Archive | New Releases

Bianca Pitzorno
In 1900 Sardinia, a young woman’s remarkable talent with a needle earns her a position as a seamstress with a wealthy family. Inside this privileged world far different from her own humble beginnings, the skilled sewer quietly takes measurements, sketches designs, mends hems–and in the silence, hears whispered secrets and stories of all those around her.

Through the watchful young seamstress’s eyes, this small Italian city and its residents emerge in all their vitality, vanity, and fragility–flawed yet congenial people who are not quite what they pretend to be. There is the Marchesa Esther, who rides horses and studies mechanics and ancient Greek; Miss Lily Rose, a spirited American journalist who commissions a special corset–with pockets to hide more than just her flaws; the Provera sisters with their expensive Parisian fashions that belie their financial hardships; and Assuntina, the wild child. There are men, young, old, and in between; love affairs and broken hearts; and even a murder (or was it suicide?). And at the center, watching and waiting is the seamstress herself, an intelligent, ambitious girl with a tender heart and her own impossible dream.

Phillipa Gregory
Three Women Who Share One Fate: The Boleyn Inheritance.
Anne of Cleves
She runs from her tiny country, her hateful mother, and her abusive brother to a throne whose last three occupants are dead. King Henry VIII, her new husband, instantly dislikes her. Without friends, family, or even an understanding of the language being spoken around her, she must literally save her neck in a court ruled by a deadly game of politics and the terror of an unpredictable and vengeful king. Her Boleyn Inheritance: accusations and false witnesses.

Katherine Howard
She catches the king’s eye within moments of arriving at court, setting in motion the dreadful machine of politics, intrigue, and treason that she does not understand. She only knows that she is beautiful, that men desire her, that she is young and in love — but not with the diseased old man who made her queen, beds her night after night, and killed her cousin Anne. Her Boleyn Inheritance: the threat of the axe.

Jane Rochford
She is the Boleyn girl whose testimony sent her husband and sister-in-law to their deaths. She is the trusted friend of two threatened queens, the perfectly loyal spy for her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and a canny survivor in the murderous court of a most dangerous king. Throughout Europe, her name is a byword for malice, jealousy, and twisted lust. Her Boleyn Inheritance: a fortune and a title, in exchange for her soul.

Phillipa Gregory
Jane Grey was queen of England for nine days. Her father and his allies crowned her instead of the dead king’s half sister Mary Tudor, who quickly mustered an army, claimed her throne, and locked Jane in the Tower of London. When Jane refused to betray her Protestant faith, Mary sent her to the executioner’s block, where Jane transformed her father’s greedy power grab into tragic martyrdom.

“Learn you to die,” was the advice Jane wrote to her younger sister Katherine, who has no intention of dying. She intends to enjoy her beauty and her youth and fall in love. But she is heir to the insecure and infertile Queen Mary and then to her half sister, Queen Elizabeth, who will never allow Katherine to marry and produce a Tudor son. When Katherine’s pregnancy betrays her secret marriage, she faces imprisonment in the Tower, only yards from her sister’s scaffold.

“Farewell, my sister,” writes Katherine to the youngest Grey sister, Mary. A beautiful dwarf, disregarded by the court, Mary keeps family secrets, especially her own, while avoiding Elizabeth’s suspicious glare. After seeing her sisters defy their queens, Mary is acutely aware of her own danger but determined to command her own life. What will happen when the last Tudor defies her ruthless and unforgiving Queen Elizabeth?

Heather Rose
Caroline will tell the story of how she came to Tasmania, when it was still called Van Diemen’s Land, many times. She will cast her inventions into the future. Those who carry them on will call it history, but she will call it her life.

Van Diemen’s Land, 1839. A young woman of means arrives in Hobart, with a young boy in her care. Leasing an old cottage next to an abandoned vineyard, Caroline Douglas must navigate an insular colony of exiles and opportunists to create a new life on this island of extreme seasons and wild beauty. But Caroline is carrying a secret of such magnitude, it has led her to cross the world, and it will take all she is made of to bring it into the light.

