Oona Kelly Webster is an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. Married with two children, her twenty-five-year relationship falls apart when she books a silver wedding anniversary getaway at a luxurious château in France and her husband Charles suddenly drops a bombshell which will shatter her carefully built world.

Although devastated, Oona decides to travel to France without Charles, but soon after her arrival in the charming village of Milly-la-Forêt, the world comes to a standstill due to a terrifying pandemic and all travel is forbidden. Isolated and fearful, Oona then receives another shock when she discovers her job has been made redundant. The only thing which helps her to face the tragedy taking place across the world is that she can remain in France, where the beautiful surroundings and slower pace of life will slowly begin to heal her.

And when a chance encounter with her new neighbour, a well-known Hollywood actor who is also stranded far from home, blossoms into something deeper than friendship, Oona wrestles with the risks of opening her heart again— especially to a younger, very famous man who has two young children grieving for their mother.

With a second chance at happiness before her, Oona must be brave enough to stay open to even greater life changes at a time when the world is experiencing great fear and turmoil . . .

Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board a ship from Bremerhaven to Portland, Maine, and anti-Semites murder her mother in Portland. In the orphanage at St. Cloud’s, it’s clear to Dr Larch, the physician and director of the orphanage, that the abandoned child not only knows she’s Jewish, but she’s familiar with the biblical Queen Esther she was named for. Dr Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; he doubts he’ll find any family to adopt her.

When Esther is fourteen, soon to become a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic family with a history of providing for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren’t Jewish, but they detest anti-Semitism and similar prejudice. Esther’s gratitude to the Winslows is unending. As she retraces her steps to her birth city, Esther keeps loving and protecting the Winslows – even in Vienna.

The final chapter of this historical novel is set in Jerusalem in 1981, when Esther is seventy-six.

Salento, Italy, June 1934: A coach stops in the main square of Lizzanello, a tight-knit village where everyone knows each other. A couple gets off: The man, Carlo, a child of the South, is happy to be back home after a long time away; the woman, Anna—his wife—is a stranger from the North. Carlo’s brother is there to meet them, and he and everyone else can’t help but notice that Anna is as beautiful as a Greek statue.

But Anna is not like the other wives. She doesn’t gossip or attend church. She reads books no one else has ever heard of, exploring ideas that some find threatening. She even wears pants, just like a man, and thinks a woman should have rights, just like a man.

There aren’t many options for a woman with Anna’s sensibilities, so when she learns that the post office is hiring, she leaps at the opportunity. A female letter carrier? It is unthinkable! But Anna passes the postal exam and soon becomes the invisible thread connecting the town as she delivers letters between clandestine lovers, families waiting to hear news of loves ones away at war, and even helping those who can’t read.

Letters connect people, and they convey information and emotion. But for some in Lizzanello, letters are too little and too late.

The Letter Carrier taps into the universal feeling of connection—and what happens when that connection perhaps comes at the wrong time.

Great Expectations was first published as a weekly serial in All the Year Round, December 1860 - August 1861. Its first appearance in volume form was as three-volume novel, without illustrations, in July 1861. A one-volume edition, the next year, preceded its inclusion in the collected editions of Dickens's lifetime. The three-volume 1861 edition is the basis of the present text: variant readings, including those in manuscript and extant proofs, are recorded in the textual apparatus, providing an unusually rich source of information on Dickens's methods of composition. The Introduction traces this process of composition and draws attention to the two unperformed dramatic adaptations: the reading version and the 1861 play version, made as a safeguard of copyright. Appendices include the original ending, the author's notes, and two textual examinations, one of the five so-called `editions' of 1861, the other a comparison of the one-volume 1862 edition with the 1864 Library edition.

Sarah het geen begeerte om met grasie oud te word nie. Sy dra onpaar oorbelle, ’n groot sonbril en haar hare is bloedrooi gekleur. Wat sy wel nie op haar ouderdom verwag het nie, is om na haar 55ste martriekreünie genooi te word. En boonop vereis die uitnodiging dat sy ’n metgesel saambring  – wat sy, ’n weduwee, wáár moet kry? Sy is nuuskierig oor die affêre, maar om na haar grootworddorp terug te keer gaan ou wonde oopkrap. En sy gaan vir Franco, die hartevertrapper, weer in die oë moet kyk!

