All That Glitters


Ilana Fox - 2012
    Married to Danny Riding, one of the Premiership's leading goal-scorers, she lives the dream - the mansion, the car, the freebie designer clothes. But Ella and Danny have a secret. Their marriage is not what is seems. Between them, it takes a lot of hard work to fool the press and the nation that they really are Love's Young Dream, when deep down Danny's desires lie elsewhere.With Ella's star in the ascendant, the world is at her feet - a TV show, a fashion column. But then she meets Johnny Cooper, the bad boy of British television. He's ruthlessly charming and sexy, and he can see through Ella's sham of a marriage in a heartbeat. Drawn into a risky, high-octane affair, Ella suddenly realises how much she has to lose and how quickly it can be taken from her?

The Hashtag Life of Isobel Irving


Alice Ross - 2020
    But that’s before she’s reacquainted with one of her former classmates, who is no longer the geek she remembers. And who adds a whole load of extra complications to the mix.

Putting on the Style


Freda Lightfoot - 2006
    So the vibrant market of Champion Street is a source of many a tempting bargain – as well as all the local gossip.Dena loves her Saturday job at Belle Garside’s market café, and her ready smile makes her a universal favourite. She is soon in thrall to Belle’s two good-looking and dangerous sons. But fate has other plans in store when her younger brother is killed by a gang of thugs.Only when it is far too late does Dena begin to ask herself one terrifying question: has she fallen in love with her brother’s killer? A moving saga of second chances and forbidden love set around a bustling café in 1950s Manchester, perfect for fans of Kitty Neale and Ellie Dean. Praise for Putting on the Style 'You can’t put a price on Freda Lightfoot’s stories from Manchester’s 1950s Champion Street Market. They bubble with enough life and colour to brighten up the dreariest day and they have characters you can easily take to your heart’ Northern Echo‘A rattling good read to touch the heart of anyone who has loved someone they shouldn’t have’ Dorset Evening Echo‘Deftly chronicled’ Telegraph & Argus‘Freda Lightfoot’s talent for creating believable characters makes this a page-turning read’ Newcastle Evening Chronicle

Instructions for Bringing Up Scarlett


Annie Sanders - 2011
    As an only child, with her parents long gone, she's financially independent and has an undemanding job as a travel writer, working from her picturesque cottage in Gloucestershire.

Lucy Blue, Where Are You?


Louise Harwood - 2005
    But on the way back home, she finds herself snowbound at the airport and forced to share a ride with a handsome stranger. Normally, she's not the sort of girl to pick up a stranger, much less sleep with him-but this is a moment out of time and place and Lucy goes for it. Back in London, just as Lucy decides to put this little secret adventure behind her, she encounters something shocking. Namely, a brightly-colored train-station poster asking "Lucy Blue, where are you?" And thus begins a journey that just might make Lucy see her chance meeting as the chance of a lifetime...

Touched by Angels


Susan Sallis - 1996
    Berry was the one who dazzled them - handsome, funny, sexy, he somehow symbolized that golden summer of the war when they all worked together on the farm. Then their world collapsed around them. Morag, the strongest and quietest of the three girls, lost everything she held dear in one savage bombing. Vallery's beloved brother was killed in the desert war, and Jannie - well, Jannie had never had much to start with anyway. With a father away at war and a succession of 'uncles' passing through her mother's bedroom, she grew up both insecure and promiscuous. But still, she had Morag and Vallery. When the Reid boys returned from the war it was Berry, the vibrant one, who had changed. Crippled, both in mind and body, he held the dream of Morag in his mind, even though it was Vallery he married. As they settled to a life in the remote cliff-side Abbey, away from everyone, so the old ties between the three girls and the Reid brothers grew more intense, more confused - and Morag, Vallery and Jannie discovered that Berry still had the power to draw them all to him.

BIG HAIR AND FLYING COWS


Dolores Wilson - 2014
    To say the least. She calls Sweet Meadow, Georgia, home, where she works for her father doing auto repairs. She also drives the tow-truck, although Sweet Meadow's rather colorful denizens tend to treat Bertie more like the local, free taxi service. You know, someone has to get to a doctor's appointment or pick something up at the dry cleaners. Bertie's favorite day of the week is Friday, when she leaves the wrecker with her father for the whole weekend and joins her friends at the Dew Drop Inn for a night of dancing. Her best friend, Mary Lou, sometimes fixes her up with dubious dates, although Bertie has to remind her friend not to tease her hair too high for those occasions. Like the time when they went to Carrie Sue's open house, and a ceramic cow with angel wings hanging from a ceiling fan locked its hooves into Bertie's big hair and refused to let go. She had to wear it all night, dangling chain and all. Bertie's nearly perfect life is about to take a downhill turn, however. It starts when her landlord, Pete, currently a resident in a nearby nursing home, starts showing up at her house. In his birthday suit. A very badly wrinkled birthday suit. And then she goes to her mailbox, a rubber large mouth bass, and finds a notice from the zoning commission saying she can no longer park the wrecker in her driveway. The notice is signed by George Bigham. But when she goes to the courthouse to take care of her little problem, it is only to discover George Bigham is deceased. And Mary Lou's pregnancy test just came up positive. Can it get any worse? In a word... yes.

