Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Genre Fiction

Georgina Garrett was born to be ruthless and she's about to earn her reputation. As World War One is announced a baby girl is born. Little do people know that she's going to grow up to rule the streets of Battersea. From a family steeped in poverty the only way to survive is with street smarts. With a father who steals for a living, a grandmother who's a woman of the night and a mother long dead, Georgina was never in for an easy life.

1942: Saba Tarcan is a talented young singer with big dreams. So when an opportunity arises to entertain the troops in the Middle East, she jumps at the chance, cutting short a burgeoning love affair with a young RAF pilot, Dom. It soon becomes clear that entertaining won’t be Saba’s only mission. It's a move that will jeopardize not only her own safety, but also the love of her life.

Pat Simms is reeling from her own role in her abusive husband's death, and the new freedom before her is daunting. Sarah Collingborne is struggling with the absence of her husband, who is stranded in a POW camp abroad, and trying her best to fill his treasured place in the village. Meanwhile, Teresa Lucas is anxious about her future as a parent, and her friend Alison Scotlock is on the verge of starting a new relationship. And Miriam Brindsley's good luck might be about to change.

1236. Beautiful Ailenor of Provence, cultured and intelligent, is only 13 when she marries Henry III. Aware of the desperate importance of providing heirs to secure the throne from those who would snatch it away, she is ruthless in her dealings with Henry's barons. As conflict escalates between them, Ailenor's shrewd and clever Savoyard uncles come to support her, but her growing political power is threatened when Henry's half-siblings also arrive at court. Henry and Ailenor become embroiled in an unpopular war to protect Gascony, the last English territory on the continent.

As evening falls, the city of Esteburg begins to stir. Christophor Morden, one of the king's special inspectorate, is woken early by a call to the city prison. A heinous crime has been committed and the police suspect supernatural causes. The investigation will take Christophor far from home, to a village on the edge of the Kingdom. There he will discover the signs of an unholy ritual that can only be performed by a witch.

When Jennifer goes up to Cambridge University with her head full of the Romantic Poets, she never dreams that she will find her very own Byron. But then she meets gorgeous actor Laurie Lewis, and finds herself living a real-life love poem. Fifteen years and two children later, Jennifer and Laurie's relationship is starting to feel more like an epic tragedy. After a series of revelations turn her world upside down, Jennifer will do anything to keep her family together—even if it means moving hundreds of miles away to Laurie's childhood home in Westenbury, Yorkshire.

Jackie loves her family. Sure, her teenage children can be stroppy. Her husband a little lazy. And providing round-the-clock care for her Alzheimer's-ridden mother is exhausting. All Jackie wants is for her children to have brighter futures than she did. So long as Martha, the eldest, gets into university and follows her dreams, all her sacrifice will be worth something...won't it?

It's April 1948, and war hangs over Jaffa. One minute, seven-year-old Salim is dreaming of taking his first harvest from the family's orange tree; the next he is swept away into a life of exile and rage. Seeking a new beginning in swinging '60s London, Salim falls in love with Jude. The only problem? Jude is Jewish. Ishmael's Oranges follows the story of two families spanning the crossroad events of modern times and of the legacy of hatred their children inherit.

Dan Ranscombe is clever and good-looking, but he resents the wealth and easy savoir faire of fellow guest Paul Latimer. Surely a shrewd girl like Meg Slater would see through that, wouldn't she? And what about Diana, Paul's beautiful sister; Charles Asher, the Jewish outsider; Madeleine, the children's nanny; and artist Henry Haddon? As these guests gather at a country house party, none has any inkling that the choices they make will have fateful consequences lasting through the war and beyond.

World War II is over, and a new decade is beginning, but for an East End teenage brother and sister living on the edge of the law, life has been suspended. Sent away to a tuberculosis sanatorium to learn the way of a patient, they find themselves in the company of army and air force officers, a car salesman, a mysterious German woman and an American merchant seaman. They discover that a cure is tantalisingly just out of reach, and only by inciting wholesale rebellion can freedom be snatched.

Best friends tell you everything - about their kitchen renovation, about their little girl’s schooling. How one of them is leaving the other for a younger model. Best friends don’t tell lies. They don’t take up residence on your couch for weeks. They don’t call lawyers. They don’t make you choose sides. Best friends don’t keep secrets about their past. They don't put you in danger. Best friends don’t always stay best friends.

In David Lodge's last novel, Thinks..., the novelist Henry James was invisibly present in quotation and allusion. In Author, Author he is centre stage, sometimes literally. The story begins in December 1915, with the dying author surrounded by his relatives and servants, most of whom have private anxieties of their own, then loops back to the 1880s, to chart the course of Henry's 'middle years', focusing particularly on his friendship with the genial Punch artist and illustrator, George Du Maurier.

Did you ever have a secret you knew would change everything? Tess' happy childhood memories are mostly of the grandmother who helped raise her. And now she has a secret to tell Iris - one which will turn so many lives upside down. But how can you confide your future in someone who barely remembers her past? Tess knows everything is about to change. What she doesn't know is that chance will lead her into the lives of two strangers - and uncover her grandmother's secret from the past. A secret which will illuminate her own future....

On an unnamed archipelago off the east coast of Britain, the impossible has come to pass. Women control the civic institutions. Decide how the islands’ money is spent. Run the businesses. Tend to their families. Teach the children hope for a better world. They say that this gynotopia is Eva Levi’s life’s work, and that now she has disappeared, it will be destroyed. But they don’t know about Cwen. Cwen has been here longer than the civilisation she has returned to haunt. The clouds are her children, and the waves.

When the university merged his Department of Linguistics with English, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. But his daily discontent is nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. In the popular imagination, he observes, deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic, but for the deaf person himself it is no joke.

In the small American town of Hope, teenager Lucas Caldwell dreams of escaping his life. His mother, Liss, is struggling with addiction, and his sickly little brother, Reuben, would never survive her without him. His grandfather, Lucky, is dying in a care facility, his mind fading. But in a final moment of clarity, he lets slip to Lucas that he is in possession of a painting worth millions, stolen from a transport convoy in a daring heist five decades ago. As the disbelief fades, a thin hope begins to grow.

Ellis Hock runs a menswear store in Massachusetts but still dreams of the four years he spent in Malawi. When his wife leaves him, he realises that there is only one place for him to go: back to Malawi, where he can be happy again.

February, 1944. A bitter winter grips occupied France, where Marc Reece leads a circuit of British agents risking their lives in order to sabotage the German war effort from within. But Reece has a second mission, secret even from his fellow agents - including Charlotte, the woman with whom he has ill-advisedly fallen in love. He must secure a document identifying a German spy at the heart of British intelligence. The fate of the Allied forces on D-Day is in his hands.

Iris Bagshott strolls down the paths of her ancient garden, close to Lichfield in the heart of England, wondering if it is time to sell her house and land for development. She is unaware that around every corner myriad family secrets from the past unfold. From a Saxon clearing to a monastery, Tudor dwelling to the present day, this sacred plot has nurtured her ancestors. Generations of Bagshott women have found refuge and solace tending it through years of plague, civil war and beyond. This is their story.

Four friends have a pact: to meet up on the same day every year in their small hometown in southern Italy. Art, the charismatic leader of the group, has always been adamant about the pact. But this year, he doesn't show up. Searching for him, the friends make a worrying discovery: Art has been farming marijuana, a very dangerous activity in mafia-controlled country.