Natasja bevind haar vroegoggend op die snelweg, tien ure noord van Kaapstad. Al haar besittings is agter in die kar en sy sweer sy sit haar voete nooit weer naby Johnny nie. Eers nadat sy op die N18 afgedraai het, onthou Natasja: George, haar pa se boesemvriend, woon nog op Lelievlei. Miskien moet sy gaan aanklop?

In dié aangrypende roman herinner die skrywer ons hoe die liefde ons almal raak. En soms skenk die heelal vir jou ’n beskermengel wanneer jy dit die nodigste het.

Cara is ná twee wêreldoorloë eindelik op pad terug na haar geboorteland. Sy is destyds wettig deur die Du Toits aangeneem en sy en Clarabelle het  saam grootgeword. Na haar weggaan het die twee gereeld gekorrespondeer, maar later het die oorlog tussenbeide gekom. Sy word goed ontvang en almal is begaan oor haar welstand, maar sy bly verward en eensaam. Vir haar voel dit soms of sy vir die res van haar lewe op reis sal wees. Het sy eindelik haar bestemming bereik? Tyd sal wel leer.

Sally Holt has always been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally's questions about life, about love and about Billy Barnes, the high school basketball star who runs the refreshment stand at the local pool. Billy's unfathomable, otherworldly cool puts him on a different planet - until a tragedy leaves Sally's life forever intertwined with his.

Opening in the early nineties and charting almost two decades of shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is a dazzlingly unconventional love story that brims with unexpected moments of joy.

From USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Sierra Simone comes her steamy, TikTok-famous Priest series, in which sinners and saints alike test the bonds of religion, love, and lust. He's a priest, and here is his confession. There are many rules a priest can't break. A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot forsake his God. Tyler Bell has had no problem playing by the rules for the last three years after a family tragedy set him on the path to priesthood. That all changes when the delicious, sultry voice of Poppy Danforth sinks its claws in him through the screen of his confessional booth, and he can't get her sins out of his head. It should be easy to put his impure thoughts of her to rest, considering the vows Tyler has taken. It should be nothing to overcome what the sight and sound of her does to him, when his life with the Church means everything. But once he has his first forbidden taste of those red lips, Tyler can't help but break all his rules for Poppy-no matter what it might cost them both.

A contemporary version of the story of David and Bathsheba. When David Samuel, chairman of Globe Oil, a multinational oil company, becomes a widower, his world is turned upside down. His old friend, Nathan - also a work colleague - and his wife have provided support and care for him, as has his friend and colleague, Rich Hampton. Rich has recently married the beautiful Beth. Then David notices a beautiful girl on a train and is very attracted to her. Later it becomes devastatingly clear that this is the new Mrs Hampton. David plans to get Rich out of the way by sending him on an assignment abroad, and begins an affair with his wife; but Beth becomes pregnant. When conscientious Rich won't return home, there's only one solution in David's mind. he has Rich murdered. Played against a strong backdrop of good supporting characters (including Beth's sister, Cerys, whose husband has an affair and leaves her), Beth ultimately loses the baby. But David has an epiphany; fasting for the child and the woman he loves, he meets with God. He is a chastened and changed man. Beth too has her own experience with God, and throws herself into charitable work. At the end, they come together again, different, but still in love.

Attending your best friend’s wedding should be a piece of (wedding) cake, but not for bestselling mystery author Eleanor Dash. Because murder seems to follow her every time she goes on holiday – and is her uninvited plus-one to this special occasion . . .

Eleanor’s best friend, Emma, is starring in a movie alongside her co-star and fiancé, Fred. As filming wraps, they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island.

There may be a storm headed their way – because of course there is – but nothing will stop their nuptials. That is until Emma receives a note that says: Someone is going to die at the wedding.

Eleanor is practically a professional detective at this point, and she’ll do everything she can to uncover the murderer. But will this be a destination wedding to die for in more ways than one?

Aldous Huxley's 1932 dystopian classic Brave New World predicts - with eerie clarity - a terrifying vision of the future, which feels ever closer to our own reality.

