Wealthy and powerful, when something goes wrong, people expect him to make it right. But what can he do when his cousin leaves his bride standing at the altar? Court her himself. Kylie Beth Webster has a thriving business and is totally committed to helping revitalize downtown Buckley. Brokenhearted, humiliated, and furious, she isn’t about to fall into a rebound romance with another sweet talkin’, good lookin’ cowboy. Not even if he’s kind, upstanding, and her longtime friend. But Gideon isn’t simply trying to make amends for his cousin’s behavior. He’s determined to marry the woman he loves. All he has to do is convince her that his love is real – and win her heart.

    Ada falls in love with Clem Hargreaves, a young man also from the slums whom her mother strongly disapproves of, and fate plays a cruel hand when a tragic accident occurs. But worse is yet to follow and when Ada’s mother is found dead, she is left with guilt and remorse. Ada’s strength and determination pulls her through and together with her husband, they work hard to achieve their ambition of owning their own pub. The Sixpenny Winner soon becomes successful despite the depression and Ada and Clem Hargreaves find love and fulfilment with their two daughters. However when two brothers join them to help with the heavy work, Ada goes against her instinct and soon realises that her family is being torn apart and discovers evil and revenge of a kind she has not encountered before where all their lives are never the same again. Dramatic, heartbreaking and heart-warming, betrayals and full of passion, The Sixpenny Winner is the best yet from Alexandra Connor.

    Beautiful. On the run. When secret agent Maggie Black agrees to protect the Mayor of London, she thinks she’s in for a boring night of babysitting. The simple job gets a lot more complicated when an assassin arrives and takes out the Mayor, framing Maggie as the killer. Unable to explain the evidence against her, Maggie is branded a traitor and hunted by the very people she once fought beside. With no one to turn to, Maggie relies on the one person who has always had her back—herself. From the hidden nightclubs of Madrid, to the dark streets of Moscow, Maggie must delve into the depths of the criminal underworld to unearth the truth, and fast. Because time is running out and the enemy is closer than she thinks… KILL ORDER is the first gripping installment to the Maggie Black thriller series, and the perfect read for fans of Lee Child and James Patterson. Venice. The Mafia. A drug deal gone wrong. When a British covert intelligence agency learns of an impending drug deal between the Venetian mafia and one of the UK’s most notorious importers, agent Maggie Black is sent to stop it. Under the alias of an American drug lord, Maggie must infiltrate the crime family and stop their product from reaching British soil. A feat that gets more complicated when her colleague and old flame Leon is sent along with her. Maggie is soon thrust into the middle of a vicious war that spans generations. As blood is spilled and the scent of death lingers across the lagoons, a failed mission becomes the least of her worries. Because someone has a score to settle and they won't let Maggie stand in their way... Join Maggie Black in VENDETTA, the first heart-pounding novella in the Maggie Black Case Files series. Get your copy of the Starter Library today and discover the action-packed world of Maggie Black.

    There's no problem with mousy Hilary, but Isobel is a wayward beauty who can never forgive her plainer sister for stealing her boyfriend, and will be pregnant before she marries. Worse, the father of Isobel's baby isn't her new husband – and when the truth comes out, her marriage is likely to hit the rocks. Hilary's life seems to be moving along more calmly, until her husband is badly injured in an accident. And as she takes charge of his business Hilary also faces the discovery that her adored children are struggling at school. There's hope if the sisters can pull together at last – but can they ever put the past behind them?

    There is something very familiar about Simon that brings Eleanor great peace, and Simon feels the same way. But when Eleanor's boyfriend, Abe, sees her talking to Simon, his jealousy is unleashed, and he warns her to stay away from Simon. Eleanor refuses, planning to break up with Abe - until an emergency changes her plan. But Eleanor cannot stop thinking about Simon and is shocked when he reveals a secret about their childhood years. Torn between Abe and Simon, Eleanor prays to Gott for an answer. Should she leave the possessive Abe and run to Simon?

    Rosie, Mummy and Daddy’s little Princess, can certainly look after herself though, and cunningly throws secret spanners in the works for her sisters. As the girls grow older, Rosie becomes more and more manipulative and her schemes soon take on a more malicious note. But even she can go too far and, when Olivia and Emily find out what she has in store for them, they decide the time has come to put a stop to their sister’s antics once and for all … Praise for Marcia Willett: 'Unexpected subtlety and charm ... a genuine voice of our times' - The Times 'With beautifully ironic observations and flashbacks to a mysterious past, the story has a twist in the tail so staggering that it necessitates re-reading and a strong cup of tea' - The Lady Willa Marsh was born in Somerset and lives in a Georgian parsonage in Devon with her husband and two Newfoundlands. As Marcia Willett, she also writes well-reviewed novels published by Headline.

    Her husband, Jack, has left her - why, she doesn't really know. Her two sons are in Australia, and both her mother and her best friend Naomi have recently died.Embarking on a journey to Exmoor to meet the famous artist Robert Haussman, with an oddly assorted group of fellow-enthusiasts, Judith finds herself a prey to all sorts of irrational fears. Chief amongst them is the increasing conviction that Jack is dead. Why did he leave her? Where has he gone? And why does Robert Haussman exert such a strange influence on her?Set in the Somerset countryside which Susan Sallis knows so well, this heartwarming novel shows how life, love and art cannot always meet happily together.

