Winter Women

Decades after her divorce, a lady returns to the village of her tumultuous marriage. A railway carriage hosts a charged schoolboy encounter. A murder raises fears of blackmail. A woman waits anxiously in a café before eloping to Paris. Another steals a friend's kitchen knife. In these bittersweet tales, the author of Lolly Willowes reveals her mastery of the short story, celebrated by the New Yorker for decades. Sylvia Townsend Warner is a tragicomic chronicler of the heart's entanglements.

The name on the screen was "Absinthe". But I knew her as the sultry voice blowing up my phone for late-night chats about Proust and Hemingway interspersed between the filthiest little...mutually satisfying exchanges...I'd ever experienced in my life. We'd never met. Until the day she walked into my office, her cherry lips wrapped around a candy apple sucker and an all too familiar voice that said, "You wanted to see me, Principal Hawthorne?"

All Emily wants for her wedding is a low-key celebration with family and friends. But with a best friend like Josie, it’s no surprise that there’s a touch of drama to the day. Meanwhile, Tara is dealing with problems of her own. In a bid to face up to her past, she sets out to make amends with her estranged father and reunite with her half siblings. Thankfully, she has James to support her when times get tough.

Ella has never known love. Left as a baby outside the workhouse, Ella has only ever been treated with unkindness; especially from the hateful guardians of the workhouse, who hold the fate of the inmates in their cruel hands. When she is sold as a scullery maid to a new home, Ella hopes for a better life. But her hopes are dashed as she struggles to do all the work heaped on her thin shoulders by her brutish master. Daring to escape her harsh treatment, it isn’t long before she is caught and once again finds herself at the mercy of an uncaring world.

Get the first three books in the Year of Discovery series in one box set: January, February, and March. Over 350 pages of tragedy, tribulation, and triumph in one volume. Twelve women connected by the death of another, realizing what they most want from life, and reaching for it - this is the year of discovery, the year of new beginnings. This compilation includes the titles: January, February, and March.

Kyra and David Winter are happier than they ever expected to be. They have a comfortable home, stable careers, and a young son, Michael, whom they adore. Though everyone who knows the Winters considers them extremely overprotective parents, both Kyra and David believe they have good reasons for fearing that something will happen to their little boy. And then, on a perfectly average summer day, it does, when Michael disappears from his own backyard. The only question is whose past has finally caught up with them: David feels sure that Michael was taken by his troubled ex-wife....

Grateful to her twin for keeping Mustang Ridge in the family, Jenny Skye agrees to return home for a month so that her sister can get away. It's the middle of winter, and only a few year-round staffers, her family, and the animals will be there. But the globetrotting videographer is soon in way over her head at the dude ranch, dealing with reservations, her redecorating-obsessed mother, and the town's hunky new veterinarian.

Cliff's End Cottage is a local landmark. Perched on the South Devon coast, its garden has begun slowly toppling into the sea, yet the elderly and infamously stubborn owner, Stella, refuses to leave her home. When Holly, a young journalist and single mum struggling to make ends meet, decides to interview Stella about her life, at first she's given short shrift. However, helped by a slice or two of cake and a couple of friendly cats, a tentative friendship begins to develop between the two lonely women.

Reluctant to leave her cherished New England hometown after her sister's winter wedding, former journalist Vera Sterling makes a sudden decision. She takes what's left of her severance pay and invests it in real estate ... in one particular drafty colonial home and old timber barn set upon the pretty banks of Addison Cove. In that rough-hewn barn, she discovers a secret treasure left behind by the previous owner, the proprietor of the long-forgotten Christmas Barn gift shop. While restoring her run-down, wood-sided home--its creaking floors, broken banister, and neglected widow's walk--that secret slowly unfolds like a bit of snowflake wonder, crystallizing hopes and dreams for many in this small Connecticut town.

When a little girl disappears a few weeks before Christmas, suspicion falls on the last person she was seen with: the mentally disabled teenage boy who gave her a ride home after school. Complicating the matter is the fact that detectives can hardly get a word out of him. When a second child disappears and a police officer is found dead, tensions in the small town of Strömstad reach an all-time high.

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.

