«A «Library Journal» Best Book of the Year What would you do with a second chance at life? Having survived a life-threatening illness, Kate celebrates by gathering with six close friends. At an intimate outdoor dinner on a warm September evening, the women challenge Kate to start her new lease on life by going white-water rafting down the Grand Canyon with her daughter. But Kate is reluctant to take the risk. That is, until her friend Marion proposes a pact: if Kate will face the rapids, each woman will do one thing in the next year that scares her. Kate agrees, with one provision — she didn't get to choose her challenge, so she gets to choose theirs. Whether it's learning to let go of the past or getting a tattoo, each woman's story interweaves with the others, forming a seamless portrait of the power of female friendships. From the author of The School of Essential Ingredients comes a beautifully crafted novel about daring to experience true joy, starting one small step at a time.»

«From «New York Times» bestselling author Luanne Rice, a moving family story that «will strike a chord in every mother, daughter, or sister» («Marie Claire») In «The Silver Boat,» «New York Times» bestselling author Luanne Rice has written a heart-wrenching yet heartwarming portrait of a family in all its flawed complexity. The McCarthy sisters have come to Martha's Vineyard to say good-bye to their family's beach house — the place they were happiest together. Each has her own complicated issues and is struggling with the difficult process of letting go, but when a cache of old letters spurs them to visit Ireland, each woman comes to see herself in a new light. True-to-life sisters, the beach, laughter, and passionate love — «The Silver Boat» is Luanne Rice at her very best.»

Wedding florist Emma Grant gets to play with flowers every day and work with her three best friends in the process. She couldn’t ask for a better job. And her love life seems to be thriving. Though men swarm around her, she still hasn’t found Mr. Right. And the last place she’s looking is right under her nose.

«From #1 «New York Times» — bestselling author Roberts comes the first book in a new series: a novel of love, friendship, and family — and the unpredictable moments that turn a pretty picture into a true work of art.»

Claire Tomalin brings her extraordinary gifts of scholarship, fluent writing and empathy for her subjects to bear on one of our greatest, and most elusive, novelists. Widely acclaimed as the finest of Austen biographies, the book offers us a brave, sharp-tongued character who fairly bounces off the page. (Val Hennesy). And along the way it gives us an authoratative, graceful,succinct account of a wide swathe of English society which brilliantly illuminates' the novelist. (Victoria Glendinning).

Pursuing art and adventure across Europe, Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote with the Furies at her heels. Dying at the age of only 34, she became posthumously one of the most influential writers of the last century. Sexually ambiguous, craving love yet quarrelsome and capricious, she glittered in the brilliant circles of DH Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, her beauty and recklessness inspiring admiration, jealousy, rage and devotion. Claire Tomalin's biography brings her nearer than we have ever been to this haunted and haunting writer.

'I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me... Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day — mock me horribly!' Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.

With his lightning-quick wit, unbridled creativity and his ear for the absurd, Milligan revolutionised British comedy, leaving a legacy of influence that stretches from Monty Python's Flying Circus to the work of self-confessed acolytes such as Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry today. Throughout his life, Milligan wrote prolifically — scripts, poetry, fiction, as well as several volumes of memoir, in which he took an entirely idiosyncratic approach to the truth. In this ground-breaking work, Norma Farnes, his long-time manager, companion, counsellor and confidante, gathers together the loose threads, reads between the lines and draws on the full breadth of his writing to present his life in his own words: an autobiography — of sorts. From his childhood in India, through his early career as a jazz musician and sketch-show entertainer, his spells in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, to that fateful first broadcast of The Goon Show and beyond into the annals of comedy history, this is the autobiography Milligan never wrote.

It's Sunday, July 18th. My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched. In this second instalment of teenager Adrian Mole's diaries, the Mole family is in crisis and the country is beating the drum of war. While his parents have reconciled after both embarked on disastrous affairs, Adrian is shocked to learn of his mother's pregnancy. And even though at the mercy of his rampant hormones and the fickle whims of the divine Pandora, a victim of a broken home and his own tortured (though unrecognised) genius, Adrian continues valiantly to chronicle the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence.

