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?

    A solitary fortress isolated in an endless sea. A city of secrets where the elite dominate with an iron fist and ambition ends at the city walls. Ordinarily the city is surrounded by water but one day a month when the moon is at its highest, the water recedes and uncovers the causeways linking the city to the outer towers. This is Moon-day, the time when the trades bring their specialities to market and the whole Citadel enjoy the celebrations the festival brings, so when the city’s stargazer predicts the water level will drop even further, nobody takes any notice.Soon enough and despite the people's indifference, the predictions are proved correct and as the sea falls it reveals secrets that have never been known before. Secrets that are at first exciting....then disturbing .....and ultimately.....terrifying

    No journalist, reporter or talk show host had been granted the privilege to interview the 86-year-old recluse throughout her 21-book career. Julia's intrigue as to why she's the chosen one sends her packing and on a plane headed South in a hurry. Nestled among a canopy of banyan trees and palms, beneath the roof of Mrs. Van Buren's gingerbread island cottage, Julia finds one last unpublished manuscript. As the fragile old woman reads aloud to Julia from delicate pages that take us back to 1930s Macon, Georgia, and on up the road to Atlanta during days of the "Gone with the Wind" premier, secrets that have been held captive for over half a century surface that connect these women in more ways than either of them ever imagined.

    Devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice, her days are full of familiar things: she lives in the very New York apartment in which she was raised, and sends Henry to the school she herself once attended. Dismayed by the ways in which women delude themselves, Grace is also the author of a book You Should Have Known, in which she cautions women to really hear what men are trying to tell them. But weeks before the book is published a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only an ongoing chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself. For readers of the best women's fiction. This is a free preview, not the full book.

    This time, he’s in Cairo – bang in the middle of the Arab Spring. ‘The only story in the world’ according to his editor. But it isn’t – there’s another story, more significant and potentially more dangerous, and if no one else is willing to tell it . . . then Carver will, whatever the consequences.William Carver spots the Arab Spring early, aided by one of the infamous ‘Listeners’ at the BBC monitoring station in Caversham. He and his producer Patrick chase the story across North Africa before arriving in Egypt where the battle between the corrupt old order and the new will be both bloody and potentially definitive.Meanwhile, in Eritrea, two brothers begin to make their way up from the Horn of Africa and across the continent, desperate to find a better life in Europe. The horrors they endure at the hands of people traffickers and others along the way test their endurance and humanity to its limit. Over a few tumultuous months, these two stories come together to prove inextricably linked.Carver knows this story is a complex one; the world is watching, but in the age of Facebook, Twitter and rolling news, its attention span is increasingly short. And if everyone is a reporter, then who can you believe?

    She has to adapt and make a home for her baby daughter and aging husband amidst boreholes, long drops and Aga stoves.She comes to terms with her neighbours, Joshua, a practising Sangoma, and Ben, a Jewish pig farmer; is educated in the ways of the Practical by her indomitable maid May; and comes of age through her determined efforts to create things of beauty amidst the khakibos - a lawn and poetry. She even restores the family fortune by engaging in a lucrative and uniquely South African venture.

    She's got problems though when bits of her ex-husband turn up in different places and the slimy DI Savage seems to be bending the evidence to link her to the death. Add the fact that she's being pressured into taking a ‘job’ by hard-nosed Vera Devlin from the estate and having to work in a topless bar to make ends meet and you can see she's up against it. Desperate to extricate herself from the mess she breaks into her old marital home to find the diary of her dead husband, except that his mother has taken up residence and arrives back early from bingo… Set against a backdrop of Northern council estate life, this fast paced, humorous novel exemplifies the problems caused by poverty, piles and unruly children, think Jeremy Kyle meets the Thorn Birds and you won't be far wrong!

    They quickly become friends and form the No Sweat Pants Allowed - Wine Club. This newly found alliance brings about some humorous escapades, a few tears, and a bond so strong no man can break as they try to cling to the past and finally step out of their comfort zones to find a happiness they thought they'd never feel again. Discover Elaina Samuels, Tawny Westerfield, Stephanie Mathews, and Grace Cordray.

    His life becomes barren, and he loses hope and the ability to continue.But God plants in his heart the seeds of a new beginning and the will to go on through an orphan child. Jim nurtures this child with the same devotion that he invests in his land. The result is a son of whom any father would be proud. Jim’s gift continues through Ellis.Ellis in turn cares passionately for his own farm, his friends, and eventually another lost soul. When he finds Clairey in the midst of a blizzard, he rescues her from her desperate life, and she grows into a capable a strong woman under his care. Jim’s legacy comes full circle.All things grow in love. . .

    At turns hilarious and bittersweet, this novel is destined to be a bookshelf classic.

    Well, most of the family was tight-knit--her father walked out on them when she was 13 and she and her two brothers and sister bonded together even closer with their mother as a result. She's been doing her best to live her new life apart from them, but when their estranged father has a stroke and summons them, Grace suddenly realizes she's done the same thing he had done...abandoned those who need her most. And need her they do, for inside the hospital walls, a strange war is unfolding between the pseudo-kindly woman who is their father's second wife and the rest of the original Hawkes clan. Upon reconnecting with her brother and sisters, Grace will find a part of herself she thought was lost forever. As they unravel the manipulative deception of the second Mrs. Hawkes, Grace will finally be able to stand up for her family--and to remember what a family is, even after all these years.

    Dina Demetriou has travelled from Cyprus for a better life. She's certain that excitement, adventure and opportunity are out there, waiting - if only she knew where to look.Her passion for clothes and flair for sewing land her a job repairing the glittering costumes at the notorious Pelican Revue. It's here that she befriends the mysterious and beautiful Bebba.With her bleached-blonde hair and an appetite for mischief, Bebba is like no Greek Dina has ever met before. She guides Dina around the fashionable shops, bars and clubs of Soho, and Dina finally feels life has begun.But Bebba has a secret. And as thick smog brings the city to a standstill, the truth emerges with devastating results. Dina's new life now hangs by a thread. What will be left when the fog finally clears? And will Dina be willing to risk everything to protect her future?A story of friendship, family, love and loss set against the grimy and glittering streets of fifties Soho. For fans of Kate Furnivall and Rachel Rhys.

    Can long-buried secrets break you apart … or set you free?On the surface, Elle has the perfect life – husband, child and a beautiful home. But sometimes a perfect facade hides the cracks beneath: Elle’s husband Rick seems determined to clip her wings at every turn, keeping her at home and away from her friends and from the world. When Elle’s father dies and she starts to clear his house, the cracks start to widen – and it’s only a matter of time before everything breaks open.On a quest for buried treasure at the house, her young son, Charlie, finds a box underneath the apple tree, with love letters from the past that could tear her world apart.As past and present collide, Elle must decide what is right – and what course her life should take.

    For two decades, she grieves the loss of Chase and struggles with her marriage to her husband, Alan. Meanwhile, Lydia Feller mourns the death of her estranged sister, who spent years living on the streets with mental illness and substance abuse. Lydia adopts the boy that she believes was her sister's son and raises him in a happy, stable home with her husband, Daniel, and their four children.God works in miraculous ways as, twenty years later, both women's worlds collide . . .

    The words aren’t coming out right, Harvey’s mojo is fading and a celebrity host is eyeing his timeslot.Back in Shorton, Harvey’s father Lionel appears at long last to be dying. It seems it’s finally time for Harvey Beam to head home and face a different kind of music.In wading through a past that seems disturbingly unchanged, the last thing he expects is a chance encounter with a wonderful stranger …