Fiction - English

Smoke Dugan is on the run. An aging bomb-maker, he was a prized asset to organized crime for most of his life. But when he finds out that one of his bombs was used to take down a plane with innocent women and children aboard, he is furious. He takes his revenge, killing the mafia boss and taking his 2.5 million. Now he’s the most wanted man on the east coast.Hiding out in Portland, Maine, only delays the inevitable as one by one, some of the most memorable killers, hitmen, and lowlifes in recent fiction take their shot at Smoke and his tough-as-nails girlfriend, martial arts expert Lola Bell. As the cat and mouse game plays out, the only thing left is a violent showdown on the streets of Portland in a conclusion that will leave readers gasping for breath.

Andie and her sister Jin have never seen eye to eye. Andie doesn’t envy Jin her marriage to a wealthy businessman, while Jin can’t believe Andie’s happy with her man-free existence (if only she knew!). But when their widowed mother Cora comes back from a Caribbean cruise with more than just a suntan, Andie and Jin are united in horror. Who is this gorgeous young man who’s swept their mother off her feet? What the women really need is a friend to set the world to rights with – but can they be friends with each other?

A music journo for most of his twenties, Dillon’s life is thrown into a spin when the magazine folds and he’s asked to become Agony Uncle for a rival publication. Amid the plethora of post about cheating boyfriends, crushes on pop stars and embarassing teenage body problems, he gets a letter from someone – someone he thinks is a stranger – asking whether she could have fallen in love with her best friend. And so Dillon tries to advise on whether there’s always more than a flicker in the candle when best friends are having dinner for two.

In their quest for cellulite reduction and a sexy self-image, Ellie Simpson, a Dublin nanny, and her three best friends — Maggie, a secretary; Pam, a divorced mother of two; and Toni, a nurse — have tried them all: Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Cabbage Soup — even the Avocado and Rice Krispies Gut-Cleansing Regime! But thus far they’ve had no better luck losing five pounds than they have had finding lasting love.

To cope with their middle-aged cottage-cheese thighs and date nights spent more often than not at home on the couch, they decide to form the WWW — Women Watching Weight — Club, meeting weekly to talk sex, spider veins, and the grim digestive realities of their latest diet — all while indulging in calorie-packed takeout and drinking wine and beer without the slightest trace of guilt (followed by their weekly weigh-in and a group vow to definitely start their diets again tomorrow!).

With one another’s unwavering support, the WWW girls face the ups and downs of their love lives, careers, and waistlines. But when they make a bet that the first WWW member to lose seven pounds will be entitled to be set up on a date by the other three, Ellie finds herself torn between her loyalty to her best friends in the WWW and her own deepening feelings for the one man who just might be everything she’s ever wanted.

A powerful tale of passion and betrayal and a woman’s determination to find out the truth about her past — from the author of The Hornbeam Tree.

A successful editor with a gorgeous husband, two adorable children and a beautiful London home, Julia has everything. But somehow she’s still searching. Her beloved father walked out when she was sixteen and no one would tell her why. She’s spent all her life missing him but wondering if she has blocked a memory too terrible to even contemplate. Julia’s confusion over the past has come to dominate her present and is even threatening her idyllic marriage — she’s convinced Josh is having an affair.

Then one day Julia is informed that her father has died, and has left his house in Cornwall to her. Still reeling from the news, she calls on her best friend Sylvia only to confront her worst fear.

Devastated, Julia goes down to Cornwall to see if she can discover the truth about her father. Although feeling betrayed by the two men she loved most, she longs to break free from the past and save her relationship with Josh. But Julia makes her own fatal mistake and once more their marriage is rocked to its very foundation.

Agnes Meadowes is cook to the Blanchards of Foster Lane, the renowned silversmiths. Her quiet world of culinary activity, preparing jugged hare, oyster loaves, almond soup and other delicacies for the family, is a happy refuge from the hustle and bustle of 1750s London. But in a single night everything is to change.

When the Blanchards’ most prestigious and expensive commission, a giant silver wine cooler destined for the house of Sir Bartholomew Grey, is stolen, a sinister chain of events is set in motion. That same night a young apprentice is murdered and a young maid. Rose, disappears. Are these portentous happenings connected?

Called upon by her master, Theodore Blanchard, to investigate ‘below stairs’, Agnes now enters a dark world of hidden secrets, jealousy and murderous intent. Before the game is played out she will be forced to act as mouse to the infamous Thief Taker’s cat as she is slowly drawn into a seamy underworld of London crime. But the truth, like the expensive tea leaves that Agnes keeps under lock and key, comes at a high price and she must decide how big a sacrifice she is prepared tp make to bring the villains to justice.

Fun-loving 16 year-old Charlie wants to experience free love and have a wild time. But when her father disappears and her mother is hospitalized, the privileged lifestyle she has always known disappears almost overnight. Suddenly free love isn’t as important as finding a job and a home.

Format:  Paperback

Pages:  690

This book is in fine condition.

If you love books by Josephine Cox, Martina Cole or Maureen Lee, you will enjoy the books by Lesley Pearse.

Known in Nantucket as the crazy woman who lives in the rambling house atop the bluff, Nan doesn’t care what people think. At sixty-five-years old, her husband died twenty years ago, her beauty has faded, and her family has flown. If her neighbors are away, why shouldn’t she skinny dip in their swimming pools and help herself to their flowers? But when she discovers the money she thought would last forever is dwindling and she could lose her beloved house, Nan knows she has to make drastic changes.

So Nan takes out an ad: Rooms to rent for the summer in a beautiful old Nantucket home with water views and direct access to the beach. Slowly, people start moving into the house, filling it with noise, with laughter, and with tears. As the house comes alive again, Nan finds her family expanding. Her son comes home for the summer, and then an unexpected visitor turns all their lives upside-down.

Yarrow is born with printer’s ink in her veins. Her grandfather and her father before her survive the Depression which threatens to destroy their Platte City Journal in a small Colorado town and from them Yarrow learns every detail of the newspaper world and of running the family business – details that Yarrow would later use in her own struggle to save her grandfather’s newspaper.
While enduring the traumas of an unhappy marriage, and raising her children, Yarrow struggles to balance her own drive for power with her enduring love for Elliot Weyden, the man who is her mentor and inspiration. He is brash, determined, and unwilling to compromise to get what he wants…and his goal is the presidency.

The last instalment in the Epic Avalon series by Marion Zimmer Bradley The Ancestors of Avalon is the story of the priests and priestesses – the ancestors in body and spirit of the characters who reappear in the other Avalon books – who flee the destruction of Atlantis and take refuge in the mist-shrouded isle of Britain. But once landed at Belerion the survivors are torn, do they look north to the midlands and seek to lead the Wessex kings, or do they explore the mystical Tor and reestablish their magical traditions within a spiritual kingdom. It is they who teach the Neolithic inhabitants how to move the mighty stones, and carve the spiral pathway around Glastonbury Tor but can they survive the battle against each other.