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress...

Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.

Acclaimed Italian author Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s best-selling novel to date, The Brittle Age is a powerful mother and daughter story and a profound exploration of human fragility and the haunting shadows of the past

In the 1990s, deep in the Maiella mountains of Central Italy, a brutal crime shatters the peace of the local community. Two young women are murdered, a third left for dead. Lucia is twenty years old back, and the only survivor is her best friend.   

Now, Lucia is a physiotherapist, separating from her husband, her daughter Amanda studying in Milan.  When the pandemic forces Amanda to return to the family’s home near Pescara, Lucia’s memories are reawakened, and with them the impact of past trauma. 

Set against the backdrop of the rugged Apennine mountains, this gripping psychological family drama weaves Lucia and Amanda’s personal struggles with the mystery of the tragedy that marked their familial land decades earlier.  

Inspired by true events, The Brittle Age is a tale of individual resilience, and a commentary on the indelible impact of historical events on personal lives and the broader community. 

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

The year is 1944 and Veit Kolbe, a young German soldier, injured fighting in Russia, is recovering at Mondsee, a village and a lake below Drachenwand mountain, close to Salzburg in Austria. Here he meets Margot and Margarete, two young women who share his hope that sometime, sooner or later, life will begin again. The war is lost but how long will it take before it finally comes to its end? In Hinterland, Arno Geiger tells of Veit's nightmares and the strangely normal life of the small village, of the Brazilian who dreams of returning to Rio de Janeiro, of the landlady and her rallying calls, of Margarete the teacher with whom Veit falls in love, but who doesn't return his affection. But when Veit's wounds are healed his next call-up orders arrive. The military outlook for Germany and Austria looks increasingly grim and Veit's luck has run out . . .

An immensely powerful epic of colonialism, set in 18th-century Greenland, about the great forces of nature, the meeting of cultures and fathers and sons. 1728: The doomed Danish King Fredrik IV sends a governor to Greenland to establish a colony, in the hopes of exploiting the country's allegedly vast natural resources. A few merchants, a barber-surgeon, two trainee priests, a blacksmith, some carpenters and soldiers and a dozen hastily married couples go with him. The missionary priest Hans Egede has already been in Greenland for several years when the new colonists arrive. He has established a mission there, but the converts are few. Among those most hostile Egede is the shaman Aappaluttoq, whose own son was taken by the priest and raised in the Christian faith as his own. Thus the great rift between two men, and two ways of life, is born. The newly arrived couples - composed of men and women plucked from prison - quickly sink into a life of almost complete dissolution, and soon unsanitary conditions, illness and death bring the colony to its knees. Through the starvation and the epidemics that beset the colony, Egede remains steadfast in his determination - willing to sacrifice even those he loves for the sake of his mission. Translated from Danish by Martin Aitken, Kim Leine's The Colony of Good Hope explores what happens when two cultures confront one another. In a distant colony, under the harshest conditions, the overwhelming forces of nature meet the vices of man.

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world's largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn't telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it's too late--and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.

When art-thief and gambler Jim Markham falls foul of Satan, he must undergo the ordeal of the seven footprints in order to avoid slavery or death. If he fails he will be forced to carry out Satan's demonic bidding for the next year of his life.

Valerio Tullus arrives in Judea in AD 22, disowned and despairing, yet hopes to redeem his honor and life. Instead, he faces many entanglements - with his subordinate Gaius Vincinius, Jewish leaders, a local scribe Eliezer, the Herodian family, Prefect Pontius Pilatus, and the children Simon and Anna, nephew and niece of Leah, a young Jewish woman whose own struggles to survive and serve God inspire him. Through these entanglements, Valerio's life becomes interwoven with Leah's and, when Vincinius attacks her, Valerio defends her. Death seems the only redemption, but, though Valerio doesn't know or understand it, the compassionate God of Leah and her family and her people has a different purpose for his life. Thus, in AD 28, as a powerful, strange prophet named Yochanan proclaims the coming of God's kingdom, to be ruled by a leader yet to come, Valerio can only wonder - what is this kingdom of compassion and justice Yochanan has announced? And what redemption will it bring? Read the book to find out.