Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Friendship

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape.

Only a few months after the end of the Second World War, a new battle is beginning in the little village of Chawton. Once the final home of Jane Austen, the Chawton estate is dwindling and the last piece of Austen's heritage is at risk of being sold to the highest bidder.... Drawn together by their love of her novels, eight very different people - from a local farmer to a glamorous film star - must unite to attempt something remarkable.

As a renowned chef, single-dad Archer never planned on moving to a small town, let alone running a pancake restaurant. But Dream Harbor needs a new chef, and Archer needs a community to help raise his daughter, Olive. Iris has never managed to hold down a job for more than a few months. So when Mayor Kelly suggests Archer is looking for a nanny, and Iris might be available, she shudders at the thought. As Archer and Iris get used to their new roles, is it possible that they might have more in common than they first thought, or is Olive just determined to play match-maker…

When Shelley Woodhouse wakes up in hospital from a coma, the first thing she says is that her husband must be arrested. He’s the reason she’s in here. She knows it. She remembers what he did. Clearly as anything. But there are things Shelley has forgotten too, including parts of her childhood. And as those start to come back to her, so do other memories. Ones with the power to change everything.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope....

’n Groep vriende kom die eerste keer in vyf-en-twintig jaar bymekaar om Adriaan se verjaardag te vier. Een vir een maak die gaste hul opwagting by Adriaan en Yvette se strandhuis aan die Weskus. Sommige bring hul kinders en die uitbundige gelag van kleinkinders saam. Sedert hulle mekaar laas gesien het, moes party van lewensmaats en drome afskeid neem; ander het nuwe liefde en betekenis gevind. En dan is daar Yvette wat haarself nie sover kan kry om vir almal van háár reis te vertel nie.

Matilda, Jo, Penny and Cressy are all women at the top of their game; so imagine their surprise when they start to be personally overlooked and professionally pushed aside by less-qualified men. Only they’re not going down without a fight. Society might think the women have passed their amuse-by dates but the Revenge Club have other plans.

Forrmer academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career - if he can untangle himself from his family drama.

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

The Tobacco Girls cling together as they realise that the clouds of war are turning dark, the world is becoming more dangerous and their lives more unpredictable. Bridget Milligan’s big, happy family fragments when her siblings are evacuated to North Devon, then a letter from America further fills her with dismay. Maisie Miles safe haven from both Eddie Bridgeman and her father is jeopardised, and she is forced to move on, but where to this time? Phyllis Mason is struck down by tragedy, and her life spirals downwards into despair until a new horizons beckons.

Steph, Jo and Meredith have been friends since school. Their lives have all taken very different paths across the years, but when Meredith buys a romantic château in an idyllic village in the Dordogne she finds she can’t do it alone - so who better to enlist for help than her two old friends? Together they hope to bring the château back to life and create the most romantic wedding venue in France.

Determined to enjoy her imminent retirement, Adele invites her fellow bibliophiles to help her house-sit in the Blue Mountains. It's a tantalising opportunity to spend a month walking in the fresh air, napping by the fire and, of course, reading and talking about books. But these aren't just any books: each member has been asked to choose a book which will teach the others more about her. And with each woman facing a crossroads in her life, it turns out there's a lot for them to learn, not just about their fellow book-clubbers, but also about themselves.

When Lou Taylor inherits a quaint country cottage and a mobile library full of books from her birth mother, she heads to the small town of Wagtail Ridge to learn more about the woman she never knew. Curiously, the last piece of the bequest is a handwritten letter, the first of many Luca left scattered along the library's route in hopes of finally sharing her secrets with the daughter she had to give up.

Rose Barlow has loved and lost. She has done her fair share during the war and seen her dreams shattered. As the British class system crumbles Rose is determined not to return to service at Trenwith Estate instead, she’s keen to pursue new opportunities and her own happiness now the war is over. Luke Trenwith survived the war and has returned home as the next Trenwith Baronet. But the life he once accepted as his fate feels cold and empty. He is left wanting more. But has the world changed enough to allow him to live his dream?

She can’t recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge), she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they always had done, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to her. When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B—a shrewd and tricksy woman in her 90s—she meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn’t have a story to tell.

A tragic accident leaves the tight-knit book club in the small seaside town of Fairweather reeling. Then stranger Tom McLysaght arrives in the community, and the members of the club find their lives changing in ways they never could have imagined. None of them realise that Tom is hiding a secret. On the surface, his move to Fairweather was to escape his highflying life in London and to put some much-needed distance between him and his ex-fiancée - but deep down Tom knows that there are some things he cannot run from.

After young Jieun accidentally misuses her powers, causing her beloved family to vanish, she lives a million restless lives in search of them. Overnight, in the village of Marigold on top of a hill, she conjures up her Mind Laundry, where she cleanses painful experiences, transferring them into stains on a T-shirt and turning them into dazzling red petals. We meet five souls: a frustrated young filmmaker; a tortured social-media influencer; a distraught mother who has discovered her husband’s other family; a young woman two-timed by her lover; a talented photographer and victim of bullying.

Khaled and Mustafa meet at university in Edinburgh: two Libyan eighteen-year-olds expecting to return home after their studies. In a moment of recklessness and courage, they travel to London to join a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy. When government officials open fire on protestors in broad daylight, both friends are wounded, and their lives forever changed. Over the years that follow, Khaled, Mustafa and their friend Hosam, a writer, are bound together by their shared history.

Ruby Wood is perfectly happy playing the dating game – until she has a red-hot dream about her very attractive flatmate, Nick. He might spend every day saving lives as a junior doctor, but he’s absolutely the last man on earth that fun-loving Ruby would ever date! The solution? Focus on all of Nick’s bad points. And if that fails, up her dating antics and find herself a man. So what if she manages to make disapproving, goody two-shoes Nick jealous in the process…

Like stars in the night sky, freckles are scattered across Allegra Bird’s arms, a legacy from her beloved father. Her legacy from her mother is more complicated–until one question from a stranger inspires a change. What if it isn’t about fitting in, but finding the people who make you who you are? Who would those people be? As she searches for connection, Allegra is about to find out that it is our differences that make life worth living–if only someone can help you to join the dots . . .