Out with white gloves and flower arranging, in with managing mortgagesand do-it-yourself manicures! Behind this remarkable transformation is business-savvy Betsy Phillimore, with her own unique connection to London's esteemed Phillimore Academy for Young Ladies....Twenty-seven years ago, an infant turned up on the Academy's doorstep, with a note tacked to her blanket by an elegant golden brooch -- "Please take care of my baby. I want her to grow up to be a proper lady." Loved by Lady Frances Phillimore and her kindhearted staff, Betsy grew up aspiring to be an Academy girl. But when Franny and her husband, Lord Phillimore, advise Betsy to instead hone her considerable math skills at college, she brokenheartedly leaves behind the only family she's known.Now, on the sad occasion of Lady Frances's memorial service, Betsy comes back to find the school in disrepair, the enrollment down, and Lord P. desperate to save his legacy. Enter Betsy, the numbers genius, and her business plan -- to replace dusty protocol with the essentials girls need today: "cell phone etiquette, eating sushi properly, handling credit cards, choosing the perfect little black dress, negotiating a pre-nup, " and other lessons in independent living.But Betsy may have bitten off more than she can chew. Can she win over the school's snobby headmistress and its handsome but risk-averse treasurer? Returning to London also means facing her own unfinished business, as she crosses paths with her sexy girlhood crush...and blowing the dust off clues to a lifelong mystery: who were her parents, and why did they abandon her? If knowledge is power, Betsy is on the brink of truly becoming her own woman, and embracing the one thing she's wanted all along: a place to call home.A bittersweet journey of laughter and tears, "The Finishing Touches" will have you gleefully turning pages through dinner with elbows on the table -- bad manners, perhaps, but excusable for one utterly irresistible read.

     Harper Bennett’s motto is work hard, play hard. Lately, she’s forgotten the latter and has focused her time as part-owner, along with her brothers, of the hottest nightclub in Atlanta. When an intriguing client enters, Harper forgoes her promise to never date a man that doesn’t live in the same city and she finds herself playing hard to get with Hunter Arrington. The passion that has ignited between them can’t be extinguished, and she dreads the day he has to leave. Hunter travels the world because of his career and has no intentions of settling down until his eyes land on Harper Bennett. There’s something about the petite, sassy woman that he adores and makes him feel at home for the first time in years. Now he’s faced with a life-changing decision and the thought of being without Harper isn’t an option. Be sure to check out the other novellas in this series. (The novellas can be read in any order) A Passionate Kiss by Sharon C. Cooper A Passionate Love by Delaney Diamond

    With conflicting claims and scandalous rumours surrounding a teacher's relationship with a student, only a fly on the wall can know what really happened.

    Rupert and his American lover Allan were all part of her new, exciting life, and when Rupert suggested to her that she and Allan should get married, just so that Allan could stay in the country, Milly didn't hesitate, and to make it seem real she dressed up in cheap wedding finery and posed on the steps of the registry office for photographs.Ten years later, Milly is a very different person. Engaged to Simon - who is wealthy, serious, and believes her to be perfect - she is facing the biggest and most elaborate wedding imaginable. Her mother has it planned to the finest detail, from the massive marquee to the sculpted ice swans filled with oysters. Her dreadful secret is locked away so securely she has almost persuaded herself that it doesn't exist - until, with only four days to go, her past catches up with her.Suddenly, her carefully constructed world is about to crash in ruins around her. How can she tell Simon she's already married? How can she tell her mother? But as the crisis develops, more secrets are revealed than Milly could possibly have realised...

    That’s when she’s not the dancer on the Gram and TikTok, dating the latest Black Hollywood shooting star.To her, Jas, a construction laborer, is a walking conundrum. He’s fruitlessly ambitious yet steadfast in his spiritual convictions. He’s enigmatic, well-read, regimented, and poor. Oh, and a felon. An incredibly disarming parolee who wants no connection to her. Until he does.Two souls, galaxies apart. He’s an unanticipated UFO about to collide in her world like an unmitigated asteroid.Publisher’s Note: “Mercy” is book ONE of a THREE book series. It ends on a suspenseful CLIFFHANGER. This book contains angst, violence, profanity, sexually explicit content, and potential gory material. If any of these elements is not what you prefer between the pages of a novel, this is not the venture for you.

