Showing titles in Friendship

From the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes an unforgettable story inspired by the true events of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition. ‘A gorgeous novel about making the best of things during difficult times, whilst celebrating the importance of sisterhood and...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Life without her would be death' The lost novel from the author of The Second Sex. The compulsive story of two friends growing up and falling apart. INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY. When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her...

Bristol 1938. A shadowy presence overshadows Coronation Close, watching and waiting. Jenny Crawford is the first to notice the stranger and wonders why his attention is fixed on Thelma Dawson’s house. When challenged he makes a hasty retreat. Meanwhile Thelma is having trouble with her precocious daughter Mary who is about to leave school and start work. Mary considers herself an adult but to Thelma she’s still a little girl; an attitude resented by her daughter.

San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.

Nightingale Books, nestled on the high street in the idyllic Cotswold town of Peasebrook, is a dream come true for booklovers. But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open. The temptation to sell up is proving enormous - but what about the promise she made to her father? Not...

When Nell’s father makes a deathbed declaration that hints at a long-held secret, it reignites feelings of isolation that have plagued her for years. Her suspicions about the family’s past only deepen when her mother, Annie, who is losing her memories to dementia, starts making cryptic comments of her own. Thirty-five years earlier, Annie’s life was upended by a series of traumas - one shock after another that she buried deep in her heart. The decisions she made at the time were motivated by love, but she knew even then that nobody could ever understand what she did.

Five years after seventy-something Tess jetted off to Paris with her best friends, Jen, Rose, Della and Pam - the Five French Hens - for Jen’s hen do, a lot has changed. Prospective groom Eddie has been given the heave-ho, Tess’s husband has been sent packing and the Hens are making the most of their golden years. But Tess is stuck in a rut. Rather than embrace her independence, she watches on as Rose wows Paris, Jen explores Iceland and Pam heads to Greece. But when tragedy strikes Della, Tess is shaken into action.

When Emma opened her gorgeous little chocolate shop in the harbour village of Warkton-by-the-Sea, she realised a lifelong dream. Love is also blossoming with her hunky beau, Max, who’s slowly healing her fragile heart. Summer is here and life has never felt so sweet. Until the rainclouds start to gather …

The new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Josephine Cox – the master storyteller. Finding a new beginning means taking the hardest road…but the journey is where you find your true courage. Torn away from their beloved home, the journey for the Carter family has just begun… In the...

Two weeks, four friends and one big bucket list of secrets to unravel. Val Murray and her best friend, Josie, had been planning a ‘Thelma and Louise’ bucket-list-style holiday. Now Josie is gone, and Val needs to make the trip before it’s too late. But Val doesn’t want to do it alone, so she enlists the help of her nieces, Carly and Carole, and their best pal, Jess, who jump at the chance to join Val on a trip of a lifetime. What Val doesn’t realise is that Carly, Carole and Jess are all at turning points in their own lives, nursing crushing secrets, lies and betrayals.

The original abridged recordings of the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga, in one collection! For almost four decades Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture—from a groundbreaking newspaper...

Sweden, late summer of 2011. Self-taught astrophysicist Petra has calculated that the atmosphere will collapse on the 21st of September that year, around 21.20 to be more precise, bringing about the end of times. Armed with this terrible knowledge, Petra meets Johan, a doomsday prophet, and Agnes, a widow of 75 who has made bank living a double life on social media as a young influencer. Together, the trio race through Europe as they plan to make the most out of the time they have left, in more ways than one. But of course, things rarely go to plan, even the end of the world.

Felicity was never meant to end up with a money-pit farmhouse to renovate and a broken heart to heal…But when Fliss attempts to drown the sorrow of seeing her ex-fiancé and his new wife’s magazine-worthy wedding all over social media, one rash decision loses her a job and gains her a doer-upper in the blink of an eye. The only bright spot of living in the country is the very dishy and very handy loveliest-man-ever Jesse Woods. And when Fliss’s new roof has an ill-advised meeting with a tree in the middle of the night resulting in her literally seeing stars, there’s only one thing for it.

Following the death of her controlling husband, Margaret Routledge is no longer the downtrodden church mouse she once was. Now she’s the talk of the Close, frequenting seedy pubs and clubs where men gather to pick up good-time girls. It seems Margaret is past redemption until she sees neighbour Jenny Crawford’s headstrong 16-year-old daughter Gloria on the arm of a man of ill repute, and her motherly instincts return. By contrast, Jenny's eldest, land girl Tilly, has a heart of gold, but trouble brews when she helps a vulnerable mother and child with a dangerous past...

Abbey Carter should be feeling on top of the world. She has the home of her dreams - a picturesque cottage just walking distance from her beloved Primrose Woods. She has a job she adores, great friends and most exciting of all - a wedding dress hanging in her wardrobe ready to be worn. So why does she feel so lonely?

With the echoes of war reverberating around London, Cordelia, Mavis, and Jane are delighted to be blessed with some good news: the King and his Queen will be making a visit to the East End. As excitement builds, so does their apprehension. With each passing day, the threat of destruction from air raids increasingly plagues their worried minds. But with Christmas on the horizon, their morale is at an all-time high, and the girls are determined to display to their esteemed guests all they have done with the library – and with so little.

Eve, Justin, Susie and Ed have been friends since they were 18. Now in their 30s, the four are still as close as ever, Thursday pub quiz night is still sacred and Eve is still secretly in love with Ed. Maybe Eve should have moved on by now, but she can’t stop thinking about what could have been. And she knows Ed sometimes thinks about it, too. Then one night, in an instant, all their lives change forever. And, as Eve learns she didn’t know her friends as well as she thought, she also discovers she isn’t the only person keeping secrets.

When he was nine, and his mother had her first deadly dance with cancer, Harry became a thief. Someone had to find food and pay the mortgage even if his mother was too sick to work. When his mother finally succumbs to cancer, Harry leaves Chicago but somehow he can't quite leave all of his past behind. Harry lives a quiet, careful, rootless life—he can't afford to attract attention or get attached—until he meets Miranda. But just when Harry thinks he has a chance at happiness his old life comes back to haunt him.

Sir Dominic De Lacy – one of the season’s most eligible gentlemen – has recently proposed marriage… to a woman he scarcely knows. But his father’s choice for him, Miss Maria Nightingale, seems amiable, and at 29, Dominic cannot live the life of a bachelor forever. He hopes he can provide a happy future for her as they learn to care for each other. Maria, however, has other ideas. Midway through their engagement celebrations, she confesses to Dominic that she is not Maria at all, but her identical twin sister, Margaret.

When Stefania Carmichael steps into the mysterious world of Bletchley Park, she immediately finds herself signing the Official Secrets Act. In whispers, she is told that she’s been recruited because of her talent for languages. Before the war ripped Europe apart, Stefania was living in Rome, charming everyone she met, and engaged to the man of her dreams, handsome and brave Matteo. And now everything has changed. With secrets swirling around the building, Stefania finds it hard to know who to trust, until she forms a close bond with two other new recruits.