Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Family Life

Chris and Cathy made such a loving home for 14-year-old Jory - so handsome, so gentle. And for Bart, who had such a dazzling imagination for a nine-year-old. Then the lights came on in the house next door. Soon the Old Lady in Black was there, watching them, guarded by her strange old butler. Soon she had Bart over for cookies and ice cream and asked him to call her "Grandmother". And soon Bart's transformation began....

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it's normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn't help that she's always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy's latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on antidepressants. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

You stand on a crowded tube platform in London. Your two little girls jump on the train ahead of you. As you try to join them, the doors slide shut and the train moves away, leaving you behind. By the time you get to the next stop, you've convinced yourself that everything will be fine. But you soon start to panic, because there aren't two children waiting for you on the platform. There's only one. Has your other daughter got lost? Been taken by a passing stranger? Or perhaps the culprit is closer to home than you think? No one is telling the truth.

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

The brilliant new novel from the author of the New York Times best seller Everything I Never Told You. Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colours of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead.

Even as a child, Serenity Jones knew she possessed unusual psychic gifts. Now, decades later, she's an acclaimed medium and host of her own widely viewed TV show, where she delivers messages to the living from loved ones who have died. Lately, though, her efforts to boost ratings and garner fame have compromised her clairvoyant instincts. When Serenity books a young war widow to appear as a guest, the episode quickly unravels, stirring up a troubling controversy. And as she tries to undo the damage – to both her reputation and her show – Serenity finds that pride comes at a high price.

Clever, charming dressmaker Ketty Clift is embarking on her final cruise from Sydney before she must make serious changes in her life. Her mission is to transform the lives of those who join her at her dining table every evening. But this trip is different. As the glamour and indulgence of the cruise takes hold, and the ship sails further away from Sydney towards the Pacific Islands, it becomes clear her fellow travellers - a troubled family, a grieving widower and an angry divorcee determined to wreak revenge on her ex - are going to be harder work than usual.

The very moment that Raina Wingate learns her husband of sixteen years wants to separate, she gets a call that her father has suffered a stroke. Racing to her family’s home on Amelia Island, Florida, Raina hopes the time apart will heal her cracked marriage and that she can step into her father’s real estate business and keep it running. Her sister, Tori, a divorcee who owns a catering business in Boston, also flies in to join the others at the hospital. But an unexpected run-in with their father’s rather attractive neurologist adds a new dimension to the days and weeks ahead.

When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she doesn't think it's love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white and her white husband knows nothing of her past.

Tasha has always felt in the shadow of her older sister, Alice. Their lifestyles couldn't be more different; Alice is married to wealthy entrepreneur Kyle and has a high-flying career, Tasha is married to her childhood sweetheart and lives in a Bristol suburb with their four-year-old twins. When Alice realises that Tasha is struggling - with money, the kids, losing her identity - she suggests they do a lifeswap for a week. Alice and Kyle will come to stay at Tasha's terraced house to look after the twins, while Tasha and Harry spend the week in Alice and Kyle's Venice apartment.

Sweet little Emma and Nealie, both just four years old, live on the same block in the exclusive, gated Blackwood neighborhood—miles from my cramped studio apartment. I go between each family’s home to care for the girls. And I know all their secrets… Their mothers were best friends until three months ago, when everything fell apart. There’s a door that’s always locked at Nealie’s house. And Emma’s house is filled with whispered arguments. I’m sure her father is having an affair.

For the last seven years Mel has been hiding; from life, from her friends and from those who love her the most—her family. But being at home in her beloved Lake District has been far too painful for Mel to contemplate. Because seven years ago, Mel lost everything and she’s never been able to banish the dark clouds that follow her. When Mel returns to Willowdale for a family event, she has no intention of staying. But surrounded by her family she begins to realise just how much she's been missing and also, how much healing she still needs to do.

The grand, Gothic Wyndemere House is a labyrinth, containing as many secrets as it does corners obscured in shadow. It's home to the Davenports, a wealthy and distinguished family, and Fern Corey and her mother have lived there as servants for Fern’s entire young life. Despite their difference in station, Fern and Dr. Davenport’s son, Ryder, have always been extremely close. Which was never a problem...until they came of age.

Six months ago, Clementine West had the worst day of her life. So, she came up with a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, take no risks. And it’s been working. That is until one day she finds a strange man standing in her kitchen. A man with kind eyes, a crooked smile, and a recipe for the perfect lemon meringue pie. The kind of man that, before everything, she could have fallen for... He’s perfect but for one thing: he lives in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact.

The O'Shea sisters couldn't be more different. Allison, an obstetrician, has always put others before herself and is torn between her job and young family. Prizewinning film director Bridie hasn't had work in over a decade, though her actor husband is on the brink of stardom. Clare, desperate for a baby, is bereft when her wife leaves her after their latest IVF failure. And Emma, the youngest, has turned to God to fill the aching loneliness in her life. When their only brother Daniel is killed the four women drift even further apart.

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens - until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes - or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show - destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London.

Marlowe and Harper share a bond deeper than most sisters, shaped by the loss of their mother in childhood. For Harper, living with what she calls the Up syndrome and gifted with an endless capacity for wonder, Marlowe and she are connected by an invisible thread, like the hum that connects all things. For Marlowe, they are bound by her fierce determination to keep Harper, born with a congenital heart disorder, alive. Now 25, Marlowe is living her own life abroad. Then she receives a devastating call that Harper’s heart is failing.

In the far north of Norway a man lives a peaceful existence. However one day his younger brother, always the more successful and charming of the two, turns up to visit, accompanied by his new wife. It soon turns out that the little brother is not quite as angelic as he seems.