    Jenny, his wife, is a stylist whose heart and soul are invested in fashion. She leaves the milieu and life she loves to join him. The certainty they share is that their destinies are linked forever. Fast forward thirty-eight years. Robert is a hardworking independent book publisher in Manhattan who has given up all personal life to build his struggling business. He is looking for one big hit novel to publish. Lillibet is a young Amish woman, living as though in the seventeenth century, caring for her widowed father and three young brothers on their family farm. In secret at night, by candlelight, she has written the novel that burns within her, and gets it into Robert’s hands, wrapped in her hand-stitched apron. He falls in love first with the book, and then with the woman he has never met, living in the sequestered world of the Amish—a world without telephones, computers, electricity, modern conveniences, or cars. Although Lillibet faces banishment from her family and community, she embraces the opportunity to publish her novel, and is irresistibly drawn to the man who has heard her voice. Destiny is at work here. Fate draws her from her horse-and-buggy life toward his, and the publication of her novel.In the hands of master storyteller Danielle Steel, these two remarkable relationships come together in unexpected and surprising ways, as lovers are lost, and find each other again. If it is true that real love lasts forever and lovers cannot lose each other, then Until the End of Time will not only comfort and fascinate us, as destiny does her dance, but it will give us hope as well. Love and fate are powerful, irresistible forces, as Steel proves to us here, in a book about courage, change, risk, and hope . . . and love that never dies.

    And look for Eat Your Heart Out, featuring Cami’s twin sister!As an interior designer and an identical twin, Cami Anderson wants her home to be unique, so she hires a master carpenter to help. She’s expecting an older man, someone kindly, experienced. In her wildest dreams, she hadn’t figured on Tanner McCall, who’s not old, not kind, but most definitely experienced…and seems more than a little interested in her blind date disasters!Originally published in 2001.

    That's what Lauren decides to leave her husband when she finds out she's dying. Each month, she gives Josh a letter containing a task to help him face this first year without her, leading him on a heartrending, beautiful, often humorous journey to find happiness again in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins. Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they're wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness. As Lauren's disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future--a future without the only woman he's ever loved. He's so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren. But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It's a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed...from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn't Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren's most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn't follow a straight line. Sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, and always uplifting, this novel from New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins illuminates how life's greatest joys are often hiding in plain sight.

    And now she’s throwing a Hissy Fit, in the best possible sense. A delicious tale of revenge and renovation, Hissy Fit tells of a wronged spitfire who’s determined to see that the no-good lowdown, lying, cheating varmint of an ex-fiancé who ruined her life and her business gets the comeuppance he so richly deserves…even as she struggles to revitalize a broken-down antebellum mansion for a hunky, if slightly odd, local businessman. If you like the novels of Fannie Flagg, Jennifer Crusie, Adriana Trigiani, and Emily Giffin, or are a devoted follower of Rebecca Wells or Jill Conner Browne’s Sweet Potato Queens, then Mary Kay’s Hissy Fit is not to be missed.

    What does she know about camping? Nada. Zilch. Heck, she doesn’t even like picnics. And the thought of sleeping amid bugs and wild animals knots her stomach.No way can she risk looking like an idiot in front of her colleagues. Taking proactive measures, she acquires the services of a guide to give her a crash-course in camping. Seven days living off the land. How hard could it be? Nona swallows those words when she meets the sexy titan tasked with leading her into the wild. Getting mauled by a bear quickly becomes the least of her worries.Mason Tinsdale’s first love has always been oil rigging. But a horrible accident has him doubting the job—more importantly, himself. Seven days in the Indigo Falls wilderness is just what he needs to sort out his thoughts. Then he meets Nona Rogers. He’s convinced the gorgeous woman is going to be far more trouble than she’s worth. And he’s right. However, there’s something about the feisty vixen that makes her irresistible.Two guarded hearts. Seven days alone. An attraction that can’t be denied.