Soaring from the champagne vineyards of revolutionary France to London and early colonial Australia, A Great Act of Love is a spellbinding novel of legacy, passion and reinvention. At its heart is a family with champagne in their blood and a fearless daughter determined to rewrite fate.

James Patterson
The suspense classic Along Came a Spider introduced an unsurpassed
Detective Alex the “human superhero” (New York Times) versus Gary the “most deliciously wicked character since Hannibal Lecter” (Lexington Herald-Leader). But that wasn’t their first meeting…

At a desolate cabin in the woods, police discover a hidden journal titled “Profiles in Homicidal Genius.” Evidence points to it being a murder book kept by Soneji.
As Alex studies the clues, he’s enmeshed in a web of evil Soneji designed to ensnare him all along. Plunging into the past, Alex must now retrace the steps of a long-ago investigation and face…the Return of the Spider.

Madelaine Bell
Tess Bright just scored her dream role starring in an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. It’s not just the role of a lifetime, but it’s also her last chance to prove herself as a serious actress (no easy feat after being fired from her last TV gig) and more importantly, it’s her opportunity to honor her mom, who was the biggest fan of Jane Austen ever. But one thing is standing in Tess’s way—well, one very tall, annoyingly handsome person, actually: Hugh Balfour.

A serious British method actor, Hugh wants nothing to do with Tess (whose Teen Choice Awards somehow don’t quite compare to his BAFTA nominations). Hugh is a type-A, no-nonsense, Royal Academy prodigy, whereas Tess is big-hearted, a little reckless, and admittedly, kind of a mess. But the film needs chemistry—and Tess’s career depends on it.

Sparks fly, but not in the way Tess hoped, when an electrical accident sends the two feuding co-stars back in time to Jane Austen’s era. 200 years in the past with only each other to rely on, Tess and Hugh need to ad-lib their way through the Regency period in order to make it back home, and hopefully not screw up history along the way. But if a certain someone looks particularly dashing in those 19th century breeches…well, Tess won’t be complaining.

A wickedly funny, delightfully charming story, The Austen Affair is a tribute to Jane Austen, second chances, and love across the space-time continuum.

Alexander McCall Smith
Life is never dull for Botswana’s premier lady detective, Precious Ramotswe. As a particularly delicate situation is brought to her attention, she must, with the help of her loyal associate Grace Matsuki, set out to investigate the peculiar circumstances surrounding the case. Over the course of their inquiries, unexpected information continues coming to light, leaving the pair puzzled—eventually, Mma Ramotswe will realize that the truth, as ever, is more complicated than it first seems.

With the generosity and good humor that guide all her endeavors, Mma Ramotswe will untangle these questions for herself and her loved ones, and prove that with a healthy dose of wisdom and a steaming cup of red bush tea, compassion will always win the day.

Jane Harper
Carralon Ridge, a once vibrant village in rural New South Wales, has become a shell of itself, its houses and buildings bought up and left to rot by the mining company operating at its borders. A decade into its slow death, surrounded by industrial noise and swathed in thick layers of dust, the skeletal town is all but abandoned, with just a handful of residents clinging onto what remains.

After years of scorning those who left the Ridge behind as it fell into ruin, Ro never imagined she’d become one of them. But everything changed when she lost her son. Five years ago, Sam vanished while visiting during a break from college, leaving behind a rental car with his belongings inside. Sam had loved Carralon Ridge, and had been working on an oral history of the town to preserve its legacy before it vanished altogether. It wasn’t long after his disappearance that the rest of the family began to crumble away too.

Julian Stockwin
Cape Colony is proving a tiresome assignment for Thomas Kydd’s daring commander-in-chief Commodore South America’s Spanish colonies are in a ferment of popular unrest. Rumors of a treasure hoard of Spanish silver spur him to assemble a makeshift invasion fleet and launch a bold attack on the capital of the Viceroyalty of the River Plate in Buenos Aires. Navigating the treacherous bars and mud flats of the river, the British invasion force wins a battle against improbable odds, taking the capital and the silver.

But the uprising that promises the end of Spanish rule never arrives and the locals begin to see dark conspiracies behind the invader’s actions. Now Kydd’s men must face resistance and the betrayal of their closest allies. Can they save themselves and their prize?