Pete’s church. Among his challenges are teenybopper altar girls, insomnia-curing confessions, and alarmingly alluring congregant Vicky Carrier. Then there’s Miss Rita, an irrepressible centenarian with a taste for whiskey, cracklins, and sticking her nose in other people’s business.When an outsider threatens to poach Father Steve’s flock, Miss Rita suggests he fight back by staging an event that will keep St. Pete’s parishioners loyal forever. As The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival draws near, help comes from the strangest places. And while the road to the festival may be paved with good intentions—not to mention bake sales, an elephant, and the most bizarre cook-out ever—where it will lead is anyone’s guess…

    Trimming the tree, mailing the cards, schlepping to the mall, the endless wrapping--bah humbug! So this year, Joy and Laura and the rest of their knitting group decide to go on strike. If their husbands and families want a nice holiday--filled with parties, decorations, and presents--well, they'll just have to do it themselves.The boycott soon takes on a life of its own when a reporter picks up the story and more women join in. But as Christmas Day approaches, Joy, Laura, and their husbands confront larger issues in their marriages and discover that a little holiday magic is exactly what they need to come together.Sheila Roberts gives the best gift of all in this funny, heartwarming novel that touches the very core of Christmas spirit.

    She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.‎Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.

    We can tell you that this is a story about that special someone: the one you trust, the one you can’t live without.For Ted Flask, that someone special is his aging companion Lily, who happens to be a dog. Lily and the Octopus reminds us how it feels to love fiercely, how difficult it can be to let go, and how the fight for those we love is the greatest fight of all.Remember the last book you told someone they had to read? Lily and the Octopus is the next one.

    Not unlike Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood and other beloved works of southern women’s fiction—except set in the American Midwest—Born Under a Lucky Moon is a story of family, love, murder, sex scandals, and new beginnings that is, at once, intelligent, endearing, and delightfully quirky.

    In his latest New York Times bestseller, Hiaasen introduces impassioned, possibly bipolar, self-proclaimed queen of lost causes Honey Santana, who schemes to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference, and dinnertime sales calls.

    He does not know that a query from a Mrs Tina Hopgood about a world-famous antiquity in his museum is about to alter the course of his life.Oceans apart, an unexpected correspondence flourishes as they discover shared passions: for history and nature; for useless objects left behind by loved ones; for the ancient and modern world, what is lost in time, what is gained and what has stayed the same. Through intimate stories of joy, anguish, and discovery, each one bares their soul to the other. But when Tina's letters suddenly cease, Anders is thrown into despair. Can this unlikely friendship survive?

    People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. At just seventeen she marries and moves down into the valley of Gap Creek, where perhaps life will be better.But Julie and Hank's new life in the valley, in the last years of the nineteenth century, is more complicated than the couple ever imagined. Sometimes it's hard to tell what to fear most—the fires and floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters, drunks, and busybodies who insinuate themselves into their new life. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay. Their struggles with nature, with work, with the changing century, and with the disappointments and triumphs of their union make Gap Creek a timeless story of a marriage.A native of the North Carolina mountains, Robert Morgan was raised on land settled by his Welsh ancestors. An accomplished novelist and poet, he has won the James B. Hanes Poetry Prize, the North Carolina Award in Literature, and the Jacaranda Review Fiction Prize. His short stories have appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and New Stories from the South, and his novel The Truest Pleasure was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

    Menacing and at times darkly humorous there are echoes of Roald Dahl and Daphne du Maurier in these stories, many of which have been specially commissioned for Radio 4.From the commuter who bitterly regrets falling asleep on a late-night train in Last Train to Helsingør, to the mushroom hunter prepared to kill to guard her secret in The Chanterelles of Østvig.Here, the land of ‘hygge’ becomes one of twilight and shadows, as canny antique dealers and property sharks get their comeuppance at the handsof old ladies in Conning Mrs Vinterberg, and ghosts go off-script in TheWailing Girl.Scandi noir at its finest.