    But the day he meets Ameenah, he becomes consumed by an entirely different and more attractive distraction--his bold, beautiful, sexy neighbor with the "glorious hips" and a penchant for ice cream. Ameenah Porter, daughter of successful New York restaurateurs, moves to the beach town of Black Diamond to fulfill her dream of opening a smoothie shop. She doesn't need the distraction of a new man but the tall, dark and handsome Wade, who's staying in the giant sized home at the end of her block, is irresistible. Ameenah's days at Tikis & Cream are spent cooling off her customers with her gourmet smoothie blends. Her nights on the shores of Black Diamond Bay are enchanting and romantic, and soon Wade and Ameenah find themselves in the middle of a Beach Thing... a fun, meaningless tryst that will end when the summer is over. Or will it? Wade is returning to Brooklyn at the end of the summer. Ameenah lives on Black Diamond. Neither want this Beach Thing to end... so is this fling really a fling or is it the beginning of something real... and will they realize it in time?Indulge in a fun, steamy #beachyblackromance and join me on Black Diamond.

    Still, Callie Smith doesn't know how to feel when she discovers she has a brother and a sister--Malcolm, who grew up with affection, wealth and privilege, and Keira, a streetwise twelve-year-old. Callie doesn't love being alone, but at least it's safe. Despite her trepidation, she moves into the grand family home with her siblings and grandfather on the shores of Lake Washington, hoping just maybe this will be the start of a whole new life.But starting over can be messy. Callie and Keira fit in with each other, but not with their posh new lifestyle, leaving Malcolm feeling like the odd man out in his own home. He was clever enough to turn a sleepy Seattle mail-order food catalog into an online gourmet powerhouse, yet he can't figure out how to help his new sisters feel secure. But affection isn't Malcolm's strong suit...until a beautiful barista teaches him that an open heart, like the family table, can always make room for more.In this emotional, humorous and heartfelt story, Susan Mallery masterfully explores the definition of a modern family--blended by surprise, not by choice--and how those complicated relationships can add unexpected richness to life.

    Set on the sun-soaked beaches of Thailand and the rough waters of the Indian Ocean, The Unimaginable paints a vivid portrait of a young woman on a journey to find herself—and her harrowing fight for survival.After twenty-eight years of playing by the rules, Jessica Gregory moves from her small Indiana town to Phuket, Thailand. But her newfound routine is upended with the arrival of Grant Flynn, a captivating, elusive man who is sailing around the world while trying to move on from a past tragedy. Jessica volunteers to help crew Grant’s boat, Imagine, on a passage across the Indian Ocean and finds herself falling in love with him as the voyage gets underway. But when disaster strikes, Jessica must summon her courage as the crew is confronted by unspeakable terrors—and, aboard a boat named for such promise, comes the unimaginable.

    Liz is content for things to stay just the way they are. But John's feelings for Liz begin to grow beyond a platonic friendship.Can he convince Liz to open her eyes and her heart to the beauty of what could be?

    The oldest of three adopted daughters, Callie Hart has always lo ved being the protector of the fa mily. But now she is all grown up—with a young son of her own to protect. Callie can’t wait to show him off when s he reunites with her two sisters in Ohio. But that also means coming face to face with the lover she left behind. Nigel Williams is even more irresistibly attractive than ever. But what will he do when he learns about the secret she kept hidden from him for ten years? Nigel has never forgiven Callie for fleeing Ohio—and the passion they shared. And when she shows up on his doorstep asking for forgiveness, the Cleveland cop is furious at her deception. But how can he deny the feelings Callie reawakens in him? Blindsided once again by the heat of desire, Nigel vows to fight for his future with the woman he has always loved. Three Harts. Three Loves. The Reunion of a Lifetime.