Showing titles in Friendship

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…

Harriet and Wyn are the perfect couple—they go together like bread and butter, gin and tonic. Except, now they don't. They broke up six months ago. And they still haven't told anyone. Which is how they end up sharing a bedroom at the cottage that has been their yearly getaway with their best friends for the past decade. Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth. The cottage is for sale so this is the last time they'll all be together here and they can't bear to break their friends' hearts. So, they'll fake it for one more week.

When Ruth Morris is moved into Banksia House by her workaholic son Michael, she is eighty-one years young, mourning her loss of independence, and missing her best friend Gladys terribly. So when she learns Gladys is dying a state over in Brisbane, Ruth is determined to say goodbye. Enlisting the help of her fellow residents, Ruth makes a daring departure from Banksia House alongside renowned escape-artist Keith, and her formidable new friend Beryl.

Phoebe and Suze used to be closer than sisters. Growing up in a quiet and wildly beautiful coastal town in Oregon, they shared everything. Until the secrets they couldn’t share threatened their bond and complicated their lives. Now, decades later, Suze, a famous actress desperate for safe haven following a brutal attack, is back in town. Phoebe, a successful illustrator and fabric designer, has discovered keeping a secret means she can’t let anyone get close, aside from her beloved granddaughter, Jasmine.

Lydia imagines her new job running a Senior Citizen's Social Club three afternoons a week will involve drinking tea while playing gentle games of cards, listening to The Beatles and reminiscing about food rationing and The Blitz. She does not expect to find a failed actor addicted to shoplifting, a woman who's been hiding from a mysterious and very chequered past, and a prolific yarn-bomber. After a tragic accident means the council threatens to sell the community centre, the Social Club, aided by their friends in the nursery next door and a geriatric orphaned mongrel, set out to save it.

Widowed at a young age, Julie understands the pain that comes with love and has avoided romance for a long time. As she eases herself back into the dating scene, her eye is caught by the darkly sophisticated Richard as he begins a passionate pursuit of her affections. But she is still confused by her feelings for best friend Mike: funny, loyal, but definitely not sophisticated. A seemingly innocent choice sets off a deadly chain of events that leaves Julie fighting for her life as jealousy simmers into murderous desire.

It's the day they've always dreamed about. But will it turn out to be a nightmare? Bel is in the midst of planning her perfect wedding when disaster strikes and everything she thought she knew is turned on its head. Can she hold it all together and, with the help of her friends, and a mysterious man she meets unexpectedly, turn disaster into triumph? Bel's friend, ice-cream parlour owner Violet, is engaged to Glyn, who is besotted by her although Violet fell out of love with him long ago.

Orphaned at sixteen, James Wakefield was determined to be a gun shearer like his father. Now he's killed twice, changed his name, and is on the run from the law. He had his reasons for both murders, and he felt no joy in taking life. Or did he? Ben McKinnon, meanwhile, is heir to the vast Glenfinnan sheep property near Goulburn, New South Wales. He too has a secret that, if ever revealed, would shatter the privileged lives of his father, Alastair, and his sisters, Jenna and Adele. When fate brings James and Ben together, a powerful friendship is forged.

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.

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.

It’s the hottest day of the 1976 heatwave and there’s not a breath of fresh air in the labour ward at Lincoln County Hospital. Michelle is having her fourth child, a girl, while beloved husband Dean is sipping a cold pint in the pub. Their little house is already bursting at the seams, but Michelle is sure they’ll find a way to stretch their budget and continue life as a blissfully chaotic happy family. They name their new baby Donna.

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.

As the waves crash on to a wild Atlantic beach, Lou is at a crossroads. For the first time ever, just giving up seems like an option. In just one night, at her own 50th birthday, her world has imploded. Her mother has kept a secret hidden all her life. And it changes everything. Before Lou can take another step, she needs to get to the bottom of the shocking truth that alters who she really is. Along with her sister, Toni, who is facing her own crisis, the two women sets out on a life-changing journey.

With her hotly anticipated third instalment, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Fielding introduces us to a whole new enticing phase of Bridget's life set in contemporary London, including the challenges of maintaining sex appeal as the years roll by and the nightmare of drunken texting, the skinny jean, the disastrous email CC, total lack of twitter followers, and TVs that need 90 buttons and three remotes to simply turn on. An uproariously funny novel of modern life, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is a triumphant return of our favourite Everywoman.

Inspired by a box of mementos found abandoned in a skip following a house clearance, The Museum of Ordinary People is a poignant, thought-provoking but ultimately uplifting story of memory and love, grief, loss and the things we leave behind. It is another brilliant novel from an author who seems to have the absolute knack of writing topical, engaging, heartwarming stories which really connect with listeners.

She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain's most photographed bad-boy who broke her heart. Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it. She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it. But at the end of their every sad endeavour to get over one another, it's still each other they crawl back to. But now their dysfunction is catching up with them, pulling at their seams and fraying the world they've built; a world where neither has ever let the other go completely.

In this sweeping story based on the true experiences of nurses dubbed "the Angels of Bataan," three women shift in and out of each other's lives through the darkest days of the war, buoyed by their unwavering friendship and distant dreams of liberation.

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.

Privacy is hard to maintain in Badara, the kind of small Australian country town where everyone knows everyone else's business. So discovers single mum Paige when she and her three children arrive from the city seeking refuge. Paige's only respite from child care and loneliness is the Tuesday gym club, where she had feared the judgement of the town matriarchs, but she is met only with generosity and a plethora of baked goods. Besides, both the brusque Marion and her polished sister-in-law Briony are too busy dealing with their own dramas to examine hers.

Nestled in the quiet countryside sits the cosy village of Little Monkham, home of the Star and Sixpence, a renovated pub owned by sisters Sam and Nessie. As the locals welcome the new season, it appears that change is afoot in their tiny community, and not all of it for the better...Nessie is moving in with her boyfriend, leaving Sam alone in the pub. But with the arrival of new chef Gabriel causing a flutter among the women of the village, it seems that Sam might not be so lonely after all.