Army deserters) fleeing from Singapore. He was captured by the Japanese, but survived the war. But his last few diary entries detail how he and a mate were waiting for a plane or a ship to take them out, then one day he wrote, “Davis [his mate] left last night without telling me”. So much for mateship. I spent years trying to find my way into their stories. At one stage I spent a year writing 40,000 words before realising it wouldn’t work. I put it aside, then realised one subplot didn’t belong, so extracted it and turned it into a separate novel The Divine Wind, which has sold 100,000 copies around the world, won a major award and been published as both a young adult and a general market novel. But cutting it out like that freed me up to write about the woman and the man betrayed by his mate, in Past the Headlands.’

    In this intriguing novel full of drama and plot twists, one family tries to hold on to their “perfect” life before their secrets, lies, and scandals are exposed.On the outside, the Joneses seem like the ideal family: Royce Jones, a funeral home mogul, and his wife, Lexi, are parents to Charity, Hope, and Lovie—and everybody wants to be them. But it’s true that money can’t buy happiness, and the Joneses are harboring secrets that can’t stay hidden forever… The funeral home business has been slow lately, and Royce is in serious trouble. When Lexi learns of their financial strain, she vows to hold on to her status by any means necessary—even if it means going behind her husband’s back. Lovie, seeing his beloved mother so stressed, will do whatever it takes to put a smile back on her face. And sibling rivalries tense up when Charity and Hope both fall for the same guy. On top of this, they all have secrets they’re hiding not only from people outside their family—but from each other. It’s only a matter of time before the Joneses’ perfect life goes spinning out of control and they’re revealed for who they truly are.

    The Christian Science-Monitor praised his "engaging blend of deadpan humor and genuine empathy"; "Thankfully," said The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Kirn never abandons his theme of uncertainty when observing modern angst." Now Walter Kirn has fashioned She Needed Me, a moving, surprising, and darkly comic novel whose sympathetic portrait of a disillusioned generation is mercifully uncynical. Weaver Walquist and Kim Lindgren first meet outside a St. Paul, Minnesota, abortion clinic. Kim - twenty-three, pregnant, with no money to finish junior college - is about to walk inside. Weaver is lying in front of the door. At twenty-six, he is a Bible-carrying member of the Conscience Squad, a fanatical right-wing protest group...yet readers of all minds will be drawn to this gentle, questing soul as he struggles with his feelings for Kim and his subsequent sexual desire for her; his crumbling devotion to the church; and his waning loyalty to his employer, Sanipure, a Christian soap and cosmetics company that calls sales "fellowship moments." But Weaver was not always devout. The only child of a widowed, highly successful Wisconsin liquor store owner, he tried to ward off teenage isolation with a mixture of pot and pills, vodka, sex and heavy metal music, until born-again Christian Lucas Boone found him half dead on the floor of a Greyhound station men's room. As Weaver tries to persuade Kim to have her baby, they embark upon a journey that brings them into contact with a cast of keenly drawn characters: Chuck and Dixie Lindgren, Kim's parents, who made more money in one hot Las Vegas weekend than they ever earned from their North Dakota farm; charismatic, paranoid Lucas Boone, popping anti-depressant pills like candy; Kim's disaffected brother, Ricky, who makes a modest living burglarizing his relatives' homes; and fin

    Like many young men he is patriotic, adventurous and headstrong. He also feels assured of a bright future with his sweetheart Catherine. Patrick’s world comes crashing down around him when he becomes a pawn in the political aspirations of the United Irishmen under Wolfe Tone. He finds himself in prison sentenced to transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales and begins a downward spiral into rage and depression. Patrick’s saviour comes in the form of Father Michael O’Court, the chaplain of the prison ship Boddington. Over time Patrick is guided out of his depression and is able to accept the vastly different directions that his life’s journey has taken. He also finds an unlikely mentor in one Preston Balfour, a British Army officer who was originally his target for assassination, but who ultimately provides him with the means of restoring his life in a new land. Patrick’s life is complete when tragic circumstances eventually lead to him being reunited with Catherine for a new life in a new land. He comes to realise that the most important journey we travel is not measured in miles but by our changes within. Patrick’s Journey is a work of fiction, but is based on the real life history of the author’s great (6 times removed) grandfather.

