Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Women's Fiction

Charlotte Hamner lost her beloved husband Jason three years ago. His death nearly destroyed her—but with the help of her dearest sisters and cousins in the Montgomery and Sheridan clans, she was able to find hope once more, and ultimately build her wedding planning business back to new heights. And against all odds, she found love again with the dashing photographer, Everett.

In her diary, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Lorelei Lee, a not-so-dumb blonde from Arkansas, documents her wild adventures to Hollywood, Manhattan, Europe, and back again with her best friend, Dorothy. Along the way, Lorelei and Dorothy are flanked by suitors from all walks of high society, but it might just be the American millionaire who draws her eye. But just because Lorelei might have found “the one” doesn’t mean the adventures are over! In the sequel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, Lorelei takes up her diary once again to tell Dorothy’s tale.

Three women, from coast to coast and in between, open their mailboxes to the same intriguing invitation. Although leading entirely different lives, each has found herself at a similar, jarring crossroads. Right when these women thought they’d be comfortably settling into middle age, their carefully curated futures have turned out to be dead ends.

How does a librarian from New Jersey end up in a convenience store on Vancouver Island in the middle of the night, playing Bible Scrabble with a Korean physicist and a drunk priest? She gets married to the wrong man for starters - she didn't know he was "that kind of Catholic" - and ends up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She gets a job in a New Age bookstore, wanders toward Buddhism without realizing it, and acquires a dog. Things get complicated after that.

Twelve-year-old Sarah Jacob was the most famous of the Victorian fasting girls, who claimed to miraculously survive without food, serving as flash points between struggling religious, scientific, and political factions. In this novel based on Sarah’s life and premature death from what may be the first documented case of anorexia, an American journalist, recovering from her husband’s death in the Civil War, leaves her home and children behind to travel to Wales, where she investigates Sarah’s bizarre case by becoming the young girl’s friend and confidante.

Book editor Emily Bryant finds herself unexpectedly in the charming town of Cascata on California’s Lost Coast, holding the keys to her grandmother’s rambling Victorian mansion. While sorting through her grandmother’s things, Emily learns that she must edit old manuscripts to inherit the estate. It’s a strange request from a family member who was basically a stranger. Emily quickly realizes that there’s something different about these manuscripts. Any changes she makes come true.

Jess and Nina, Nina and Jess … to everyone else they’re typical best friends, sharing closeness and confidences in their own little world. But Nina and Jess have a secret. Simply by touching their foreheads together, they can swap bodies. In Jess’s assertive persona, self-conscious Nina turns bolder, free to say what she’s frightened to voice on her own. Inhabiting Nina, Jess becomes part of the loving, stable family she craves. Now, in crisis after her father’s death, Jess has reentered Nina’s life following a long separation.

Still grieving the death of her mother, 29-year-old Akiko is single and lives in self-imposed isolation in Tokyo. Then one evening, she unexpectedly runs into Kento, her first love from school. Kento now leads a reclusive life as a hikikomori, only venturing out at night.

It is a dazzling decade, and Barbara Bond is a beautiful young singer torn between her fierce desire for independence and her deep, abiding love for her husband, a brilliant doctor. She has trained for years to sing grand opera, but soon after her marriage to Harvey Perkins, she learns that he has accepted an assignment as a medical missionary in the country of Siam. Suddenly Barbara is forced into the duty of a “good wife"—to support her husband’s career, not her own. As resentment slowly grows, she travels with Harvey first to the jungles of Siam, then to the capital city of Bangkok.

Things are finally looking up for the Benson family. After a year of tough choices and big leaps of faith, it seems like love, success, and happiness are right in their grasp. But with a wedding on the horizon and a successful new restaurant growing faster than anyone ever expected, everyone certainly has their hands full. In fact, it’s starting to cause problems. Little cracks are appearing in the surface. And the historic storm brewing offshore might turn those cracks into craters.