    When Nick’s charmingly erratic behavior finally became too much for Lena, the marriage and the partnership ended. But—like C. K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord—it seems that Lena and Nick just can’t quite separate.Lena works out fiercely, keeps her dates with the boring and conventional Preston Winter, and daily battles on against corporate greed. But Nick’s not doing so well.Still brilliant and devilishly clever, he is now also almost crazy. He is prone to fantasy and the big gesture, and he engages frantically in guerrilla activism for the sake of animals wild and domestic. Nick doesn’t make plans; he has visions. And eventually his antics put him back into Lena’s hands. While she tries to navigate the legal waters into which he’s thrown them, Nick veers out of her wake and into the midst of a strange set of companions, including Oscar, his psychiatric attendant and Action Comics collector; Ralph and Alice Wilson, the rebellious managers of the city animal shelter; and an aging Russian hound named Wolfram.Often laugh-out-loud funny, with bright wit and brilliant machine-gun dialogue, The Marriage of True Minds sweetly explores modern love, undying idealism, and one cracked partnership that can’t be sundered—from without or from within.If you like screwball comedies, like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, then you’ll love The Marriage of True Minds!

    She's a successful marketing executive who still believes in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

    It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. ‘I’ll get out,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come back for you, ok?’ The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he’d believed it too.’In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres.The Boy, who is no longer really a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is unguessable, are charged with its maintenance. They carry out their never-ending work as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. Land is only a memory.So too is the Boy’s father, who worked on the turbines before him, and disappeared.The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer.As the Old Man dredges the sea for lost things, the Boy sifts for the truth of his missing father. Until one day, from the limitless water, a plan for escape emerges…Doggerland is a haunting and beautifully compelling story of loneliness and hope, nature and survival.

    Now, as the holiday approaches, she is at a crossroads in her life; recently divorced and alone, she can’t summon the old enthusiasm for celebrating. So without telling anyone, she buys a ticket and boards a plane bound for the beautiful Pacific Northwest. When an unexpected detour takes her deep into the woods of the Olympic rainforest, Joy makes a bold decision to leave her ordinary life behind--to just walk away--and thus begins an adventure unlike any she could have imagined.In the small town of Rain Valley, six-year-old Bobby O’Shea is facing his first Christmas without a mother. Unable to handle the loss, Bobby has closed himself off from the world, talking only to his invisible best friend. His father Daniel is beside himself, desperate to help his son cope. Yet when the little boy meets Joy, these two unlikely souls form a deep and powerful bond. In helping Bobby and Daniel heal, Joy finds herself again.But not everything is as it seems in quiet Rain Valley, and in an instant, Joy’s world is ripped apart, and her heart is broken. On a magical Christmas Eve, a night of impossible dreams and unexpected chances, Joy must find the courage to believe in a love--and a family--that can’t possibly exist, and go in search of what she wants . . . and the new life only she can find.

    But Evan is greeting his son, Dean, fourteen years late. The boy had been shuttled secretly to another city, along with his teenaged mother, while still a newborn. Now his mother has passed away, and Evan is it—Dad. An instant single parent.   Evan was once lead guitarist for a hot band with a hit single; now 31, he gets by as a guitar instructor to middle-aged guys, and does menial work in a music shop. With Dean in the picture he has to change fast, which means facing up to the past, to his own father, and to the epilepsy that haunts him and threatens his every moment.

    Poor Alice Thrift: book-smart but people-hopeless. Alice graduated second in her class at medical school, but hospital life is proving quite a challenge. Evaluations describe her performance as 'workmanlike' and her people skills as 'hypothermic'. Luckily, Alice's roommate Leo, the most popular nurse at the hospital, and her feisty neighbour Sylvie, take on the task of guiding Alice through the narrow straits of her own no-rapport zone.When Ray Russo, a social-climbing fudge salesman, dedicates himself to a romantic pursuit, Leo and Sylvie harbour serious doubts. Yet as the chase intensifies, Alice's bedside manner begins to thaw. Can this dubious character be the one to lift Alice out of the depths of her social ineptitude? Written with bite, pace and effortless wit, this seriously funny novel puts romance under the microscope with hilarious consequences.