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The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton


Elizabeth Gill - 2013
    Since she was a child, Lucy Charlton has dreamed of working with her father in the family solicitor's firm. But a scandal shatters her dreams and, when her father disowns her, she finds herself on the streets, fighting for survival.Joe Hardy has returned to London after the Great War to find his life in tatters - his father is dead and his pregnant fiancée has disappeared. Then Joe learns he's unexpectedly inherited an old river house in Durham from a stranger called Margaret Lee. With nothing left for him in London, he makes arrangements to travel north and claim it.Lucy's determination has finally secured her a job as a legal secretary, campaigning for the rights of the poorest in society. As Joe arrives in her office to collect the keys to his new home, she promises to help him uncover information about his mystery benefactor. But before long, the past comes back to haunt them both, with shocking consequences...

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg -- Review


Expert Book Reviews - 2014
    The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion compares the contrasting worlds of present-day Southern life and Midwestern immigrant cities during World War II. After learning that she was adopted, Sookie is filled with questions of self-doubt and becomes determined to learn the truth behind her roots. Fannie Flagg depicts adventurous and courageous women as WASPs during WWII as she tells the story of the Jurdabralinski sisters. These roles contradict Sookie's upbringing in Alabama where society is ruled by social norms and status. The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion offers an inspirational tale with accurate historical details that are presented through an engaging plot. This review of Flagg's novel gives you a broader view of the author and her writing style. Read quotes from literary critics to discover the book's appeal, or lack thereof. Sookie counters a cast of larger-than-life characters as she finds adventure and realizes her underlying identity. The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion captures a journey of self-discovery mixed with realism and humor to delight all readers.

Summary and Analysis of A Man Called Ove: A Novel by Fredrik Backman


Leopard Books - 2016
    It tackles hard questions while keeping things light with contemporary humor. Over the course of the story, a reader of any age will grow to like and relate to Ove. Furthermore, the non-linear timeline keeps the plot interesting and suspenseful. PLEASE NOTE: This is a Summary and Analysis of the book and NOT the original book. This companion includes the following: - Book Review - Character List - Summary of the Chapters - Discussion Questions - Analysis of Themes & Symbols This Analysis fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience.

A Different Kind of Happy: A family in patchwork can be perfect


Rachaele Hambleton - 2021
    A partner she loves, five amazing kids and a house by the sea. But life is never simple and there is more than a little emotional baggage coming along for the ride.Starting with that tw*t of an ex-husband who doesn't pull his weight. Then there's the untrained puppy, the work/life balance, a custody battle for the children and all the everyday ups and downs and chaos of being a patchwork family.Surrounded by family dramas and mums who seem to have all their sh*t together, Jo must find a way to make friends and make it work in this new town.Barbecues on the beach and dog walks open up new conversations, but as Jo gets to know everyone better, the picture perfect families might be in need of more help than she first thought...When normal is not an option, surprises can lead to a different kind of happy family.

Aftermath


George Weinstein - 2018
    Luring you in with atmospheric elements--a small town hiding dark secrets and a woman determined to uncover her questionable legacy-- Aftermath 's final, disturbing twist will jolt you and good. A gripping, suspenseful read." - Emily Carpenter, author of  Burying the Honeysuckle Girls Can Janet Wright complete the deadly puzzle connecting her father, his murder, and a hostile small town? After her father is murdered, New Yorker Janet Wright returns to her folksy childhood home of Graylee, Georgia to tie up loose ends and mend her broken heart. When Janet is met with hostility upon arriving to her hometown, she begins a relentless search for answers about her father’s death. The unwavering heroine soon discovers that there’s more than meets the eye within the enigmatic small town, including secrets, scandals, and lies. This suspenseful Southern thriller will have Wright facing pieces of her broken childhood and fighting for her life. Mystery, murder, and romance converge to keep you turning page after page.“Aftermath has everything I crave in a novel: the perfect blend of mystery and romance, flawlessly crafted dialog, and an unsinkable heroine with equal parts grit and heart.” - Erika Marks, author of The Last TreasureOUR SOUTHERN FRIED GUARANTEEIf you wouldn’t enthusiastically recommend one of our books with a 4- or 5-star rating to a friend, then the next story is on us. We believe that much in the stories we’re telling. Simply email us at pr@sfkmultimedia.com.

Boomerville at Ballymegille


Caroline James - 2020
    There’s Irish craic and shenanigans aplenty for the colourful cast of characters as everyone gathers for the grand opening.Meet Melissa, an ex-cabaret singer running from her abusive husband, and Bill, a bachelor bullied from beyond the grave by the ghostly voice of his mother. Along with local bobby Harry the Helmet, ageing aquatic team the Boomerville Babes, eccentric artist Lucinda Gray, and heartthrob Finbar Murphy, they gather in Ireland and the fun begins. But murder is in the air and there’s mischief afoot. Will the residents get more than they bargained for at Boomerville?Set in the beautiful Irish countryside, ‘Boomerville at Ballymegille’ is a heart-warming story of friendship, fears and new beginnings.

