In 15th century China two women are born under the same sign, the Metal Snake. But life will take the friends on very different paths.
 
According to Confucius, ‘an educated woman is a worthless woman’, but Tan Yunxian – born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separation and loneliness – is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. She begins her training in medicine with her grandmother and, as she navigates the male world of medicine, requiring tact and diplomacy, she struggles against the confining world of her class.
 
From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose – despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it – and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.
 
How might a woman like Yunxian break free of tradition, go on to treat women and girls from every level of society, and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a captivating story of women helping other women. It is also a triumphant reimagining of the life of a woman who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.

“Nothing quite like this has ever been published before,” proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.

The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women― the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up―a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city’s obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable.

The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.

A compelling and thought-provoking novel about the choices we must make to find the life we want and the rejuvenating power of love by the world’s favourite storyteller, billion copy bestselling author, Danielle Steel.

After a dark and unhappy childhood and two failed marriages where love was rarely felt, bestselling thriller author, Sabrina Brooks, has finally found the life she’s always craved. She’s discovered that her writing, her close circle of friends, and her beautiful home in Massachusett’s Berkshire mountains with her two beloved dogs are all that she needs to be happy and at peace.

However, Sabrina’s perfect life is suddenly disrupted when she receives a mysterious letter informing her that she is now the sole heir to her recently deceased uncle’s title and manor house in southern England. Determined to sell, Sabrina is forced to cross the Atlantic and see the property for herself.

But Sabrina’s visit to England takes a very different turn as she learns more about the family history and the secrets her father had kept from her, and she starts to fall in love with the breath-taking beauty of the historic manor and its gardens. Also, she cannot help but enjoy the company of the devastatingly handsome but complicated lawyer who acts as her tour guide.

As she discovers the rejuvenating power of love in all its forms, Sabrina must decide whether she is brave enough to gamble on her future and choose a different, more exciting path or return to the safe haven she thought she’d always wanted.

From Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony of the moon three hundred years later. The Sunday Times bestseller, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a story of parallel worlds and possibilities that plays with the very line along which time should run.

Lives separated by time and space have collided, and an exiled Englishman, a writer trapped far from home, and a girl destined to die too young, have each glimpsed a world that is not their own.

Travelling through the centuries, between colonies on the moon and an ever-changing Earth, together their lives will solve a mystery that will make you question everything you thought you knew to be true.

A hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-shortlisted author – available for pre-order now

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

'FAST-PACED, TAUT AND PUNCHY' Sunday Times After an epic and interrupted journey all the way from the snows of South Dakota, Jack Reacher has finally made it to Virginia. His destination, the closest thing to a home he ever had: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th Military Police. Why? He wants to meet the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner. He liked her voice on the phone. But now he's arrived, she's disappeared, and things are getting weird. Accused of a sixteen-year-old homicide and co-opted back into the army, Reacher says nothing. But he's sure as hell thinking of a way out. 'One of Reacher's best...a must' Daily Express Although the Jack Reacher novels can be read in any order, Never Go Back follows on directly from the end of A Wanted Man.

"I didn't just happen upon this room; I dreamed of the pale green walls before I arrived."

Attempting to rise above the secrets of her past, Bolanle, a university graduate, marries Baba Segi, who promises her everything in exchange for agreeing to become his fourth wife. Thus she enters into a polygamous world filled with expensive clothes, a generous monthly allowance . . . and three Segi wives who disapprove of the newest, youngest, most educated addition to the family. There's Iya Femi, a fiery vixen with a taste for money; Iya Tope, a shy woman whose kindness is eclipsed by terror; and Iya Segi, the first, most lethal, and merciless of them all.

Bolanle quickly becomes Baba Segi's prized possession . . . until her very presence unlocks a secret that the other wives have long since guarded, and unleashing it could change life as they know it.

Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, bestselling author Dennis Lehane's extraordinary eighth novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads where past meets future. Filled with a cast of richly drawn, unforgettable characters, The Given Day tells the story of two families--one black, one white--swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power. Coursing through the pivotal events of a turbulent epoch, it explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in the thrall of, itself.

From the New York Times number one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah, comes Wild, a remarkable story about the resilience of the human spirit, the triumph of hope and the promise of new beginnings.

In the rugged Pacific Northwest of the United States lies the Olympic National Forest – a vast expanse of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this mysterious woodland, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past.

Having retreated to her hometown after a scandal left her career in ruins, child psychiatrist Dr Julia Cates begins working with the extraordinary little girl. Naming her Alice, Julia is determined to free her from a prison of unimaginable fear and isolation, and discover the truth about Alice’s past. The shocking facts of Alice’s life test the limits of Julia’s faith and strength, even as she struggles to make a home for Alice – and find a new one for herself.

When an unusual building appeared overnight in a remote northern Cape community in the 1970s, and disappeared a few weeks later, it seemed to point to a series of baffling existential overlaps.

Some individuals claimed that occasionally they found themselves on the other side of a restive civil war divide, in identity embodiments that were highly contrary versions of themselves. In other cases, absurd social situations seemed to mock ‘normal reality’ by alternating with it. When a small-town journalist reported on the events, his quiet life became cruelly disrupted by unwanted attention.

