No bombastic explosions, steamy sex scenes, political intrigue or cosmic encounters. Just slices of life from the people you walk by every day - glimpses into how ordinary people interact, how they think, how they feel and how they love. A contemporary novel exploring every day interactions and relationships.

    She loves illuminating history, filling the spaces in people's hearts with stories of their family legacies. But Tess's own history is filled with gaps: a father she never met, and a mother who spent more time traveling than with her daughter. Then Dominic Rossi arrives on the doorstep of the San Francisco shop Tess hopes to buy, and he tells her that the grandfather she never knew is in a coma. Tess has been named in his will to inherit half of Bella Vista, a hundred-acre apple orchard in the magical Sonoma town called Archangel. The rest is willed to Isabel Johansen. A half sister she hadn't heard of. Isabel is everything Tess isn't: all softness to Tess's hard angles, warm and nurturing where Tess is tightly wound. But against the rich landscape of Bella Vista, with Isabel and Dominic by her side, Tess begins to discover a world filled with the simple pleasures of food and family, of the warm earth beneath her bare feet. A world where family comes first and the roots of history run deep.

    For nineteen-year-old Mickey, Instagram offers a tantalizing portal into the world she wishes she inhabited. Though beautiful, cunning and privileged, Mickey finds herself with a stalled modelling career, an escalating drinking problem, few friends and next to nothing in the bank. To numb her growing despair, she spends her days frantically refreshing her Instagram feed, obsessively tracking the movements of Insta-famous model Gemma Anton.Gemma is a perfected version of Mickey, living a seemingly perfect life: a skyrocketing career, a famous photographer boyfriend and adoring followers--the life Mickey wants more than anything for herself. She studies every detail Gemma offers through the window of her phone, trying to absorb, learn, mimic, become the object of her growing fascination.Then, a chance encounter thrusts Mickey into a world of opportunity, and she is met with surprising, and immediate, success. But as her online persona begins to take over her life, Mickey finds it increasingly difficult to separate reality from the fa�ade of Instagram.Engrossing, sharp and astute, Like Me is a shimmering portrait of infatuation, disconnection and identity in the digital age--and a dazzling introduction to a brilliant new voice in contemporary literature.

    Back then Betty Stern was an eighteen-year-old knockout working at her grandparents’ lakeside resort. The “Catskills of the Midwest” was the perfect place for Betty to prepare for bigger things. She’d head to college in New York City. Her career as a fashion editor would flourish. But first, she’d enjoy a wondrous last summer at the beach falling deeply in love with an irresistible college boy and competing in the annual Miss South Haven pageant. On the precipice of a well-planned life, Betty’s future was limitless.Decades later, the choices of that long-ago season still reverberate for Betty, now known as Boop. Especially when her granddaughter comes to her with a dilemma that echoes Boop’s memories of first love, broken hearts, and faraway dreams. It’s time to finally face the past—for the sake of her family and her own happiness. Maybe in reconciling the life she once imagined with the life she’s lived, Boop will discover it’s never too late for a second chance.

    Now, in this original short story, available exclusively as an eBook, Picoult introduces Serenity Jones, one of the fascinating characters from her eagerly awaited new novel, Leaving Time. Even as a child, Serenity Jones knew she possessed unusual psychic gifts. Now, decades later, she’s an acclaimed medium and host of her own widely viewed TV show, where she delivers messages to the living from loved ones who have passed. Lately, though, her efforts to boost ratings and garner fame have compromised her clairvoyant instincts. When Serenity books a young war widow to appear as a guest, the episode quickly unravels, stirring up a troubling controversy. And as she tries to undo the damage—to both her reputation and her show—Serenity finds that pride comes at a high price.

    But when she returns, Viola is gone. A breaking point in an already fractured marriage, Viola’s abduction causes Ellis to disappear as well—into grief, guilt, and addiction. Convinced she can only do more harm to her family, Ellis leaves her husband and young sons, burying her desperate ache for her children deeper with every step into the mountain wildernesses she treks alone.In a remote area of Washington, a young girl named Raven keeps secrets inside, too. She must never speak to outsiders about how her mother makes miracles spring from the earth, or about her father, whose mysterious presence sometimes frightens her. Raven spends her days learning how to use her rare gifts—and more important, how to hide them. With each lesson comes a warning of what dangers lie in the world beyond her isolated haven. But despite her mother’s cautions, Raven finds herself longing for something more.As Ellis and Raven each confront their powerful longings, their journeys will converge in unexpected and hopeful ways, pulled together by the forces of nature, love, and family.

    Sex is not always awesome; it can be awkward and embarrassing, and it has consequences. You don't always fall for Mr Right, even if he falls for you. And realising you're in love is not always good news. It can make the future look daunting.Jess has made a series of bad choices. Job, relationships and life-style have all let her down. By escaping the turmoil of her London life, she is putting her young child first. This time she wants to get it right, to devote herself to being a mother. But the country does not offer the i ‘good life ’idyll she pictured. The landscape she looks out on is under threat, new friends have hidden agendas, two very different men pull her in opposing directions. In the face of temptation old habits die hard. She is torn between the suitable man and the unsuitable boy.E Book linkhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Torn-Gilli-Al...Paperback linkhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Torn-Gilli-Al...

