One for My Baby


Tony Parsons - 2001
    Full of biting social commentary and overwhelming emotion, One for My Baby is a warm and witty novel of love, family, sex, and Tai Chi. Returning to London from Hong Kong after a brief, idyllic marriage ends in tragedy, Alfie Budd finds his world collapsing. Believing his chance for love has passed, he takes comfort in fleeting affairs with his students at Churchill's Language School while watching his parents' marriage, his grandmother's health, and his career ambitions rapidly deteriorate. But then Alfie meets two people who help him to start healing: the old Chinese man he sees practicing Tai Chi in the park every morning and a single mother who needs Alfie's help in completing her education. Soon, our bereft widower is learning much more than Tai Chi and falling for one student above all others. But can Alfie give up meaningless sex for a meaningful relationship? And how much room in our hearts do we really have for love?

Seven Steps to Treason


Michael Hartland - 1979
    the plot skips around like gunfire on the ricochet." - LOS ANGELES TIMES "Superior stuff - taut, well observed, original and civilized." - THE TIMES "The women are not mere decoration; they are at the heart of the action." - THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR "Suspense builds from start to finish... the author will rank alongside le Carre, Deighton, and Follett." - WEST COAST REVIEW OF BOOKS VIENNA late 1980s - violence is breaking out in strife-torn Poland. A spark that could set the Soviet prison of Eastern Europe ablaze. There are dangerous Western plans to ensure that the inevitable rising will not be a repeat of Hungary in 1956. In Moscow, faceless men and women know that Bill Cable, after years banished to diplomatic backwaters, is into something big - so big they will destroy him to get it. If they fail, this could mean the end for the Soviet Union. They've had a stranglehold on Cable ever since the tragedy, deep in the past, that led to him being kicked out of the Intelligence Service. Now he is back, as British Ambassador in Vienna. Still compromised but, just to make sure, they kidnap his daughter, Sarah, and threaten her life. Will he betray her - or his country and the freedom of millions?

Exclusive


Sandra Brown - 1996
    Then, suddenly, she receives an invitation from First Lady Vanessa Merritt for an off-the-record conversation. Barrie's reporter's instincts are instantly aroused. During a furtive, emotionally charged meeting, Barrie sees that the President's beautiful wife is stunned by grief after the crib death of her infant son. Vanessa's motive for meeting Barrie seems to be to share her heartache with another woman. What Barrie overlooks in her excitement at hearing the confidences of the First Lady are the questions she should be asking: Why would Vanessa Merritt call her? And why would the President's wife hint to an unknown reporter that her child may have been murdered? Blind to everything but getting her exclusive, Barrie is determined to investigate the death of the President's child. But she soon realizes that getting her story will test her ethics and her patriotism. Would she expose information that could topple the presidency? She confronts this problem when she tracks down Gray Bondurant, a former presidential aide and war hero who shunned the politics of Washington in favor of life on a remote Wyoming ranch. And when they both begin to follow a trail of lies and intrigue right to the White House door, Barrie's exclusive puts at least three people on the firing line: the First Lady, Gray, and herself - as crimes and ambitions combine to endanger their lives and the future of the nation.

Acts of Love


Judith Michael - 1991
    . . the glitter of Broadway . . . the spectacular vistas of Sydney, Australia . . . and the myriad acts of love that will reunite a lost woman with her dreams, her destiny, and the one man who truly believes in her talent--and in their love. . . .When director Lucas Cameron finds letters to his grandmother from her protégé--the brilliant young actress Jessica Fontaine--who had vanished mysteriously after a tragic accident, he is intrigued, and determined to find her. When finally they meet, they have one magic week of passion and love. But still Jessica cannot return with Lucas to his world--and he cannot share hers--unless they discover the many kinds of love, and the inner strength, that can triumph over the past and open the way for their hands and hearts to join.

Tell Me Lies


Carola Lovering - 2018
    The wrong one. The one you couldn’t let go of. The one you’ll never forget.Lucy Albright is far from her Long Island upbringing when she arrives on the campus of her small California college, and happy to be hundreds of miles from her mother, whom she’s never forgiven for an act of betrayal in her early teen years. Quickly grasping at her fresh start, Lucy embraces college life and all it has to offer—new friends, wild parties, stimulating classes. And then she meets Stephen DeMarco. Charming. Attractive. Complicated. Devastating. Confident and cocksure, Stephen sees something in Lucy that no one else has, and she’s quickly seduced by this vision of herself, and the sense of possibility that his attention brings her. Meanwhile, Stephen is determined to forget an incident buried in his past that, if exposed, could ruin him, and his single-minded drive for success extends to winning, and keeping, Lucy’s heart. Alternating between Lucy’s and Stephen’s voices, Tell Me Lies follows their connection through college and post-college life in New York City. Deep down, Lucy knows she has to acknowledge the truth about Stephen. But before she can free herself from this addicting entanglement, she must confront and heal her relationship with her mother—or risk losing herself in a delusion about what it truly means to love. With the psychological insight and biting wit of Luckiest Girl Alive, and the yearning ambitions and desires of Sweetbitter, this keenly intelligent and staggeringly resonant novel chronicles the exhilaration and dilemmas of young adulthood, and the difficulty of letting go, even when you know you should.

Thrill


Jackie Collins - 1998
    She could have any man -- but the one she can't resist is a mysterious lover with a shadowed past. As their jolting affair skyrockets with electric passion, shocking secrets break through their hidden traps -- in a brilliantly twisting story that sparks with the explosive Jackie Collins touch.

