Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Literature & Fiction

Left profoundly deaf after an accident, Émile is no stranger to isolation—or heartbreak. Now, as Nazi planes loom over Guernsey, he senses life is about to change forever. Trapped in a tense, fearful marriage, Isabelle doesn't know what has become of Émile and the future she hoped for. But when she glimpses him from the window of the French House, their lives collide once more. Lieutenant Schreiber is more comfortable wielding a paintbrush than a pistol. But he has little choice in the role he is forced to play in the occupying forces—or in his own forbidden desires. 

Accepting the task of protecting Billie Womack is a no-brainer for ex-counterterrorist soldier Joe Hunter, but it comes with its own set of complications. Billie's husband, Richard, stole $30 million from some violent people. He apparently died in a car crash with Billie's daughter, Nicola, during a desperate attempt to elude his pursuers. But his enemies don't believe him dead. They think he escaped the plunge into the icy river that killed Nicola and has now decided to come back for the money.

At first glance, the world has not changed: the trams on the boulevards, the grand hotels, the cafes abuzz with conversation. The street kids still play on the two great bridges that divide the city, and the smart set still venture down to the Morgue Ship for an evening's entertainment. Yet it only takes a spark to ignite a revolution.

This cheering book of best loved short tales, extracts and poems will calm and restore an anxious mind before sleep. A good night's sleep is essential for our well-being and our health, but in our busy lives sleep is often poor and overlooked. Now is the time to stop a while and find consolation and wonder in other worlds where all is well and sleep just a minute or two away.

“I've started dreaming of Portland again. Like a monster from one of the ghost stories we used to tell as kids, the past has been finding its way in. It bubbles up through the cracks when I'm not paying attention, and pulls at me with greedy fingers. This is what they warned me about for all those years: the heavy weight in my chest, the nightmare-fragments that follow me even in waking life.I warned you, Aunt Carol says in my head. We told you, Rachel says...”

From the very first day that they move to the Oddlode Valley, it's inevitable that young teacher Mo Stillitoe, recently separated socialite Diana Lampeter and cool, retired dressage diva Anke Brakespear will find their lives entangled. Despite their differing generations and backgrounds, the women are on a relocation collision course. As inept removal men deliver furniture - and even horses - to the wrong houses, other moves are being made…

Minnie and her sister, Clara, spinsters both, live in a dilapidated country house in the middle of a housing estate, built when their father sold off the family's land. Now in their 70s, their days follow a well-established routine: long gone are the garden parties, the tennis lessons and their suffocating strict mother. Gone, too, is any mention of what happened when Minnie was 16 and the secret the family buried in the grounds of their estate. Over the course of the summer, both begin to tell their stories....

Flavia Albia is a private investigator, always drawn to an intriguing puzzle - even if it is put to her by her new husband's hostile ex-wife. On the Quirinal Hill, Clodia Volumnia, a very young girl with stars in her eyes, has died, amid suggestions that she was poisoned by a love potion. It will have been supplied by a local witch, who goes by the name of Pandora, though Albia learns that Pandora carries on a trade in herbal beauty products while hiding much more dangerous connections.

A standalone thriller from the prizewinning queen of Nordic noir and author of the Thora Gudmundsdottir series. A chilling thriller from the author of The Silence of the Sea, winner of the 2015 Petrona Award for best Scandinavian Crime Novel. A journalist on the track of an old case attempts suicide. An ordinary couple return from a house swap in the states to find their home in disarray and their guests seemingly missing.

When the bombers appear like a flock of birds over the horizon, Sibil Helinger, 17, is enjoying market day in the small Spanish town of Guernica. With no warning, clouds of German planes are upon them and bombs fall on the town like rain. Reeling with shock, Sibil spends the next few days frantically searching for her relatives in the smouldering rubble. Though she finds her little sister trapped in the ruins, she discovers her mother and the others are dead.

Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.

Veterinary nurse Helen Steer adores her job at Animal Ark, and with the summer ahead things couldn't be better. That is until her best friend goes travelling, leaving Helen unexpectedly jealous and questioning her own stable life with her boyfriend Seb. Charming new vet Toby Gordon, with his flirtatious wit and mysterious family background, suddenly seems a much more exciting prospect. But just as Helen and Toby's friendship starts to become something more, Sunrise Farm, the beautiful fruit farm where Helen lives, is hit by crisis, leaving its future in the balance.

The clock is ticking on Hollywood actress Edie O'Dare's contract with FWM Studios. Her acting career is going nowhere, and she's running out of time to find a new role in the industry - other than providing salacious details of the latest party or premiere to the press. So when an up-and-coming starlet hands her an explosive letter - alleging an assault by an A-list actor - Edie helps get the story into print, and buys herself a new career as Tinseltown's new reigning gossip columnist.

For the millions addicted to Strictly Come Dancing - a debut tapping in to the world's latest craze. When three couples join a new ballroom class, they're all looking for some magic in their lives. Lauren and Chris are getting married, and Lauren's dreaming of a fairytale wedding with a first dance to make Cinderella proud. Not wanting to be shown up on the dance floor, her parents, Bridget and Frank, have come along, too.

The scorching hot love story that is this generation's Pretty Woman. You can't put a price on love - so they say.... When a medical condition threatens to tear apart Lanie Talbot's family, she makes the ultimate sacrifice. With no time and no other option, Lanie puts herself up for sale at an underground, high-end establishment where women are auctioned off to influential, wealthy men with more money than sense. Enter Noah Crawford: millionaire business mogul and Chicago's most eligible bachelor.

Clare Riordan and her son, Mikey, are abducted from Clapham Common early one morning. Hours later the boy is found wandering disorientated. Soon after, a pack of Clare's blood is left on a doorstep in the heart of the City of London. Alice Quentin is brought in to help the traumatised child uncover his memories - which might lead them to his mother's captors. But she swiftly realises Clare is not the first victim...nor will she be the last.

Pull up a chair at Big Earl's diner and meet the 'Supremes': three women from Plainview, Indiana, who've been best friends since their high-school days in the Sixties. Clarice is a pious wife and mother struggling with her husband's infidelity; Barbara Jean must confront the tragic reverberations of a youthful love affair; and Odette, whose fearlessness has saved her friends many times, now faces a terrifying situation of her own.

There is something wrong with Mathilda. She's still reeling from the blow of a gut-punch break up and grieving the death of a loved one. But that's not it. She's cried all her tears, mastered her crow pose and thrown out every last reminder of him. But that's not helping. Concerned that she isn't moving on, Mathilda's friends push her towards a series of increasingly unorthodox remedies. Until the seams of herself begin to come undone. 

When story-lover Anna takes over Longhampton's bookshop, it's her dream come true. And not just because it gets her away from her three rowdy stepchildren and their hyperactive dalmatian. Unpacking boxes filled with childhood classics, Anna can't shake the feeling that maybe her own fairy-tale ending isn't all that she'd hoped for.

1871. When Fergus Deagan's wife dies in childbirth, she makes him promise to take their family to Western Australia to join his brother Bram, also to marry again. She's right. His young sons and newborn daughter do need a mother's love, and he needs something different. Disowned by her father for becoming pregnant, Cara Payton bears a stillborn baby. She's in deep despair until a plea to wet-nurse a motherless baby gives her life new purpose.