    She's left that life far behind, and has no intention of returning to it. At least not until her best friends talk her into a crazy scheme to "bring down" Public Enemy Number 1: Sam Kenneman.Sam Kenneman has every woman in the country up in arms about his new bestseller, 101 Ways To Avoid Commitment. The book's supposed to be a joke--but women aren't getting it. Now he just wants the frenzy to die down so life can go back to normal.Her goal? Teach him a lesson.His goal? Don't fall for the sexy blonde.The problem? They can't resist each other!

    But then her work as an expert of fine china—especially of Limoges—requires her to return to the one place she swore she’d never revisit...It’s been ten years since Georgia left her family home on the coast of Florida, and nothing much has changed, except that there are fewer oysters and more tourists. She finds solace seeing her grandfather still toiling away in the apiary where she spent much of her childhood, but encountering her estranged mother and sister leaves her rattled.Seeing them after all this time makes Georgia realize that something has been missing—and unless she finds a way to heal these rifts, she will forever be living vicariously through other people’s remnants. To embrace her own life—mistakes and all—she will have to find the courage to confront the ghosts of her past and the secrets she was forced to keep...

    After her father’s disappearance when she was six, she has alone borne the burden of her mother’s bipolar disorder. When her mother is institutionalized after a failed suicide attempt, Mia is abruptly forced to live with the estranged father she has not known for ten years. She is shocked to discover that he has created a new, picture-perfect life for himself, and is now living with a stepmother and a half-sister Mia never knew she had. Together, Mia and her new family must face the bitterness, mistakes, and long-hidden secrets that threaten to destroy their precarious happiness. Finding Mia follows Mia's journey as she searches to find the unanswered questions from her past, leading to her own self-discovery.Ultimately, this is a story of confronting pain and finding freedom, of letting go and learning to search for love in unexpected places.

    The story captures the struggles of a family as it was pulled apart by poverty and alcohol, yet bound by witty—and sometimes ribald—humor.The cast of characters reads like fiction, but it is actually truth. There’s the father, the sarcastic, anti-government, alcoholic, and general ne’er-do-well. He moved his family from state to state, only to leave them again for years at a time in search of construction work. He’d return with empty pockets and bizarre interests such as ESP, pyramid power, and telekinesis. The mother, an Irish Catholic, stayed devoted to him.Her lack of education and access to transportation in a small town led to a dependence upon welfare.Two older sisters complete the picture, acting as sources of tension and strength throughout the book. And then there’s the narrator, the youngest—the snoop, the clown, and the observer.In the spirit of memoirs such as Blackbird and Angela’s Ashes, the narrative addresses serious issues while avoiding self-pity. Don’t Spend it All on Candy continuously comes back to the humor that sustained them while celebrating the tenacity that led all three daughters to break the cycle of poverty.

    In the time it takes to fly from London to Chicago, each finds something in the other that they didn't even realise they needed.Their pasts are such that they can never make one another happy and it's when they get off the plane, that their true journey begins...

    She also cannot forget the day her stepfather sent her away to a group home. Now, years later in Vancouver, she has met a man who can make her forget all that.The God of My Art is layered with unforgettable scenes of youth, obsessive love, and artistic longing. At the core of this coming-of-age tale are the shifting faces of Helene--teenage runaway, university student, and budding artist. Related in her engaging voice, this novel chronicles Helene's seminal love affair with Matthew, a globetrotting mountaineer passionate about Nietzsche, and the art he inspires within her. As she wrestles to become the artist she wants to be, she encounters unforgettable characters along the way, including Hana, a lesbian theatre student fed up with her partner's multiple affairs, and Laurent, a French exchange student who grapples with existential questions of his own.Bold and poetic, sensual and confessional, The God of My Art explores obsessive love as a source of inspiration for art, where the artist is female and the eternal muse, male.

    Sure, she loves fostering shelter dogs, but she never imagined herself as a mother. Anxious to be an aunt, her sister starts pressuring her to be someone she’s not. Her new friend wants her to stay fun and unencumbered. When Hope’s ex says he wants back in her life, she feels like it might be what’s best for her baby. Pulling away from her sister, Hope spends more time with her new friend and risks letting her ex break her heart all over again.

    When her boss sends her to Ruby Lake, a small, rural town in northern Wisconsin, the last thing she was looking for was love at first sight, not to mention a place in the world where she finally fits. Add in her city-savvy best friend, a jealous ex-girlfriend, a famous father, and a coffee shop full of off-the wall characters, and it becomes more challenging for Sydney to manage than a spinning plate competition. When disaster strikes close to home, Sydney is left with the unbearable choice of her family, or the life she has always dreamed of. Come with Sydney on her journey and laugh, cry and rediscover why some choices are not really choices at all, they are simply fate.