Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Friendship

Ballet dancer Jessica Stone has just landed her dream role in New York. At thirty-one this is her last chance to be a prima ballerina. To celebrate, Jessica flies to England to surprise her parents before her rigorous training begins. But instead, when she gets home, she finds her whole family with their cases packed—they are going on holiday, without her! Now she’s stuck in Surrey taking care of Monty the dog. At least he hasn’t abandoned her. But out on a walk his lead gets caught around Jessica and she falls, badly hurting her foot. Luckily a handsome stranger comes to her rescue.

Winter, 1364. Sir Thomas Blackstone, Edward III's Master of War, has travelled to France to secure Brittany for England. In the throes of battle, he rescues a Castilian boy, Lazaro, who just witnessed the murder of the young queen. It is suspected that the king - along with Velasquita Alcon de Lugo, the beautiful witch who serves him - assassinated his queen. But Lazaro knows that is not the case. With the king in hiding and the French army advancing Castile is on its knees. So Blackstone is ordered to Castile, to defend England's ally from the French.

Chance brings together Nina Thomas and elderly Laura Chadwick just at the time when Laura is in need of a friend to help with an interfering family member. Their growing bond is one thing that Nina will be sorry to leave behind as she relocates from Australia to England, but they promise to stay in touch. It will prove to be a significant friendship.

When a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague–the poet–it is not long before it begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn’t; she has everything he wants. While he writes about steel and sex, she dreams about the movements of swallows.

Welcome back to The Potting Shed! Join Maddie and Sabi as they re-open the doors of their family-run garden center. Autumn is falling, business is thriving, and rival garden center BIG has been held at bay once more. Maddie and Sabi have decided it's time to give back to the community that has kept The Potting Shed afloat, by opening a dementia cafe called the Forget-Me-Not Café.

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away. Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another's sight, always on one another's mind, yet rarely together.

Sophie Mills has worked her Manolo Blahniks off to reach the near-top of her profession. And she's very happy with her priorities in life - her job, her neurotic cat Artemis and her passion for shoes. After all, relationships only get in the way. And as for children? She hasn't even begun to think about them yet.

Liv Granger has been flailing through life since her teens. When her brother, Joe, announces his engagement to his long-term boyfriend, Liv realizes that she has never been able to commit to anything—a career, a fixed address, a relationship—and she may, in fact, be a massive loser. With the help of Joe and Henry, her oldest friend, Liv comes up with the Loser List: ten tasks to change her life. The most challenging—three dates with the same person. After each increasingly disastrous date, Henry is always there to the rescue.

Molly Black has disappeared. She's been a bit flighty since her parents died (sure, hadn't she run off with a tree surgeon that time?) but this time, or so says her hastily written leaving note, she's gone for good. That's why the whole Black clan—from Granny perched on the printer all the way through to Killian on Zoom from Sydney—is huddled together in the back room of Uncle John's semi-D in the Dublin suburbs, arguing over what to do.

In the third book in Alice Bell’s Grave Expectations series, Alex has managed to convince Claire, Sophie and Basher that they should incorporate as a private investigation company. They investigate a suspicious death at a pro-wrestling company, with help from the ghost of the deceased.

Bella Beckett is clearing out her mother Betty’s house when she finds a hidden diary. On the cover, two words are written: BURN THIS. According to the diary, thirty-five years earlier, Betty witnessed the murder of Bella’s childhood friend, Vicky. The diary is quickly dismissed by the police as fiction–Betty’s attempt at creative writing–but Bella is convinced they are wrong. As she uncovers a series of dark connections, it is clear Vicky’s killer is still at large. And they weren’t just someone familiar to Betty, but a person Bella herself knows well…

Connie Darke is trying to run away from the traumas in her past, and it's led her home, to the small rural council estate she left almost 20 years earlier. Matilda Reynolds has spent most of her long life in the Worcestershire village of Stonecastle, and she's content there, with her animals and her solitude. Until a fall lands her in hospital, and Matilda has to turn to her strange young neighbor Connie for help looking after her home. Out of their tentative arrangement, each woman gains a new sense of community.

Cassie Holliday is at the top of her game. A glamorous wife and mother with 1.3 million Instagram followers, she posts images of her gorgeous husband and cute (gender-neutral) twins online every day. To her adoring fanbase, Cassie's life is a string of perfect experiences in Valencia filter. But in real life, you can't airbrush the truth. Cassie's marriage is at breaking point, her finances are precarious and she is terrified of every Insta-star's worst nightmare: becoming irrelevant.

Billionaire tech mogul Blake Fielding is on top of the world—until a scandalous hack makes him public enemy number one, shattering the empire he’s built. Ellie Mae-Woodward’s dream job at the famous social media company Heartbook is within her grasp. Except she never steps foot in the interview room. When she arrives, the company is in lockdown. Her dream job is over before it has even begun.

Forty-somethings Fred and Nel embark on an Arctic cruise with a pair of long-time university friends. What they haven’t counted on is the presence of a further journalist friend Heather, and her nemesis, a climate change-denying American oilman called Marvin Ridley. With a potential superpower conflict over oil also now brewing in the background, Fred and Nel discover that this is a journey to the end of the earth in more ways than one.

Two women. An open road. The trip of a lifetime. Thea is confident, sorted, determined to have fun, but there are sorrows beneath the surface of her life. Denise is struggling under the weight of her many commitments and in desperate need of some excitement. When these polar opposites meet, and unexpectedly become friends, they realise they're both looking to escape.

Alice, Nina and Jules have been best friends for 20 years. They met in Paris and return there once a year, to relive their youth, leave the cares and troubles of home behind and indulge in each other's friendship and warmth. But this year, aged 35, the cracks in their relationships are starting to show. After their weekend together in Paris, the three women never speak again. Each of them claims the other two ghosted them. But what really happened that weekend?

In a remote refugee camp, many diverse lives collide. A child with a love of wizards and an ageing rock star share their fate with a collection of disparate visitors when the camp is attacked. Years later, they find a way to tell their stories.

Theo, an aging Parisian cartographer, is desperately searching for the woman he once loved before Alzheimer’s takes his memories of her. Elise, his estranged daughter, moves in to take care of him. She still blames him for the tragic loss of her mother and is struggling with this new forced intimacy. Nebay, an Eritrean refugee, becomes Theo’s carer and friend. Unbeknownst to Elise, Nebay does not have a visa for France and is working illegally in order to support his sister.

Diana and her sister, Antonia, are house-sharing spinsters who have never got over their respective first loves. Naomi lives alone, haunted by the failure of her two marriages. When a body is discovered in the local quarry, all three women’s lives are turned upside down. And when Diana’s old flame Gill turns up unexpectedly, tensions finally spill over and threaten to destroy the outwardly peaceful lives all three women have carefully constructed around themselves.