A long time ago, when I was in hospital awaiting an
operation, a fellow patient told me in times of trouble, you can’t go wrong
with a Mills & Boon published book (Harlequin if you are in the US) to whisk you away. Wise advice, which I have used over and over again. And one of my go-to authors
is Michelle Smart.
This book has everything I require for a complete escape – avrunaway bride, a resourceful heroine, and a broody hero who may not have loved the
heroine to begin with but by the end is head over heels and a fabulous location
as well.
This book allowed me some time to escape for a few hours on a bad day.
It gave me the strength to carry on
A Florence cathedral, a fairy tale dress…a runaway bride!
Discovering that her billionaire fiancé, Enzo Beresi, will receive her inheritance if they wed, Rebecca Foley leaves him at the altar! She refuses to marry a man who keeps secrets from her.
Innocent Rebecca is devastated, yet she can’t let go of their powerful connection. So when Enzo arrives on her doorstep, she gives him twenty-four hours to tell her everything. The brooding Italian vows his feelings for her are real, but dare Rebecca believe in him enough to give into the temptation of their wedding night?
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…
I have been writing for many years, and my main preference is political thrillers with criminal overtones. I first became interested in politics when I worked at several political conferences in the 60’s and 70’s. I have been involved in several criminal cases, including my own, and within my family, I have a nephew in the police force. For many years I have had the opportunity to mix with the upper tiers of society as well as the criminal classes and this has given me great insight into creating my characters and plots.
I do love a chase thriller, especially one that has you scratching your head until the author reveals a clue or adds more calculated confusion or a red herring. This plot starts with a terrorist attack in Europe and involves a clever barrister and an agent trying to solve a mystery that introduces us to a double agent.
I think the plot is a very clever one where no one can be trusted until the mystery is solved. Kent is really good at characterization and some of his descriptive work I found very colorful. A damn good read.
'Packed with deception and espionage ... Kent has become the British Baldacci, and there can be no higher praise.' Daily Mail
Don't miss Book 5 from criminal barrister and crime author Tony Kent: THE SHADOW NETWORK
How do you take down an enemy when no one believes they exist? When the lawyers of alleged war criminal Hannibal Strauss are caught up in a terror attack in The Hague, barrister Michael Devlin immediately suspects all is not what it seems. Teaming up once more with Agent Joe Dempsey, they…
This is really a recommendation for the whole
Ice Breakers series by Cynthia Eden. It’s about a group of people from various
backgrounds who come together to solve cold cases.
In Trapped In Ice, it stars one of my favorite icebreakers, Smith
Sanders. I was so happy when it was time for his story. He’s the type of
anti-hero you love—sarcastic, annoying, and fierce. Smith hasn’t met a
dangerous situation he hasn’t laughed at.
Knowing he had a secret crush on
Madelyn in high school and then meeting her again sixteen years later when
she’s in danger, flips this romantic suspense up a notch. I loved it when bad boy
Smith falls hard for the good girl.
She never expected her hero to be the bad boy from her past…
They hate each other.
Or at least, Smith Sanders always believed Madelyn Lake hated him. But when the city plunges into darkness and he finds himself trapped in an elevator with the prim and ever-so-reserved Madelyn, he realizes that hate and desire can be twined dangerously close together. The simmering tension that has existed between them since they were sixteen years old explodes in a sensual frenzy that sweeps past their control.
It won’t ever happen again.
Power returns. So does sanity. They go their separate ways…
The women in this book dare greatly, do the unexpected, and come together for each other in an ending I did not see coming. Satisfying and highly original.
“Whip-smart and compulsively readable. . . both a wildly entertaining adventure story and a meditation on what it means to love your children—fiercely and imperfectly.”—Oprah Daily
“Springs alive to explore questions that stump scientists and families, problems of the head and the heart.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“A full-hearted portrait of sisterhood, family and the ways we process grief. Charming, wry, and original.” —People
A playful, witty, and resonant novel in which a single mother and her two teen daughters engage in a wild scientific experiment and discover themselves in…
I am a HUGE Don Winslow fan and have devoured every book, novella, and short story that I can get my hands on. He is, perhaps, the greatest writer of the past 20 years and this finale of a trilogy was perfection.
Following City on Fire and City of Dreams, City in Ruins is the explosive, impossible to put down conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Don Winslow's epic, genre-defining crime trilogy and the final book of Winslow's extraordinary career.
'A gangland trilogy to equal THE GODFATHER. If you like SCARFACE and GOODFELLAS, this is where it's at.' STEPHEN KING
Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love.
Danny Ryan is rich. Beyond his wildest dreams rich.
The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman - a…
The Pianist's Only Daughter
by
Kathryn Betts Adams,
ThePianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist…
the intertwining of three amazing stories of collaborators in WW2 including Kawashima Yoshiko, a gender fluid Manchu princess, spied for the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc.
I wasn’t always a joyful person. But today I’m freaking sunshine, and full-out committed to being an effective member of the team that’s elevating the level of love and joy in the world! My positions on that team have included writing dozens of mega-selling books (my own, and as a ghostwriter), founding my online Joy School at LisaMcCourt.com, hosting my Do Joy! podcast, and collaborating on projects with many other popular teachers of consciousness and joyful living. My books have sold over 9 million copies, earned 7 publishing industry awards, and garnered over 9,000 glowing Amazon reviews. Joy is my jam. I know a joyful book when I read one!
One of the secrets of my wildly successful joy trainings is an elevation of self-love. I say “secret” because self-love is a tired, cliched topic.
For some, it implies a self-indulgent pursuit for weaker-willed people than we like to admit ourselves to be. Others, who know they don’t have it, deep down believe they aren’t worthy of it anyway. It’s heartbreaking because self-love is the key to everything we believe we want. And it’s not about bubble baths or buying the shoes.
It’s about how we talk to ourselves all day long, day after day, with that voice in our heads. Spending time with Scott Stabile via the insightful musings in this precious book will create a shift in your relationship with that voice. And that shift will upturn everything.
From the author of the acclaimed Big Love, a funny, profound, and inspired collection of short prose on the transformational power of self-acceptance
Overwhelmed by a heartbreaking series of personal tragedies that defined his early life, Scott Stabile seemed destined for hardship and misfortune. Instead, he found the transformative power of love and the courage to walk away, which he detailed in his beloved collection of essays Big Love: The Power of Living with a Wide-Open Heart.
In Enough as You Are, Stabile delivers more of these liberating truths with a heart-expanding collection of poetry and short prose rooted in…
It was really original and deep research on a usually overlooked aspect of Shanghai's history - the interregnum between 1949 and the Cultural Revolution when everything changed, but some things didn't....
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
A sweeping family saga of a French Algerian family, who are pied noirs--people of European descent who lived in Algeria during French colonial rule from 1830-1962.
I was swept along by the story of a family torn apart by World War II and then displaced in the diaspora. Although Messud's family isn't Jewish, their story reminded me of my family and our journey in the diaspora.
The sheer scope of the time period covered, the emotional range of the characters and their lives, and the sumptuousness of Messud's language were just glorious. It was a feast of a book.
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state-separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of Francois and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of Francois's union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result…
