Contemporary Family Life Women Fiction

This city girl's about to get a dose of cowboy charm. Emily Baker doesn't rough it - anymore. Born and raised on a farm, she's worked hard to distance herself from that life, thank you very much. But when the seniors at the nursing home where she works beg for a ranch retreat, she caves and heads up to the Longhorn Canyon spread. With one glance at the sexy cowboy who opens the door, she's suddenly thinking a week with him might not be so bad after all.

Everyone that meets Kat Keating is mesmerised. Beautiful, smart and charming, she is everything a good girl should be. Her sister Eleanor, on the other hand, knows she can't compete with Kat. On the awkward side of tall, clever enough to be bullied, and full of the responsibilities only an older sibling can understand, Eleanor grows up knowing she’s not a good girl.

Sweeping powers of description transport her listeners to another time and place. Rosanna Ley, author of best-selling The Villa and Return to Mandalay. Some memories can be forgotten.... Others won't ever go away. For renowned actor Sir Mungo, his quiet home village in Devon provides the perfect retreat. Close by are his brother and his wife, and the rural location makes his home the ideal getaway for his old friends in London.

For Sabrina Monroe, moving back home to the Wisconsin Dells - the self-described Waterpark Capital of the World - means returning to the Monroe family curse: The women in her family can see spirits who come to them for help with unfinished business. But Sabrina's always redirected the needy spirits to her mom, who's much better suited for the job. The one exception has always been Molly, a bubbly rom-com loving ghost, who stuck by Sabrina's side all through her lonely childhood.

Dear Reader,You’ve probably heard that my wife has left me. Rachel’s pregnant, and she says she can’t handle the stress in our household anymore. My 13-year-old daughter, Jolene, is jealous of her. Maybe it’s my fault. As a widower I spoiled her - Jolene was reading over my shoulder just now and says that’s not true. She claims Rachel ruined everything. But that’s not true. The real question is: How can I get my wife back? I don’t even know where she is. She’s not with Teri Polgar or any of her other friends from the salon.

Teresa "Toots" Amelia Loudenberry has crammed a great deal of living - not to mention eight much-loved husbands - into her varied and rewarding life. Newly single, Toots is ready to taste life again, and fate has just handed her the perfect opportunity.

It was a lifetime ago that recently widowed Maggie Flynn was in Wyndham Beach. Now, on the occasion of her fortieth high school reunion, she returns to her hometown on the Massachusetts coast, picking up right where she left off with dear friends Lydia and Emma. But seeing Brett Crawford again stirs other emotions. He shared Maggie’s dreams - and eventually, a shattering secret that drove them apart. Buying her old family home and resettling in Wyndham Beach means a chance to start over for Maggie and her two daughters, but it also means facing her rekindled feelings....

Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends…

A lost girl. A mysterious house in Ireland. An invitation that changes everything. Twenty years ago, at the end of a hot long Irish summer, three sisters walk down to the cool lake at their home, Swan Hall. As Maeve and Aisling watch their beautiful younger sister Nuala laughing and splashing, it is hard to hide their envy of her. But later that morning, when Nuala drowns, they are devastated. Now, as Iris scatters the ashes of her beloved mother Aisling onto the golden leaves of Central Park, she feels very alone.

Emilia arrives in Rome reeling from heartbreak and reckoning with her past. What was supposed to be a romantic trip has, with the sudden end of a relationship, become a solitary one instead. As she wanders, music, art, food, and the beauty of Rome's wide piazzas and narrow streets color Emilia's dreamy, but weighty experience of the city. She considers the many facets of her life, drifting in and out of memory, following her train of thought wherever it leads. While climbing a hill near Trastevere, she meets John, an American expat living a seemingly idyllic life.

March Murray, along with her 15-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up to attend the funeral of Judith Dale, the beloved housekeeper who raised her. After nearly 20 years of living in California, March is thrust into the world of her past.

Lily Danville's life is crumbling around her. With no money and no home, her only choice is to go back to the one town she swore she'd never see again: Cedar Ridge, Colorado. Back to the memories of her sister's tragic death. Back to the place where, 10 years ago, she shared an unforgettable kiss with Aidan Kincaid-the man her sister once loved. A new job at the town's hottest resort is just the fresh start Lily has been looking for...until she discovers the resort is owned by none other than the Kincaid family.

When Charlotte and Philip meet, the pair form a deep and instant connection. Soon they’re settled in the Florida Keys with plans to marry. But just as they should be getting closer, Charlotte feels Philip slipping away. Second-guessing their love is something Charlotte never imagined, but with Philip’s excessive absences, she finds herself yearning for more. When she meets Ben, she ignores the pull, but the supportive single dad is there for her in ways she never knew she desired.

I never expected to have to uproot my family to go live in my parents’ isolated cottage on Lost Lake. It’s twenty miles to the nearest town, an insignificant speck in endless pine forests. Nobody’s lived here for a decade. Now, I pick up a rusty pail from its nest of autumn leaves and turn to my daughter. Suddenly, I recall how I used to help my own mother pick wild strawberries up here as a little girl. Maybe, this isn’t a punishment. Maybe this place will be the making of our family.

Audrey’s dream as a mother had been for her daughters, Jess and Lily, to be as close as only sisters can be. But now, as adults, they no longer speak to each other, and Audrey’s two teenage granddaughters have never met. If only Audrey had known three decades ago that a secret could have the power to split her family in two, and yet, also keep them linked. And when hostilities threaten to spiral out of control, a devastating choice that was made so many years ago is about to be revealed, testing this family once and for all.

Korean immigrant Mina Pak Johnson is clearing out the last of her husband’s things when she finds a picnic basket in his closet—a long-forgotten wedding present from her mother. With it comes decades of memories—of her mother’s wishes for her to be happy and her own shattered hopes for her first child—and regret at never having used it. Pushing her husband’s ashes and a bottle of wine in a rusty old stroller, Mina is determined to re-create the picnic they never had. But with it comes something Mina never expected, illuminating a loving gesture her husband made years ago.

always wondered, How does she do it? Defying gravity is no easy trick. Neither is motherhood. Now that her mother is leaving New York for bigger skies in New Mexico, it’s a new stage in life for both of them in an ever-evolving relationship that reveals the true magic of being a mother.

Fixing things has always been Alex McFarland's greatest gift and keenest pleasure. But with her own life thoroughly broken, she's signed on to renovate the dilapidated Pelican Point lighthouse, hoping to reconnect with herself. The last thing she expects is to find herself falling in love - with the glorious coastline, with age-old secrets and welcome-home smiles - and with rugged Logan McCrae, the man she just might be able to build new hopes on. DIY is so much better with two.

The charming vacation house on the coast of Maine was meant to be a heavenly retreat for Danica Lindsay and her husband Blake, a place where they could mend the wounds of a strained and tired marriage. Instead, she finds herself mostly there alone while Blake's political star is rapidly rising back in Boston. Were it not for the companionship of her new neighbor, gentle and caring Michael Buchanan, Danica would surely be overcome by loneliness and despair.

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.