Each winter the crew at the Shackleton South Pole Research Facility faces nine months of isolation, round-the-clock darkness, and one of the most extreme climates on the planet. For thirty-something mechanical engineer Cass Jennings, Antarctica offers an opportunity to finally escape the guilt of her troubled past and to rebuild her life. But the death of a colleague triggers a series of mysterious incidents that push Cass and the rest of the forty-four-person crew to the limits of their sanity and endurance.

"Du musst Konfetti in dein Leben bringen, es bunt und lebenswert gestalten." Nach dem Tod ihres Mannes flieht die fünfzigjährige Zoey nach Sylt. Alles scheint ohne Sinn. Doch dann trifft sie am Strand auf die Künstlerin Marlene, die mit ihrem Hund mitten im Nordsee-Idyll wohnt. Marlene macht sie mit dem Witwer Moritz bekannt und führt sie nicht nur damit in Versuchung... Wird Zoey in ihr Leben zurückfinden? Oder doch ein ganz anderes entdecken? Ein liebevoller und mutmachender Frauenroman – ein Plädoyer für das Leben.

Just as a murderer dumps his corpse into the lake across Valley View in Lily Dale, Bella Jordan happens to be at her window, not quite realizing what she's seeing. Jiffy Arden, a neighborhood kid looking for the black cat and stumbling across the killer, begins to have premonitions of being kidnapped during the season's first snowstorm. Sure enough, he vanishes. A body shows up in the lake. Now everyone is pulling out all the stops to find the missing child, identify the victim, and collar the killer - and fast, because he's coming for Bella next in Dead of Winter.

A week after Cherry Red Summer, Emely still can’t understand why both of her potential lovers, Elyas and Luca, suddenly broke off contact with her. Only when Emely decides to summon the courage to confront Elyas does she discover how hard she has fallen for him once again. But as autumn gives way to winter, Emely’s newfound bliss is shattered when she discovers a shocking lie that destroys her trust in Elyas. To flee their ruined relationship, Elyas makes plans to leave Emely, and Berlin, behind.

I'm in the midst of scrawling "I quit!" onto his fancy cardstock letterhead when my boss corners me. He needs a favor, he says. And then he asks how well I can act. Hudson Rutherford needs a fiancée. With his old-moneyed parents forcing him to marry some bratty hotel heiress and his hedonistic, playboy lifestyle at stake, the only way to get them to back off is to make them think he's truly, madly, deeply in love...with me - his third personal assistant this year. But I can hardly stand working for him as it is.

Deputy Jordan Branson is accused of murder in order to cover up a departmental investigation into his questionable behavior. He asks former Hollywood starlet, Sam Jones, to help him find the real killer. The problem? Sam isn’t sure she believes in his innocence. She dives into the case anyway, but unfortunately, all clues lead directly back to Jordan.

Job, Mann, Familie. Wo ist bitte mein Komplettpaket, fragt sich Mila verzweifelt, als sie schon wieder ohne Freund und ohne Job dasteht, während ihrer besten Freundin Maya alles, aber auch alles nur so zu zufliegen scheint? Ein bisschen so wie Maya sein, denkt sich Mila und beginnt abzunehmen. Doch schnell findet sie heraus, dass mit weniger Pfunden die Dinge immer noch nicht leichter werden.

Can love triumph over tragedy and bring joy amid winter? When unexpected tragedy hits her family, Carol Mason struggles to forge a new life for herself and her sons. Though Vermont has been their home for 20 years, betrayal and misunderstanding force Carol to leave the mountains she loves and return to her hometown of Apache Pointe, Arizona. There she is welcomed by scorching heat, lizards, scorpions, and (gulp) Aunt Penny. Carol finds a sympathetic friend in her cousin Millie as she does her best to put the pieces of her shattered life back together.

Ruby's singing career is on the verge of hitting the big time when her voice breaks. Fearing her career is over, she signs up for a retreat in Tenerife to recover. But an unexpected call from a stranger on a remote Scottish island takes her on a short trip to sort out some family business. It's time to go and see the grandfather she's never met. City girl Ruby knows she will be happy to leave the windswept beaches behind as quickly as she can, especially as a years-old family rift means she knows she won't be welcome at Teach Mhor.