Last summer, a storm blew the Benson family’s lives to bits. It’s been almost a year since that fateful day, since they learned that life at the beach isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. They are doing their best to pick up the pieces. Widow Mae Benson is running the Sweet Island Inn. Her daughter Eliza is learning what it means to be a mother. Sara is rediscovering her passion in the wake of heartbreak. Holly is searching for stability in her marriage. And her son Brent is—well, Brent isn’t doing so great. Despite these challenges, they might make it—if they stick together.

What Pretty Girls Are Made Of breaks the lipstick seal of silence in this thinly veiled tell-all about what it’s like working in the cosmetic trenches. Roth’s roman-a-clef centers around the indefatigable Alison Kraft, who lands a new career in the cutthroat world of high-end makeup, ensnared under a new boss who could give even Miranda Priestly a run for her money.

Startlingly honest and unsentimental, Television for Women explores the realities of life postpartum, the demands children make on women’s identities and relationships—and the desperate lengths someone might go to in order to reclaim the person she once was.

Isabelle Duprees is one of Forbes’ most powerful self-made women and has built a reputation as one of New York’s savviest investors and sharpest advisors. With a penthouse overlooking Central Park, an open invitation to any event she wishes to attend, and a weekly date with a man who won’t ask too much of her, Isabelle’s carefully curated life is exactly what she wants. Until it isn’t. After her estranged sister shows up, circumstances—and too much champagne—have Isabelle Googling herself, only to discover three other women her age, with the same name, birthdate, and familiar features.

Single, unfulfilled and well into middle age, long-troubled Charlotte Lansing desperately reaches for love and acceptance. When she announces her engagement to an unemployed morphine addict, her family falls into a tailspin. Her mother is determined to prevent disaster, her father seeks to mend the growing chasm, and her sister stubbornly hopes that their sibling bonds can keep Charlotte safe. But Charlotte resists all this because she thinks she is finally happy. Ultimately, all her loved ones can do is watch as Charlotte disappears, slowly and inevitably, into her new husband’s illness.

Red Pottage follows the lives of close friends Rachel West, the wealthy heiress, and Hester Gresley, the novelist. Rachel has fallen in love with Hugh Scarlett, a spineless and weak-willed man who has just ended an affair with a married woman. Hester, on the other hand, is stuck living with her brother, a pompous and critical vicar. She must contend with her brother’s disapproval of her writing, a battle which manifests itself as a nervous illness in her.

Brenda Lockhart’s family has been living well beyond their means for too long when Brenda’s husband leaves them―for an older and less attractive woman than Brenda, no less. Brenda has never worked outside the home, and the family’s economic situation quickly declines. Oldest daughter Peggy is certain she’s heading off to a university, until her father offers her a job sorting mail while she attends community college instead. Younger daughter Allison, a high school senior, can’t believe her luck that California golden boy Kevin has fallen in love with her.

Tessa is a successful white woman writer who develops a friendship, first by correspondence and then in person, with Charlie, a ruggedly handsome philosopher and scholar based in Los Angeles. Sparks fly as they exchange ideas about Camus and masculine desire, and their intellectual connection promises more—but there are obstacles to this burgeoning relationship.

Franny Steinberg knows there’s powerful magic in laughter. She’s witnessed it. With the men of Chicago off fighting WWII on distant shores, Franny has watched the women of the city taking charge of the war effort. But amidst the war bond sales and factory shifts, something surprising has emerged, something Franny could never have expected. A new marvel that has women flocking to comedy clubs across the nation: the Showstopper.

Pamela Binnings Ewen’s newest novel reveals the story of Émilienne, once the most beautiful, sought-after woman in Paris during the Belle Époque, the era of peaceful years just before World War I. As a girl, Émilienne fights her way through poverty in Montmartre, drawn to the lights of Paris below. Soon, she stars at the Folies Bergère, mistress of kings and princes, known as the most beautiful woman in Europe.