Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Friendship

Alice is stifled, bored, and misunderstood. So when she meets wealthy and handsome American, Bennett Van Cleve, she is quickly swept off her feet. Marrying him and moving to America seems like a great adventure - but life as a newlywed in stuffy Baileyville, Kentucky, is not at all what she hoped for. Until, that is, she responds to a call for volunteers to start a travelling library, surprising herself by saying yes, before her husband can say no.

Thea Fox is just twelve years old when her parents are brutally slain. With Thea's help the police are able to put their murderer - a psychotic serial killer called Ray Riggs - behind bars for life. Changed forever, Thea slowly learns to come to terms with the events of that terrible night and builds a new life in a small country town where she can breathe in the smells of pine, fresh bread and her grandmother's homemade candles. But the connection that helped Thea put her parents' killer behind bars will come to haunt her.

Jemma thinks she’s found the love of her life. Scott is everything she ever dreamed of and she can’t wait to begin the next stage of their life together. But just as she is heading for her happy ever after, a shock revelation shatters Jemma’s life as she knows it. Left to pick up the pieces, Jemma's friends and family rally round to help her find the courage to move on. Sam thinks he has his future all worked out. A thriving career, lovely home and an amazing fiancée. But when tragedy strikes, he finds himself alone, far from everyone he cares about.

In a little coffee shop in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different women come together. Sunny, the proud proprietor, who needs an ingenious plan to keep her cafe and customers safe. Yazmina, a young pregnant woman stolen from her remote village and now abandoned on Kabul's violent streets. Candace, a wealthy American who has finally left her husband for her Afghan lover. Isabel, a determined journalist with a secret that might keep her from the biggest story of her life. And Halajan, the sixty-year-old den mother, whose long-hidden love affair breaks all the rules.

Meet Lana, Judith and Catrin. Best friends since primary school when they swore an oath on a Curly Wurly wrapper that they would always be there for each other, come what may. After the trip of a lifetime, the three girls are closer than ever. But an unexpected turn of events shakes the foundation of their friendship to its core, leaving their future in doubt - there’s simply too much to forgive, let alone forget. An innocent childhood promise they once made now seems impossible to keep.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

Mrs Harris is a salt-of-the-earth London charlady who cheerfully cleans the houses of the rich. One day, when tidying Lady Dant's wardrobe, she comes across the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life - a Dior dress. In all the years of her drab and humble existence, she's never seen anything as magical as the dress before her, and she's never wanted anything as much before. Determined to make her dream come true, Mrs Harris scrimps, saves and slaves away until one day, after three long uncomplaining years, she finally has enough money to go to Paris.

Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a classic international best seller and an unforgettable portrait of London. One of the most talked about fictional debuts ever, White Teeth is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-listen.

Noosa Heads, 1987: Newly divorced Cynthia has returned to her home town from Los Angeles to reconnect with her 19-year-old daughter, who is pregnant and determined not to listen to her mother's advice. Cynthia's former best friend, Lorraine, has been stuck mowing lawns as part of a business she shares with her husband - his dream, not hers. When Cynthia convinces Lorraine to join the local Sunshine Gardening Society, they meet young widow Elizabeth, and rootless, heartbroken Kathy.

Deira isn't the kind of woman to steal a car. Or drive to France alone with no plan. But then, Deira didn't expect to be single. Or to suddenly realise that that the only way she can get the one thing she wants most is to start breaking every rule she lives by. Grace has been sent on a journey by her late husband, Ken. She doesn't really want to be on it but she's following his instructions, as always. She can only hope that the trip will help her to forgive him. And then - finally - she'll be able to let him go.

The last time Esther Wilding's beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura's disappearance, Esther's family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister's death, Esther reluctantly travels from Lutruwita, Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.

Sisters Jolene, Marsha and Annis have convened at their childhood home the huge and beautiful Fox House following the death of their mother, the cold and impenetrable Eleanor Vamplew, to arrange the funeral and sell up. Born seven years apart, the women have never bonded and are more strangers than sisters. Together, Again is the story of truths uncovered and lies exposed, of secrets told—and kept. It is a novel about sister helping sister to heal from childhood scars, and of finding, in each other, the love they have all been deprived of.

From the Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize for The Natural Way of Things. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her? They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house.

Maz Antonio has spent the last two years in prison so is determined to make the first major family gathering in their new home deep in Australian suburbia as perfect as possible. She owes it to everyone after the terrible mistakes she's made ... mistakes for which she will always be trying to atone. This special lunch is her chance to make things right for her husband and children, to show everyone that she can maintain her sobriety, that things can go back to normal.

Jo Sorsby knows she is hiding from her past when she agrees to look after her uncle’s stationery shop. Spending her days glimpsing the lives of her customers as they experiment with what’s on offer is a welcome distraction from the life she has left behind. Yet far from home, Jo feels adrift... But when she meets Ruth, a vicar running from a secret, and Malcolm, a septuagenarian struggling to write his first book, she realises that she isn’t alone.

Everyone in Halfmoon Quay, the picture-perfect village clinging to the edge of the Cornish coast, knows Rick Penrose is the person to turn to for help. Friendly and reliable, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, he’ll do anything for anyone. When his teenage crush Anya moves back to the quay for a fresh start, he has the perfect solution. She needs a job and his great uncle needs help to run his hotel. It’s a win-win.

Twelve summers ago: Poppy and Alex meet. They hate each other and are pretty confident they'll never speak again. Eleven summers ago: they're forced to share a ride home from college, and by the end of it, a friendship is formed. And a pact: every year, one vacation together. Ten summers ago: Alex discovers his fear of flying on the way to Vancouver. Poppy holds his hand the whole way. Seven summers ago: they get far too drunk and narrowly avoid getting matching tattoos in New Orleans. Two summers ago: it all goes wrong. This summer: Poppy asks Alex to join her on one last trip.

Felicity Lewis' 50th birthday party in her newly renovated home, loving husband and daughter Greta by her side, is going off with a bang when disaster strikes. Her father, Franklyn, with his usual impeccable timing, has keeled over and died. For some members of the family, his wife Hazel, for example, Franklyn's death is not the great loss it first appears to be. But when his toxic and inexplicable will is read out, it becomes clear that long-buried secrets are about to surface, starting with the astonishing reappearance of Hazel's long-lost sister.

Long past its heyday and deep in drought, the riverside hamlet of Nowhere River is slowly fading into a ghost-town. It's a place populated by those who are beholden to it, those who were born to it and those who took a wrong turn while trying to go somewhere else. City-born Carra married into Nowhere River, Lucie was brought to it by tragedy, Josie is root-bound and Florence knows nowhere else. All of them, though familiar with every inch of their tiny hometown, are as lost as the place itself.

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.