     Coming out is hard. The struggle is ongoing, a daily part of life whether to a new friend, a co-worker, or most importantly yourself. Pray the Gay Away chronicles Michael and Zach as they face awkward sexual encounters, drug-fueled escapades, coming out to each other, and their biggest foe - Mom, a woman who not only gave birth to what she calls one regret - but two. The memoir hilariously and poignantly explores what it’s like growing up as gay, Iraqi twins in modern America. Pray the Gay Away was inspired the night Mom snuck into their bedroom and force fed them “holy grapes,” determined to “de-gay” them. The Zakar Twins are new voices speaking out against generations, particularly within the Iraqi culture, who look down on being gay. This book is not only for the LBGTQ community, but for young adults, looking to achieve normalcy.

    Meanwhile, in 'Erlinda and Mr Coffin', Southern etiquette is unashamedly turned upside down in a tale of amateur theatricals reminiscent of Dickens and Victorian melodrama. Yet it is in 'Three Stratagems', 'The Zenner Trophy', 'Pages from an Abandoned Journal' and 'The Ladies in the Library' (with more than a hint of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice in the latter) that we see Vidal as we know him best: cynical and provocative in these subtle tales of what was known in those days as 'sexual inversion'.

    No one knew why Robin abandoned a brilliant university career to start a new life at an eccentric island monastery, but it was thought to have something to do with the surprise engagement of Candida, Robin's childhood playmate and Jake, their mutual friend.

    She’s happy—or is at least she’s willing to tell herself she is.But when a relationship from the past resurfaces, it throws Evelyn’s world into turmoil. Suddenly she finds herself tempted in a way she hasn’t thought about in years.Evelyn wants to do the right thing—but she wants to follow her heart more.As her passion and desires intensify, she’s forced to weigh the cost of stepping out of her old life and into the arms of a new lover—and decide whether she’s willing to lose the things she thought she held dear to reunite with the person she thought she’d lost forever.A riveting page-turner about burning desires and secret passions, Out of Bounds is a smoldering romance that will delight hot-blooded women of all ages.

    They shout out to him: 'good luck, and don't get slurped up!'. It's about to get even weirder at the castle where there is a battle of wills going on between the mysterious Count and what he terms, the 'blood-sucking b*tches!' in the village, led by the infamous van High-Heelsing. But who will prevail on the runway? As each kween sashays towards the jugular, the reader is taken on a journey to the ultimate lip sync for your life finale.

     He gives often moving, and frequently comic, portraits of his great teachers in England -- such men as Lord David Cecil, Nevill Coghill, and W. H. Auden, who was the most distinguished English-language poet of those years. In London the poet and editor Stephen Spender becomes his first publisher and a generous friend who introduces him to rewarding figures like the essayist Cyril Connolly and George Orwell's encouraging widow, Sonia. He spends rich months traveling in Britain and on the Continent; and above all he undergoes the first loves of his life -- one with an Oxford colleague whom he describes as a "romantic friend" and another with an older man. Back in the States, in his first class at Duke he meets a startlingly gifted student in the sixteen-year-old Anne Tyler; and he soon combines the difficult pleasures of teaching English composition and literature with his own hard delight in learning to write a first novel. At the end of three lonely years, he completes the novel -- A Long and Happy Life -- and returns to England for a fourth year before his novel appears in Britain and America and meets with a success that sets the pace for an ongoing life of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations (Ardent Spirits is his thirty-eighth volume). The droll memories recorded here amount to the unsurpassed -- and, again, often comical -- story of a writer's beginnings; and the young man who emerges has proven his right to stand by his fellows of whatever sex and goal. Ardent Spirits is a book that penetrates deeply into the life of a writer, a teacher, and a steadfast lover.

    Revolving around three interlocking lives, it offers, among other things, a detailed inside look at the work of paramedics, and entertaining celebrity gossip.

    Lovecraft and his circle. Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends--or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them.A tour-de-force of storytelling, The Night Ocean follows the lives of some extraordinary people: Lovecraft, the most influential American horror writer of the 20th century, whose stories continue to win new acolytes, even as his racist views provoke new critics; Barlow, a seminal scholar of Mexican culture who killed himself after being blackmailed for his homosexuality (and who collaborated with Lovecraft on the beautiful story The Night Ocean); his student, future Beat writer William S. Burroughs; and L.C. Spinks, a kindly Canadian appliance salesman and science-fiction fan -- the only person who knows the origins of The Erotonomicon, purported to be the intimate diary of Lovecraft himself.As a heartbroken Marina follows her missing husband's trail in an attempt to learn the truth, the novel moves across the decades and along the length of the continent, from a remote Ontario town, through New York and Florida to Mexico City.The Night Ocean is about love and deception -- about the way that stories earn our trust, and betray it.