    She has just lost her mother Tess and brother Mikey, her marriage to Joe is coming apart at the seams and her thirty-year friendship with Karen is on the rocks.While clearing out her childhood home, Carmel discovers that her mother gave birth to a baby in an Irish Mother and Baby home when she was sixteen, a place notorious for its mass burial of babies and illegal adoptions.Carmel goes on a quest for the truth about her troubled mother’s past. Her roller-coaster journey takes her from her comfortable Manchester home to the west of Ireland and to London's theatre land. It’s a journey that leads her to ask: Can we ever escape our own family history or is our destiny in our DNA?

     Washington D.C. and Manhattan disappear beneath nuclear mushroom clouds. Stripped of its congress, judicial and executive branches, the United States is a fractured, frantic shell of its former self; each state, a world unto its own. Germany’s threat of further attacks on major American cities like Chicago, Miami and Pittsburgh compels Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, sole survivor of the executive branch and now president, to bend to Hitler’s demand of neutrality. Powerless and impotent, America watches from the sidelines while Europe and Asia go up in flames. In search of a cause to unite America once again as a nation, the “Sons of Liberty,” a distant echo of our nation’s revolutionary war volunteers, secretly band together again, in the South this time, led by take-no-prisoners, General George S. Patton himself. And in doing so, he calls upon a group of ordinary citizens, including ex-Pan Am pilot Sam Carter and Hollywood actress Ava James, to embark on a series of missions that, if successful, will deliver America from its darkest hour and set it on a path toward the bright light of victory. The odds are impossible, the missions dangerous, and with an unknown spy in their midst threatening to wreck their intricate plans, everything seems doomed from the start as they struggle to bring America back into the fight for liberty and justice for all.

    Their bodies are burned and buried in the Reich Chancellery garden, above the Führer's bunker.Buenos Aires, 9th January, 2012Three audacious thieves carry out the biggest safe depository heist in Argentine history, escaping with more than one hundred million dollars' worth of valuables. Within hours, an encrypted phone call to America triggers a blood-soaked manhunt as the thieves are tracked down, systematically tortured, then murdered.San Francisco, 18th January, 2012Senator John Franklin, hailed as the 'Great Unifier', secures the Republican Presidential nomination and seems destined for the Oval Office. Despite the sixty-seven year interval and a span of thirteen thousand miles, these events are indelibly linked.Chief Inspector Nicolas Vargas of the Buenos Aires Police Department and Lieutenant Troy Hembury of the LAPD are sucked into a dark political conspiracy concealing an incredible historical truth stretching from the infamous Berlin bunker to Buenos Aires and to Washington, which threatens the very heart and soul of American democracy.

    It is a world in which American pop culture and local Filipino tradition mix flamboyantly, and gossip, storytelling, and extravagant behavior thrive.A wildly disparate group of characters--from movie stars to waiters, from a young junkie to the richest man in the Philippines--becomes caught up in a spiral of events culminating in a beauty pageant, a film festival, and an assassination. In the center of this maelstrom is Rio, a feisty schoolgirl who will grow up to live in America and look back with longing on the land of her youth.

    Now he's twenty-nine and still dreaming. But he faces a dilemma. His girlfriend Alison wants him to sort his life out. She's given him an ultimatum: Find a record deal by the end of the year or it's find a new girlfriend. When is it time to give up on your childhood ambitions? When is it time to stop watching Columbo in your underpants and get a proper job? Is six months long enough for one last assault on the big time? Is friendship ever more important than love? Is it just your imagination or can your girlfriend always tell when you've been looking at Internet porn? With the help of his boss Kostas, his two best friends, and an eighty-year-old Kung Fu enthusiast called Sheila, Danny McQueen is about to find out.