Showing results for "Margaret" in Women's Fiction

BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HANDMAID'S TALE AND THE TESTAMENTS WINNER OF THE 2000 MAN BOOKER PRIZE 'Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge' Decades after Laura's mysterious demise, her sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic...

Hester (1883) is a dramatic story of female power and family tensions within Victorian society. Using her own money, Catherine Vernon manages to save the family bank from collapse after her cousin John absconds with some of its money. As the matriarch of Redborough, Catherine is used to commanding authority, but this is challenged with the arrival of John’s strong and capable teenage daughter, Hester. Ignorant of her father’s conduct, Hester takes against Catherine and a mutual antipathy soon sets in. A masterpiece of domestic realism, the novel is one of Mrs Oliphant’s most admired works.

Lovers of classical fiction will enjoy viewing life through the lens of Jane Ward as she grapples with the meaning of love in this 1931 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Generational pressures are on full display over the course of four decades, as we see her struggle with her upbringing by Victorian parents, yet strain to understand her own children’s life choices, as the Roaring 20’s boasts dramatic changes in societal norms.

Life is hard enough for a teenage girl in 1950s suburbia without having a mother who may—or may not—be a witch. A single mother at that. Sure, she fits in with her starched dresses, string of pearls, and floral aprons. Then there are the hushed and mystical consultations with neighborhood women in distress. The unsavory, mysterious plants in the flower beds. The divined warning to steer clear of a boyfriend whose fate is certainly doomed.

From the bestselling author of Haven Point comes a sweeping historical novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on the rocky Maine coastline, for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Beatriz Williams, and Sarah Blake. 1900: 28-year-old Anna Bradley spends summer days...

Rennie Wilford, a young jounalist running from her life, takes an assignment to a Caribbean island and tumbles into a world where no one is what they seem. When the burnt-out Yankee Paul (does he smuggle dope or hustle for the CIA?) offers her a no-hooks, no strings affair, she is caught up in a...

Margaret est une jeune femme comme beaucoup d'autres. Et, comme tout le monde, elle râle. La météo, ses deux enfants, son travail, son mari, les malheurs du monde, sa vie. Tout y passe. Mais à force de jérémiades, elle a attiré sur elle une terrible malédiction : elle est vouée à un avenir plein d'aigreur et de solitude. Sa seule chance de se libérer du mauvais sort : cesser complètement de se plaindre pendant vingt-huit jours consécutifs. Et elle n'a que trois mois pour réussir !

Over the course of 47 years, Victorian writer Margaret Oliphant produced 120 novels, biographies, and histories, as well as hundreds of essays and book reviews. "She was of an intellect so alert," wrote J. M. Barrie, "that one wondered if she ever fell asleep." Widowed young, she was the sole support of her children and her nieces, whom her brother had abandoned: a powerful impetus for her prodigious output. The two novels included here reflect the difficulties that Victorian wives had when their lives took unexpected turns.

A “sweeping” (Entertainment Weekly) novel of America’s forgotten leading lady, the central figure of a movement that defined a nation—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post “Soul-stirring . . . brings to life the epic and inspiring story of...

Brought to you by Penguin. The Mermaid Collection Originally published in 1951 from the author of beloved holiday classic The Feast comes a glorious coming-of-age tale about a heroine whose wedding day does not go entirely to plan . . . With a foreword by Lucy Mangan ‘People seem to get over...

Osborne House, 1879. Queen Victoria has occupied the British throne for over 40 years. Bringing together her extended family from across Europe offers a chance for old alliances to be strengthened and new unions to be forged. May Teck, daughter of a duke and princess, is constantly reminded that she lacks the pedigree to be a true royal. Alicky lives in the shadow of her siblings, until she meets the heir to the Russian throne. And Willy is destined to be the kaiser of Germany. As shifting forces of power send warning ripples across Europe, an unavoidable war looms on the horizon....

In England in the 1930s, eighteen-year-old Helen Carstairs braves the prejudice of friends and family to marry Heine, a young German photographer who has fled the growing horror of the Nazis. But the storm clouds are gathering in Europe. When fighting breaks out Heine is interned, their small son is evacuated and Helen is left to face the Blitz alone. And the agony of war threatens to divide a family already tormented by conflicting passions of loyalty, shame, betrayal - and love.

Margaret "Peggy" Thomas and her husband, James, lead a simple and peaceful life; she tends to the farm while he works as sheriff in the nearby town of Bleak Knob. Their evenings are spent doing the thing they love most - being together. One afternoon, after picking up fabric at the general store, Margaret watches helplessly as James is gunned down on the sidewalk in front of her. Days of mourning turn into weeks and then years, filled with little more than grief and alcohol.

Madeleine Roux’s next season in Regency England follows a rebellious writer and the man who risks everything to publish her. Margaret Arden yearns to live like the passionate and daring women in her novel. The idyllic life at Mosely Cottage with her two younger sisters and mother is fine, but...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Sian Clifford, star of Fleabag and Vanity Fair. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Margaret R. Higonnet. When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a...

Sebastian Hunter has shown his last hand at the card table. Nights once spent womanising and gambling are now spent in the dark shadows of Blackloch Hall. That is until the mysterious Phoebe Allardyce – his mother’s new and far too pretty companion – interrupts his brooding.

Eighteen-year-old Debbie Hargreaves is heading to college in Leeds, where she'll be sharing digs with three girls. Debbie soon becomes firm friends with shy Lisa, outspoken Karen and self-assured Fran. Over the coming months, the four flatmates will share tears and laughter and the drama of a new romance. At the same time, Debbie's birth mother, Fiona Norwood, is struggling to cope with four young children and her duties as a rector's wife.

The Dark Flood Rises asks momentous questions as it entertains and enthralls. In her beautifully imagined new book, Margaret Drabble is at her incisive best, exploring the end of life with her trademark humour, composure and wisdom. Francesca Stubbs holds our hand as we take a walk through old age and death. Fran brings us to drinks with her dear friends, dropping off mouth-watering suppers for Claude, her ex-husband, warm and cosy in his infirmity.

London-based PR consultant Rosie Denham and American IT professor Patrick Riley couldn’t be more different. She’s had a privileged English upbringing. He was raised in poverty in Missouri. Patrick has two kids, a job that means the world to him, and a wife who might decide she wants her husband back. So when Patrick and Rosie fall in love, the prospects don’t seem bright for them. But magic sometimes happens, right?

They whisper her name in the ballroom’s shadows – the Marquis’s mistress! It will take all of Alice Sweetly’s acting skills to play this part: smile until it no longer hurts, until they believe your lies, until you believe. If the Marquis of Razeby thinks he can let his mistress go easily, he is so very wrong. Each night she appears before a rapturous Covent Garden audience, taunting him with her beauty.