Were these accounts imagined or real? Real enough to the eyewitnesses.

Traumatised and adrift, the journalist wrote up his story in reportage style when a childhood friend invited him to recuperate on her farm. He believed he had narrowly escaped the disappearance of an entire region – a place nobody has ever heard of – and its people, including the love of his life. As the mystery unfolds, with an aura of retrieved memory, the narrator’s lost love becomes an increasingly evocative presence. The Equality of Shadows is a compelling novel – in some places uproariously funny, in others filled with deep pathos – about the vagaries of identity, love and time.

What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? The year is coming to a close and Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbour, Asleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjorgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgangers - two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about life, death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness. Written in melodious and hypnotic 'slow prose', The Other Name: Septology I-II is an indelible and poignant exploration of the human condition by Jon Fosse, 'a major European writer' (Karl Ove Knausgaard), in which everything is always there, and past and present flow together.

A refreshingly modern fairy tale and instant New York Times bestseller that Love Hypothesis author Ali Hazelwood hails as "an uplifting, feel-good, romantic read."

After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who’s ten years younger than her and as casual as they come—the complete opposite of sophisticated city-girl Alexis. And yet their chemistry is undeniable.

While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere” ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

The Whittiers is a heartwarming story about the importance of family, home and being true to yourself, from the world's favourite author Danielle Steel.

Connie and Preston Whittier raised their six children in a once-grand Manhattan mansion. The children are now adults, but the house remains the heart of the family and somewhere they all love to return to, particularly in times of stress. But on Connie and Peter's annual skiing holiday in Europe, an avalanche hits their resort, resulting in tragedy.

In every family, each member has their own personal struggles. The Whittiers are no exception. Lyle is successful but has an unhappy marriage. Gloria is a genius on Wall Street but lonely. Twins Caroline and Charlie work all hours on their growing fashion brand, but have no time to enjoy life and discover who they really are. Benjie has personal challenges and requires additional support. And rebellious Annabelle has fallen in with a bad crowd. The future of the family - and also their home - is now in question.

The house is a refuge providing comfort . . . but each of them will learn that to move forward and face their challenges, they must be true to themselves and come together to support one another.

Colleen Hoover’s romantic, emotion-packed debut novel unforgettably captures all the magic and confusion of first love, as two young people forge an unlikely bond before discovering that fate has other plans for them.

Following the unexpected death of her father, eighteen-year-old Layken becomes the rock for both her mother and younger brother. She appears resilient and tenacious, but inside, she's losing hope. Then she meets her new neighbor Will, a handsome twenty-one-year-old whose mere presence leaves her flustered and whose passion for poetry slams thrills her.

Not long after a heart-stopping first date during which each recognizes something profound and familiar in the other, they are slammed to the core when a shocking discovery brings their new relationship to a sudden halt. Daily interactions become impossibly painful as they struggle to find a balance between the feelings that pull them together and the forces that tear them apart. Only through the poetry they share are they able to speak the truth that is in their hearts and imagine a future where love is cause for celebration, not regret.

Ravaged Souls follows the lives of four friends.

Luxolo and Vuyolwethu Ndamase are childhood sweethearts and are happily married until they lose their only son to an accident caused by Vuyo. From there life changes for them as they deal with their grief and loss, finding comfort outside their union.

Lubabalo Sobukwe is a pastor’s kid hiding his sexuality from his family and close friends. He lives a lie until he meets Ryan Cook and falls madly in love. He now has to decide whether to keep living the lie and jeopardise his chance at happiness or own his truth and risks killing his father and losing his family. Ryan on the other side still battles with scars of being abandoned and disowned by his family for his sexuality. He also has to deal with lies about his paternity. He has found a sense of belonging with Lubabalo but can he risk his mental health and give him a chance.

It's the most anticipated event of the decade: Big Lou and Fat Bob's wedding and everyone is invited! After a wonderful day, Big Lou crashes back down to earth and finds that she is a victim of her own success. The lure of those famous bacon rolls is preventing her from leaving hungry customers without their daily dose of deliciousness - even to go for a long-awaited honeymoon. Will Big Lou find the happiness she so richly deserves? Everyone in Scotland Street hopes so, but, as Burns warned, the best laid plans ... The relative peace and tranquillity of 44 Scotland Street is about to be disrupted. Irene is to return for a two-month stay, consigning Bertie to a summer camp. Not satisfied with that, she somehow manages to come between the enigmatic nun, Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna, and her friend, the hagiographer, Antonia Collie. Can a person really change, even after being struck by lightning? Bruce's metamorphosis and new-found outlook on life is put to the test as he prepares to leave his creature comforts for the monastic simplicity of Pluscarden Abbey. His house sitter, meanwhile, gets a little too comfortable in his new life and discovers that the talented Bruce Anderson's shoes are all too easy to slip into. With great taste comes great responsibility. Come and discover The Enigma of Garlic and join the delightful denizens of Edinburgh's most famous address. This latest instalment of the much-loved 44 Scotland Street series is wise, witty, and full of warmth.