Mick Little used to be a shipbuilder on Glasgow yards. But as they closed one after another down the river, search for work took him and his beloved wife Cathy to Australia, and back again, struggling for a living, longing for home. Thirty years later the yards are nearly gone and Cathy is dead. And now Mick will have to find a new way to live.

A girl can get into all kinds of trouble just by going back to work... Henrietta Tate gave up everything for her husband Marcus and their kids. But now that the children are away at school and she's rattling round their large country house all day she's feeling more than a little lost. So when a friend puts her in touch with Laurie, a historian in need of a PA, Henrietta heads for London. Quickly, she throws herself into the job. Marcus is — of course — jealous of her spending so much time with her charming new boss. And soon enough her absence causes cracks to form in their marriage that just can't be papered over. Then Rupert, a very old flame, reappears, and Henrietta suddenly finds herself torn between three men. How did this happen? She's not that kind of girl... is she?

By the waters running through the valleys of Kashmir, teenage boys come to play cricket, talk about girls, and just be. But a few years later, when they are young men and violence grips the region, they are gone. Only the son of the local headman has stayed. He knows his friends have slipped over the border to Pakistan, and turned militant to bear arms against the Indian army. He would like to join them — but he cannot. Instead, put in an impossible position by an Indian army Captain, he must cross into the shadowland between the opposing sides, a ghost walking among the dead. His fate, like that of his lost brothers, unknown...

Holly Golightly is a free spirited, lop-sided romantic girl about town. Her apartment rocks to Martini-soaked parties and she plays hostess to millionaires and gangsters alike. Yet Holly never loses sight of her ultimate dream — to find a real life place like Tiffany's that makes her feel at home.

On the outbreak of war, Belle Reilly's husband Jimmy enlists and heads for the deadly trenches of northern France. Volunteering to help battlefield wounded, Belle is posted to France as a Red Cross ambulance driver. There, a tragic accident brings her face to face with Etienne — a man from her past she's never quite forgotten.

The influence of the British Empire is everywhere, from the very existence of the United Kingdom to the ethnic composition of our cities. This title describes the selection process for colonial officers, the importance of sport, the sweating domestic life of the colonial officer's wife and the crazed end for General Gordon of Khartoum.

In almost every major war there comes a point where defeat looms for one side and its rulers cut a deal with the victors, if only in an attempt to save their own skins. In Hitler's Germany, nothing of this kind happened: in the end the regime had to be stamped out town by town with an almost unprecedented level of brutality. Just what made Germany keep on fighting? Kershaw's gripping, revelatory book recounts these final months, from the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 to the German surrender in May 1945.

SKYE and SUMMER TANBERRY are identical twins, and Skye loves her sister Summer more than anyone else in the world. They do everything together, but lately Skye's been feeling like second-best ? It's the story of her life. And when her friend Alfie confesses he's fallen not for her, but for Summer, it hurts. Skye wants to be her own person, but with an effortlessly cool twin, how can she? Will Skye ever step out of Summer's shadow and find her own chance to shine?

As near as possible to experiencing what it was like to be there... It is almost impossible for a reader not to get caught up in the excitement. (Giles Foden, Guardian ). The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. Antony Beevor's gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war.

Plunging into the enchanted and luminous worlds of Speak, Memory, Ada, or Ardor; and the infamous Lolita, Lila Azam Zanganeh seeks out the Nabokovian experience of time, memory, sexual passion, nature, loss, love in all its forms, language in all its allusions. She explores his Russian childhood, his European sojourns, the landscapes of 'his' America, hallucinates an interview and seeks the 'crunch of happiness' in Vladimir Nabokov's singular vocabulary. This rhapsodic and beautifully illuminated book, which includes such fans as Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk, will lure the innocent reader to a well of delights.