Showing results for "Literary Life" in Contemporary

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.

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!

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....

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.

In the bustling world of Dublin's advertising scene, Kitty O’Sullivan, a copywriter, feels an unexplainable void in her life that she can't quite pinpoint. Her five-year relationship with Dave is stagnant, her creative juices have dried up and she’s even entertaining thoughts of marriage as a cure-all! Something’s missing from her life but she can’t work out exactly what it is…When Dave decides to take time out from ‘them’, Kitty finds herself momentarily liberated to explore life and have some fun. She and best friend Shazza are corralled into joining a five-aside football team.

Harvard physiologist Robert Merriwether has four whip-smart children, an attractive and intelligent wife, and a successful, stimulating career. True, he and Sarah have not slept together in years, and when he decides to stay behind in Cambridge for the summer while the rest of the family vacations in Maine, his newfound freedom is deeply unsettling. But that does not mean that Merriwether wants to change his life or feels unloved.

When Sara Hardy inherits a cottage in the small town of Redemption, Connecticut, it is just the break she needs to draw a line under her past - to begin again, on her own. Sara never thought she'd be starting over. She was married, successful, and the mother of a beautiful girl. But the life she thought was on the right path has taken a series of wrong turns...

What happens to you when you love someone with all of your heart, but that love has nowhere to go? Heartthrob, Cole Harkin, counted his blessings with a gorgeous wife and the couple's excitement of a first baby on the way. Just when he thought his world was complete, Cole becomes devastated and overwhelmed when his future is ripped from under his feet.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Samantha Bonti knew the writer's life she was meant to live waited across the bridge in Manhattan. Summoning the courage to break free from an abusive mobster boyfriend, Sam finally leaves Bensonhurst and begins her new life, working as a temp in a Wall Street brokerage firm. Quickly, she's swept off her feet by Wall Street player Alec DeMarco, a man of boundless energy, appetites, desires, and the wealth to indulge it all.

Jojo Harvey is a literary agent whose star is on the rise. In love with both her married boss and her burgeoning career, not much distracts her. Until she finds herself representing two women who used to be best friends. Used to be....

Ingrid is desperate to sell up and move on. Recently widowed, she no longer needs the large house or the treasures (and tat) collected by her late husband, Tommy, an auctioneer. Then there’s the debt he left her with, too. So, she jumps at the chance to downsize and move to Willowbrook on a temporary lease. She’ll open a pop-up shop for just one year – to dispose of Tommy’s accumulated goods – and then move on. No getting embroiled in village life. But Ingrid hasn’t reckoned on Willowbrook’s extrovert local ladies. Or handsome local craftsman Joel, with whom there’s a definite attraction.

Single mum, Holly Wilson, and her twenty-year-old son Harry have an enviably close relationship but when Harry finds out that she is pregnant and, for reasons unknown to all but herself, intends to raise the baby alone again, he begins to question her decision not to tell him about his own father, who abandoned them before his birth. Upon discovering his father’s name, Harry secretly embarks on his search for the truth, a search which takes him to Los Angeles where he uncovers a tragic story.

Freelance writer Jacqueline Tate arrives in Los Angeles and soon meets brilliant, award-winning scientist Randall Atwater, the man she's come to cover at a conference on trends and technology. He is everything she's read about - brainy, witty, handsome, and cool. And after a week spent with the most fascinating man she's ever known, there's no way she can give him up. There's just one problem: Randall's wife of 20 years. No matter - men like Randall are few and far between.

Milla has always felt alone in the world. The only child of a distant mother, she has no other family, and even her forthcoming marriage to Paul feels more like settling than true romance. But then a letter arrives, announcing that a Spanish grandmother she knew nothing about has died and left her a small shop in Mallorca. Milla is determined to uncover the truth. She travels to Palma, where she is enchanted by the beauty of the old town in springtime. At the shop she now owns, she meets Leandro, a handsome local who helps her piece together the story of her grandmother.

No new people: that's Annie Mercer's vow. It's bad enough that her boss sabotaged her chemistry career and her best friend tried to cure her with crystals. But after her fiancé, Jon, asks for space while he's gallivanting around Paris, Annie decides she needs space too - from everyone. Yet when Harper moves in next door, Annie can't help but train a watchful eye on the glamorous but fragile young woman. And if keeping Harper safe requires teaming up with Mo, a maddeningly optimistic amateur detective, who is she to mind her own business?

Thomasina "Hitch" Waycott loves living and working on the remote family farm and B&B. But she also wants more. To see the world. To own her own home. To fall madly in love. But those are fairy tales, and if her life is a fairy tale, then she’s the ugly duckling. Her deformed lip, her crooked limbs and her weak heart have kept her from taking chances. But that’s about to change. When Grayson Potts comes to stay, he’s unlike anyone Thomasina has ever met.