Showing results for "Literary Life" in Romance

Elizabeth Gaskell's remarkable first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life portrays a love that defies the rigid boundaries of class with tragic consequences.

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

The story of a relationship that everyone thought was forever and which is now in danger of being for never, The Break is about getting older and staying in love when life, real life, is trying to pull you apart.

After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises. The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles.

A cautionary tale of social climbing by Agatha Christie, written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie, famous for her ingenious crime novels, also wrote about crimes of the heart. Written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, Christie’s tales of romantic suspense further explore...

It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at the video game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived. The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever.

In Dorothy Whipple's High Wages, a determined young woman makes her way in the world against the looming backdrop of World War I. High Wages is more than a tale of savvy entrepreneurship: Jane’s thoughts, feelings, adventures and disappointments in love and friendship are all laid bare. Jane...

First published in three volumes in 1860 it tells the story of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up on the river Floss. Maggie is deeply attached to her brother but their conflicting temperaments and outlook produce only stress and misunderstanding until they are finally reconciled in a moment of revelation before tragedy overtakes them.

Lisa Edwards, top London magazine editor, has been fantasizing about promotion to New York. Instead, she's asked to launch a new women's magazine in Dublin. She thinks nothing could be worse - until she meets her new staff. They're friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic - in other words, they wouldn't last two minutes in London!

If ‘Life Begins at Forty’, then Charlotte Turner's not off to the best of starts. On top of a recent divorce, and trouble with her twelve-year-old son, the husband of her closest friend has just started to show a bit too much interest in her as a newly-single woman. But only when Charlotte has faced up to some uncomfortable truths about her past can she finally shed the unhappy skin she's been so comfortable in and open up her life – and her heart – to all the promise and possibility that her future holds.

So when mum of two Beth moves out of her beloved marital home and into an unloved and unkempt cottage, she can’t help but feel demoralised. Faced with months of DIY and dust, her children Jacob and Olivia aren’t impressed either. But when Beth finds a box of letters while she’s clearing out the children’s room, things start to look up.

In this delectable novel, a chef on the rise fuels her passion for cooking while enduring the hardest challenges she’s ever faced after a debilitating injury. Everybody wants a piece of grand chef Sophie Valroux. With her once-destroyed reputation fully recovered and then some, Sophie is...

When Gabby’s husband accepts a transfer to Pakistan, she discovers a new world of heat and colour, of exotic bazaars and trips to the breathtaking Kashmiri mountains. It's an escape she didn’t know she was looking for. But then a shocking letter from her sister reveals a devastating secret. Gabby is transported back to her childhood home on the Cornish coast, and as memories unravel, so too does her new life in Karachi. Will Gabby find the courage to face the dark secrets and embrace a different future?

Juliette always thought she’d have more time. But as her 40th birthday approaches she is dealt the deadliest of blows - she has just weeks to live. As the terrible news sinks in, Juliette’s only concern is for her 15-year-old daughter, Rosie. Who will take care of her precious child? Who will love her daughter with the same fierce love? The answer lies in a secret Juliette hoped never to reveal....

Twenty-eight-year-old Lana Green has never been good at making friends. She’s perfectly happy to be left alone with her books. Or at least that’s what she tells herself. Nancy Ellis Hall was once a celebrated writer. Now 80, she lives alone in her North London house and thinks she’s doing just fine. But dementia is loosening Nancy’s grip on the world. When Lana and Nancy become unconventional housemates, their lives will change in ways they never expected. But can an unusual friendship rescue two women who don’t realise they need to be saved?

Kate dreamed of a happy marriage, a house full of children and a fulfilling teaching career. But after twenty-five years of married life and about to hit the big 5-0, it’s clear that her dreams haven’t quite come true. Then her husband leaves her for his golf partner, forcing Kate to take stock of what has become of her life. Luckily, new friendship comes her way in the form of three feisty older women who take Kate under their wings, plus a new flame (could it be more . . .?) sparks with local divorced dad, Milo. As her big birthday approaches, Kate’s zest for life begins to return.

Brought to you by Penguin. Exquisitely written, sublimely fraught and erotically charged, How to Be Somebody Else is an uncoming of age in New York City Spring 2015, New York. On the surface Dylan has achieved the impossible - a life in New York, eight years of making this stick. And yet it is...

This delicious novel revolves around a classic love triangle: Two men and one woman. She is English, they are French and American. The Frenchman is married, the American is not. None of this makes any difference. The woman—elusive, unreliable, a classic femme fatale—flits back and forth between her two lovers, driving them both mad.

From Susan Vreeland, bestselling author of such acclaimed novels as Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Luncheon of the Boating Party, and Clara and Mr. Tiffany, comes a richly imagined story of a woman’s awakening in the south of Vichy France—to the power of art, to the beauty of provincial life, and to...

In this first of three books inspired by the life of Josephine Bonaparte, Sandra Gulland has created a novel of immense and magical proportions. We meet Josephine in the exotic and lush Martinico, where an old island woman predicts that one day she will be queen. The journey from the remote village of her birth to the height of European elegance is long, but Josephine's fortune proves to be true.