The Case of Lisandra P.


Hélène Grémillon - 2013
    When a beautiful young woman named Lisandra is found dead at the foot of a six-story building, her husband, a psychoanalyst, is immediately arrested for her murder. Convinced of Vittorio’s innocence, one of his patients, Eva Maria, is drawn into the investigation seemingly by chance. As she combs through secret recordings of Vittorio’s therapy sessions in search of the killer—could it be the powerful government figure? the jealous woman? the musician who’s lost his reason to live?—Eva Maria must confront her most painful memories, and some of the darkest moments in Argentinian history.In breathless prose that captures the desperate spinning of a frantic mind, Hélène Grémillon blurs the lines of past and present, personal and political, reality and paranoia in this daring and compulsively readable novel.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Volume I


Anne Brontë - 1848
    The character development is very strong and realistic, and the dialogue of the novel is very powerful.

The Magnolia Inn


Carolyn Brown - 2019
    After living with the guilt of failing to rescue her self-destructive mother, Jolene knows her aunt and uncle’s B&B is the perfect jump start for a new life and a comforting place to call home. There’s just one hitch: stubborn and moody carpenter Tucker Malone. He’s got a half interest in the Magnolia Inn, and he’s planting his dusty cowboy boots squarely in the middle of her dream.Ever since his wife’s death, Tucker’s own guilt and demons have left him as guarded as Jolene. The last thing he expects is for his new partner to stir something inside him he thought was gone forever. And as wary as Jolene is, she may have found a kindred spirit—someone she can help, and someone she can hold on to.Restoring the Magnolia Inn is the first step toward restoring their hearts. Will they be able to let go of the past and trust each other to do it together?

The Girl He Used to Know


Tracey Garvis Graves - 2019
    She feels lost in social situations, saying the wrong thing or acting the wrong way. She just can't read people. She prefers the quiet solitude of books or playing chess to being around others. Apart from Jonathan. She liked being around him, but she hasn't seen him for ten years. Until now that is. And she's not sure he'll want to see her again after what happened all those years ago. Annika Rose likes being alone.Except that, actually, she doesn't like being alone at all.The Girl He Used to Know is an uplifting novel full of surprising revelations that keep you turning the page. Perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes, Gail Honeyman, Jill Santopolo and Sliding Doors.

See Me


Nicholas Sparks - 2015
    . .Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. With a history of violence and bad decisions behind him and the threat of prison dogging his every step, he's determined to walk a straight line. To Colin, that means applying himself single-mindedly toward his teaching degree and avoiding everything that proved destructive in his earlier life. Reminding himself daily of his hard-earned lessons, the last thing he is looking for is a serious relationship.Maria Sanchez, the hardworking daughter of Mexican immigrants, is the picture of conventional success. With a degree from Duke Law School and a job at a prestigious firm in Wilmington, she is a dark-haired beauty with a seemingly flawless professional track record. And yet Maria has a traumatic history of her own, one that compelled her to return to her hometown and left her questioning so much of what she once believed.A chance encounter on a rain-swept road will alter the course of both Colin and Maria's lives, challenging deeply held assumptions about each other and ultimately, themselves. As love unexpectedly takes hold between them, they dare to envision what a future together could possibly look like . . . until menacing reminders of events in Maria's past begin to surface.Rich in emotion and fueled with suspense, SEE ME reminds us that love is sometimes forged in the crises that threaten to shatter us . . . and that those who see us for who we truly are may not always be the ones easiest to recognize.

The Needle in the Blood


Sarah Bower - 2007
    Charismatic bishop Odo of Bayeux commissions a wall hanging, on a scale never seen before, to celebrate the conquest of Britain by his brother, William, Duke of Normandy. What he cannot anticipate is how utterly this will change his life-even more than the invasion itself.His life becomes entangled with the women who embroider his hanging, especially Gytha-handmaiden to the fallen Saxon queen and his sworn enemy. But against their intentions, they fall helplessly in love. Friends become enemies, enemies become lovers; nothing in life or in the hanging is what it seems.

The Last Princess


Cynthia Freeman - 1960
    Yet on the night of her wedding she threw it all away...for the love of another man. Harry Kohle was everything her parents despised- with nothing to offer but a driving ambition to write. And his undivided passion-at least for a while...From the high society of New York's Upper East Side to the corrupting glamour of Hollywood and the haunting beauty of the Israeli desert; through hardship, tragedy and the fruits of fabulous wealth-their hearts were challenged by the ultimate test...

Miss You


Kate Eberlen - 2016
    They just haven't met properly yet. And perhaps they never will . . . Today is the first day of the rest of your life is the motto on a plate in the kitchen at home, and Tess can't get it out of her head, even though she's in Florence for a final, idyllic holiday before university. Her life is about to change forever - but not in the way she expects. Gus and his parents are also on holiday in Florence. Their lives have already changed suddenly and dramatically. Gus tries to be a dutiful son, but longs to escape and discover what sort of person he is going to be. For one day, the paths of an eighteen-year-old girl and boy criss-cross before they each return to England.Over the course of the next sixteen years, life and love will offer them very different challenges. Separated by distance and fate, there's no way the two of them are ever going to meet each other properly . . . or is there?

Absent in the Spring


Mary Westmacott - 1944
    This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself. Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her.