Dread Uprising


Brian K. Fuller - 2019
    By the divine promise of sacrifice, he awakened an Ash Angel with a new body, new powers, and a new war to fight. Cassandra, his temperamental trainer, tries to get him ready to battle Ghostpackers and Dreads, but it might be too little too late: for the first time in history, the Ash Angels are faltering against the fury of an evil more ancient than they are.While he fights to survive run-ins with a Sheid-hunted popstar and a gorgeous but dangerous Dread, Trace realizes his new life cannot erase the trauma of the old. Thrust onto the front lines of a violent war with ancient ambition, Trace finds that the deadliest demons are the ones lurking in his own mind.

People We Meet on Vacation


Emily HenryEmily Henry - 2021
    Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together. Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since. Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees. Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read, a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.

Malibu Rising


Taylor Jenkins ReidTaylor Jenkins Reid - 2021
    But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever. Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.

The Rector's Daughter


Jean Fullerton - 2019
    Charlotte has an understanding with Captain Nicolas Paget - every inch the gentleman - who she expects someday to marry. But then she meets Josiah Martyn, and everything changes...A driven and ambitious Cornish mining engineer, and the complete opposite to Captain Nicholas, Josiah has come to London to help build the first tunnel under the river Thames. When unpredictable events occur at the inauguration of the project, Josiah and Charlotte are suddenly thrown into an unexpected intimacy.But not everyone is happy with Charlotte and Josiah growing closer. As friends turn to foes, will they be able to rewrite the stars and find their happy ever after, although all odds seem to be stacked against them...?

Into The Lake


L.K. Chapman - 2021
    But it will mean putting herself in serious danger – and betraying someone she loves.With Josh spiralling deeper into despair, and her own life torn apart by lies, can Natalie unravel what really happened before it is too late?

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot


Marianne Cronin - 2021
    A lifetime of stories. Their last one begins here.Life is short. No-one knows that better than seventeen year old Lenni living on the terminal ward. But as she is about to learn, it's not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with. Dodging doctor's orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eighty three year old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years. To celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything. As their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny and brimming with tenderness, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT unwraps the extraordinary gift of life even when it is about to be taken away, and revels in our infinite capacity for friendship and love when we need them most.

Glory Over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House


Kathleen Grissom - 2016
    Glory Over Everything is “gripping…breathless until the end” (Kirkus Reviews).The year is 1830 and Jamie Pyke, a celebrated silversmith and notorious ladies’ man, is keeping a deadly secret. Passing as a wealthy white aristocrat in Philadelphian society, Jamie is now living a life he could never have imagined years before when he was a runaway slave, son of a southern black slave and her master. But Jamie’s carefully constructed world is threatened when he discovers that his married socialite lover, Caroline, is pregnant and his beloved servant Pan, to whose father Jamie owes his own freedom, has been captured and sold into slavery in the South. Fleeing the consequences of his deceptions, Jamie embarks on a trip to a North Carolina plantation to save Pan from the life he himself barely escaped as a boy. With the help of a fearless slave, Sukey, who has taken the terrified young boy under her wing, Jamie navigates their way, racing against time and their ruthless pursuers through the Virginia backwoods, the Underground Railroad, and the treacherous Great Dismal Swamp.“Kathleen Grissom is a first-rate storyteller…she observes with an unwavering but kind eye, and she bestows upon the reader, amid terrible secrets and sin, a gift of mercy: the belief that hope can triumph over hell” (Richmond Times Dispatch). Glory Over Everything is an emotionally rewarding and epic novel “filled with romance, villains, violence, courage, compassion…and suspense.” (Florida Courier).

NOT A BOOK: Lilac Girls - The Book..


NOT A BOOK - 2017
    

Jess Castle and the Eyeballs of Death


M.B. Vincent - 2018
    It's home to all sorts of people, with all the stresses and joys of modern life, but with a town square and a proper butcher's. It also has, for our purposes, a rash of gory murders ...  Jess Castle is running away. Again. This time she's running back home, like she swore she never would.   Castle Kidbury, like all small towns, hums with gossip but now it's plagued with murder of the most gruesome kind. Jess instinctively believes that the hippyish cult camped out on the edge of town are not responsible for the spate of crucifixions that blights the pretty landscape. Her father, a respected judge, despairs of Jess as she infiltrates the cult and manages, not for the first time, to get herself arrested.  Rupert Lawson, a schooldays crush who's now a barrister, bails her out. Jess ropes in a reluctant Rupert as she gatecrashes the murder investigation of DS Eden. A by-the-book copper, Eden has to admit that intuitive, eccentric Jess has the nose of a detective.   As the gory murders pile up, there’s nothing to connect the victims. And yet, the clues are there if you look hard enough.