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

Beneath the stars, on a stony beach, stand two brothers. They are wearing lifejackets that are too big for them and their most precious belongings are sealed in waterproof bags tucked inside the rucksacks on their backs. Turkey is behind them. Two or three kilometres' swim away is the Greek island of Samos, now only a smudge in the moonlight.

An extraordinary reimagining of the life of one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known: a man who knew both adoration and humiliation; who loved and was loved in turn; who betrayed and was betrayed; who never sought to cause pain to others yet left a trail of affairs and broken marriages in his wake...and whose life was ultimately defined by one relationship of such tenderness and devotion that only death could sever it: his partnership with the man he knew as Babe. he is Stan Laurel. But he did not really exist. Stan Laurel was a fiction.

It feels like the safest place on earth. A family-friendly, floating palace. But, as Anya Crichton soon discovers, cruise ships aren't all that they seem...Statistics tell us that a woman is twice as likely to be sexually assaulted on a cruise ship than on dry land. Customers aren't screened, so the ships are a haven for sex offenders and paedophiles. With no policing, and floating in international waters, sexual assaults and passengers 'disappearing' are uncommonly frequent.

Caitlin has been having an affair for over a year when the country enters lockdown. Suddenly, seeing her lover, Daniel, without alerting her husband becomes almost impossible. When she does manage to sneak to his home, she finds him lying in a pool of his own blood, dead. Ali is a just-about-functioning alcoholic, recently laid off and feeling rather lonely. Each day she goes to her local shop to buy her permitted two bottles of wine, leaving food parcels for neighbours on her way home. While keeping an eye on what they are up to, of course.

Lottie has saved all year for her family vacation by the sea with her husband and young son. But as soon as they arrive at their rental, it is clear they have made a huge mistake coming here. Next door, Olivia looks like just another wealthy out-of-towner buying up local property, only to leave it empty for ten months of the year. But Olivia has a secret plan for her second home. When one of the houses goes up in flames, and a body is pulled from the ashes, the secrets both Lottie and Olivia have been keeping threaten to destroy their families.

One year ago, Leah's feisty 21-year-old niece, Amy, mysteriously drowned near her family-owned luxury resort on the shores of Lake Garda. Now, Leah is returning to Italy for the first time since Amy's death. But what she finds upon her arrival shocks her: her sister, brother-in-law and surviving niece, Olivia, seem to have erased all memories of Amy and insist her death was an accidental drowning, despite murky circumstances. Leah knows she must look beyond the resort's beautiful façade if she is to uncover the truth of that night.

Milly isn't okay, but she looks it online. But everyone lies about their lives on Instagram, don't they? One day, sick of all the pretence, Milly creates Mizzenial, a new channel inspired by the straight-talking magazines of her childhood. But even here, she still can't quite admit how lonely she really is. Can she take her own advice, finally open up and start to move on?

Years ago, Dana Mayer had a vision of a better world: one where women are in charge. Now her manifesto, The Quickening, has established the rules for a new order, designed to elevate and protect women. A genteel and peaceful society that prioritises nature, good manners and aesthetics. Of course, in order for women to maintain control, the freedoms of men have been necessarily limited.

1915. After the recent dramatic events at the Home Depot, Milly Woods is looking forward to spending as much time as possible with her post office girls, Nora and Beth - known as Liza to her friends. With Christmas fast approaching, their job of getting millions of letters and parcels to the troops on the front line is more important than ever. But when Milly is moved to a different department, she and the girls struggle to find time to spend together.

John visits his ageing mother, Mary, in her nursing home by the sea, and mourns the slow fading of her mind. Hoping to shore up her receding memory, he prompts her with songs, photographs, and questions from their shared past, taking her back to the 1940s, when she was a young woman and he a child in a small Cumbrian town. But as he rekindles her memories, it is her own mother she longs for - and John finds himself delving further back, into the secrets and silences of Mary's fractured childhood, and the unsung sorrows of her thwarted yet spirited mother, Grace.

November, 1941. Germany is about to win the war. Only one thing still separates the Nazis from a certain victory: they must find the three remaining all-powerful swastikas and reunite them with a fourth that is safely hidden away in Himmler's mountain stronghold. Churchill has no choice but to mobilise his best man, double agent Tristan Marcas, and employ the most risky techniques to beat them to it. It all comes to a showdown at a ball in Venice.

In a Europe on the verge of collapse, the Nazi organisation Ahnenerbe is pillaging sacred landmarks across the world. Their aim is to collect treasures with occult powers, which will help them establish the Third Reich. The organisation's head, Himmler, has sent SS officers to search a forgotten sanctuary in the Himalayas, whilst he tries to track down a mysterious painting. Which ancient power do the Nazis believe they hold the key to?

Argyll, 1998. Stories run deep in the MacArthur family, passed from generation to generation. Tales not just of selkies and changelings, but of the lives and deaths of the family themselves. Anna MacArthur has heard how her beautiful grandmother Netta boarded a ship for Canada after the war, leaving behind her young son Donnie, and was never seen again. Now, fifty years after her disappearance, Anna accidentally pulls a loose thread in the story of Netta's fate, causing the tale of her vanishing to unravel completely.

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.

Most people travel to Croatia for its endless sunshine, pebbly beaches and crystal clear sea. Kate goes there to disappear. She needs to escape from a life that has fallen apart in spectacular and public fashion, and no one on the beautiful island of Hvar knows who she is or what she's running away from. Until she meets another lonely soul.

In the little village of Welford, flowers are blooming, the lambing season is underway...and love is in the air. Mandy Hope is on cloud nine. Hope Meadows, the animal rescue and rehabilitation centre she founded, is going really well. And she's growing ever closer to handsome villager Jimmy Marsh. What's more, James Hunter, her best friend, is slowly learning to re-embrace life after facing tragedy. But when an unexpected crisis causes Mandy to lose confidence in her veterinary skills, it's a huge blow.

It's 1953. Britain and her empire are diminished. Nazi Germany controls Europe and a vast African territory. There has been no Holocaust. Instead the Jews have been exiled to Madagaskar, a tropical ghetto ruled by the SS. Returning home after a disastrous mission to Africa, ex-mercenary Burton Cole finds his lover has disappeared. Desperate to discover her, he is drawn into a conspiracy that will lead him back to the Dark Continent.

This is a novel for people with breeding. Only people with the right genes and the wrong impulses will find its marriage of bold ideas and deplorable characters irresistible. It is a novel that engages the mind while satisfying those that crave the thrill of a chase. There are riots and sex. There is love and murder. There is Darwinism and Fascism, nightclubs, invented languages and the dangerous bravado of youth. And there are lots of beetles. It is clever. It is distinctive. It is entertaining. We hope you are too.

When Juliet Montague's husband disappears, so does she. As far as the conservative Jewish community in which she lives is concerned, she is invisible. She does her best to conform to their rules, but then on her thirtieth birthday she does something unexpected. Instead of the fridge she has scrimped for, she impulsively spends her savings on a portrait of herself.It is the first in a series of portraits that punctuate Juliet's adult life as she joins London's lively post-war art scene and proves to be an astute spotter of talent.

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.