What We Had


Jacalyn Wilson - 2016
    From the foothills of North Carolina to the mountains of West Virginia, Birdie weaves her story with homespun simplicity, creating a tapestry that vibrates with the colors and textures of her life and times, spinning a tale from the years before the Great Depression on up through the end of World War II. Enthralled by her first taste of womanhood, she follows her heart with the man of her dreams, only to find that life is not fair. Or perfect. Or easy. Will she find the courage to risk everything in order to reclaim what she once had?

Secret Diary of an Incurable Romantic (Um...and a closet alcoholic)


Chitrangada Mukherjee - 2018
    Have these knots in my stomach. But drinking isn’t an option. Maa is sleeping with me. Baba in Lalitaji’s room. And she on the sofa. Want to step into the toilet, take one swig, and then go directly to sleep. How the hell will Maa know? I mean she’s sleeping like a log. No, no, shouldn’t. What if she wakes up? She’s a light sleeper, after all.11.30 pm: No wine. Or vodka. Terrible, terrible night. When will they go back to Kolkata and let me be?11.32 pm: Chhi . . .Chhi . . . How selfish am I? My parents, one with a heart condition, spent thousands on flight tickets and landed in Chennai. Why? Because they wanted to spend time with their widowed daughter. And what does the daughter want? To sneak into the toilet and take one good swig of wine. Shame on her! Okay, now I’m being over-dramatic.Meet Madhubala Ray a thirty-year-old brand-spanking-new widow in Chennai.She lives with her seventy-year-old mostly-silent MIL—whose name she can’t remember, teaches Social Science to bratty teenagers, and suddenly has a life filled with unpredictable men, catty colleagues, a bisexual best friend, and . . . heart-wrenching memories of her late husband.How does she deal with all of that?By baring it all, in her diary. Join this oddball-widow who always keeps it real as she gives an honest account of a young North Indian working woman in Chennai, who tries to survive a tragedy through wine and vodka, her quirky sense of humour, and refuses to give up on love. Despite its oddities. The question is: does she survive and find love, again?Secret Diary of an Incurable Romantic is a story that is brutally honest, funny, romantic and liberating. It’s a slice of life, you wouldn’t want to miss.

Westward Courage


A.T. Butler - 2021
     Caroline Harper has everything she could want--wealth, position, the attention of an eligible bachelor. When her brother’s news destroys all of that, Caroline must decide what kind of life she wants to create for herself. As the Harpers make their way along the grueling thousands of miles of Oregon Trail, Caroline discovers strength, poise and potential she didn’t realize she possessed. Strength that perhaps was not in a spoiled city girl at all. But will it be enough to survive and bring Caroline and her brother all the way to Oregon?

Return to Sender


Zoë Barnes - 2008
    She would seriously love to have a baby one day, but for the first time in ages being adopted has become a stumbling block for her. Does she want to start a family of her own when she doesn't even know who she really is or where she's come from? With an on-off boyfriend who she's swiftly falling out of lust with, Holly decides to move back to her home town to be near her adoptive family. Who knows, it may be the change she needs to get her life back on track - and the place to be if she wants to begin tracing her roots. But these roots prove trickier to trace than Holly has expected. That is, until she hires her own oh-so-sexy private investigator to take charge...

The Other Side of Heartache


Sarah Jo Smith - 2013
    Summoned to her childhood home to sort through Penny’s belongings, the timing couldn’t be worse. Grieving over her losses and exhausted from a demanding teaching schedule, she worries that her marriage is collapsing under the pressure. While packing her mother’s closet, Grace discovers a box filled with mysterious keepsakes and old diaries written in Penny’s hand and takes them home. After reading pages filled with typical musings of a teenage girl from a generation ago, she stumbles upon a dark secret and is devastated to learn that what she believed her whole life about her family was based on lies.As Grace digs beneath the Rose family tree, she unearths more than one skeleton buried there. All the while, she must endure the wrath of her grandmother, Eleanor, who is determined to block her efforts to find out what happened when Penny was seventeen, as well as the underlying cause of her premature death. Yet Eleanor harbors a well-kept secret of her own, one more deceitful and calculating than Penny’s sin. Grace’s journey through an emotional labyrinth of passion, shame, and manipulation not only leads to more shocking revelations but also changes the course she had mapped for her life.Through a story told in alternating voices between the past and present where old morals and double standards from the historical 1950s and ‘60s clash with modern day values, Grace must decide if it’s worth taking an unforeseen risk to reaffirm her belief in the power of love. BOOK GROUP GUIDE INCLUDED.

The Amish Girl Who Never Belonged


Samantha Price - 2020
    

Little Mishaps and Big Surprises


C.J. Morrow - 2018
    She certainly doesn’t need a man to complete her. Her life couldn’t be better. Or could it?Charlie’s life is about to change. From an episode of doggy incontinence to a vomit incident in the M&S food hall, life has some little mishaps planned for Charlie that lead to some BIG surprises.With a fancy dress party looming, what begins as a drunken nightmare could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to her.

Going It Alone


Clare Dowling - 2008
    She needs to have a baby and fast, but after months of fruitless trying, her husband Andrew is feeling like a walking sperm bank and their marriage is in crisis. Matters come to a head when Andrews job relocates to London and Millie decides that if he wont stick around to get her pregnant, then shell do it without him. Setting her sights on Spain, Millie embarks on a voyage of discovery