When Alice Eveleigh arrives at Fiercombe Manor during the long, languid summer of 1933, she finds a house steeped in mystery and brimming with secrets. Sadness permeates its empty rooms and the isolated valley seems crowded with ghosts, none more alluring than Elizabeth Stanton whose only traces remain in a few tantalisingly blurred photographs. Why will no one speak of her? What happened a generation ago to make her vanish? As the sun beats down relentlessly, Alice becomes ever more determined to unearth the truth about the girl in the photograph - and stop her own life from becoming an eerie echo of Elizabeth's . . . The book begins with a great insight into the social history of the 1930s with a young girl becoming pregnant whilst unmarried. It then continues in this vein with a glimpse of an old country estate in the 1930s told through Alice’s eyes, and in the late 1890s told through Elizabeth’s eyes. I felt there was going to be a great story brewing – with all the dee
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'This was where her dreams drifted to if she didn't blot her nights out with drink; this was where her thoughts settled if she didn't fill her days with chat. She remembered this tiny, remote foreign village on a molecular level and the sight of it soaked into her like water into sand, because this was where her old life had ended and her new one had begun.' Portobello - home to the world-famous street market, Notting Hill Carnival and Clem Alderton. She's the queen of the scene, the girl everyone wants to be or be with. But beneath the morning-after makeup, Clem is keeping a secret, and when she goes too far one reckless night she endangers everything - her home, her job and even her adored brother's love. Portofino - a place of wild beauty and old-school glamour. Clem has been here once before and vowed never to return. But when a hansome stranger asks Clem to restore a neglected villa, it seems like the answer to her problems - if she can just face
Since her parents’ mysterious deaths many years ago, scientist Cora Sparks has spent her days in the safety of her university lab or at her grandmother Etta’s dress shop. Tucked away on a winding Cambridge street, Etta’s charming tiny store appears quite ordinary to passersby, but the colorfully vibrant racks of beaded silks, delicate laces, and jewel-toned velvets hold bewitching secrets: With just a few stitches from Etta’s needle, these gorgeous gowns have the power to free a woman’s deepest desires. Etta’s dearest wish is to work her magic on her granddaughter. Cora’s studious, unromantic eye has overlooked Walt, the shy bookseller who has been in love with her forever. Determined not to allow Cora to miss her chance at happiness, Etta sews a tiny stitch into Walt’s collar, hoping to give him the courage to confess his feelings to Cora. But magic spells—like true love—can go awry. After Walt is spurred into action, Etta realizes she’s set in motion a series of astonishing events
'Name: Stella Sweeney. Height: average. Recent life events: dramatic.' One day, sitting in traffic, married Dublin mum Stella Sweeney attempts a good deed. The resulting car crash changes her life. For she meets a man who wants her telephone number (for the insurance, it turns out). That's okay. She doesn't really like him much anyway (his Range Rover totally banjaxed her car). But in this meeting is born the seed of something which will take Stella thousands of miles from her old life, turning an ordinary woman into a superstar, and, along the way, wrenching her whole family apart. Is this all because of one ill-advised act of goodwill? Was meeting Mr Range Rover destiny or karma? Should she be grateful or hopping mad? For the first time real, honest-to-goodness happiness is just within her reach. But is Stella Sweeney, Dublin housewife, ready to grasp it? Never having read a Marian Keys book before I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m so glad I c
Dr. Matthew MacAulay is a facial transplant surgeon working in a prestigious New York hospital. He is forced at gunpoint to perform a facial transplant in the middle of the night. The surgical team includes Dr. Sarah Larsson the anesthetist and his scrub nurse Marcia Lopez. They work under intense pressure but unfortunately the patient dies. The next day Matthew learns that Dr. Tom Grabowski, leader of the facial transplant program in Palo Alto, also died last night. The death is initially classified as a heart attack. Matthew is suspicious since the facial transplant centers are being funded by the government in secret. The Secretary of Defense is very concerned by the death of Dr. Tom Grabowski; he was the world leader in transplant research and possessed a great deal of highly valuable intellectual property. Quentin Taylor assigns Jonathan to investigate Tom’s death and ensure no vital secrets have gone missing. Clues seem to just fall into Jonathan’s lap. Within no time Jonatha
She doesn't want her turn on the catwalk-she'd rather be behind the scenes creating fabulous outfits! So when a famous fashionista discovers Emma's designs and offers her the opportunity of a lifetime-a feature in Madison magazine (squeal!)-Emma sort of, well, panics. She has only one option: to create a secret identity. And so Allegra Biscotti is born. Allegra is worldly, sophisticated, and bold-everything Emma is not. But the pressure is on. And Emma quickly discovers juggling school, a new crush, friends, and a secret identity might not be as glamorous as she thought. Something a little different from me - this is a book I downloaded as it was (and still is) on offer at 1p on Amazon. It's a teen book but after reading some of the reviews I decided to give it a go. The book is based on Emma - who has to invent an alter go Allegra to pass off her fashion designs to a magazine - she is after all only a teenager. I love fashion and used to sew all my o
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published it would ruin lives - so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him. And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before . . . I’m a JK Rowling fan but to put this review into context I actually hated The Casual Vacancy. So it was with trepidation I first read her alter ego Galbraith. However, I loved the first book featuring Cormoran