Friendship

It is almost the year of the millennium, and Melissa meets her college friends Sarah and Doug and her first and only true love John for a reunion in Hyde Park. All four are in the midst of their careers. All struggle with the compromises that have marred their happiness. All wish to change the world, each in a different way. Sarah has left her government job for a new life as a yoga teacher. Doug is helping to birth a new value-based economy. John is a successful academic doctor. Melissa is ailing.

It’s the early 1970s. Melissa and her friends begin their first year of college in the inner city of Chicago at a time when post-assassination riots, Great Society scholarship programs, and veterans returning from Vietnam create a sometimes explosive confluence of urban and rural, rich and poor, white and black, educated and uneducated. Coming of age in a violent, unjust, and yet hopeful time, they struggle to reconcile their hopes and opportunities with the shadows of war and the tragic limitations of colliding ideologies and ambitions.

In the fading days of summer 2011, self-taught astrophysicist Petra has calculated that the atmosphere will collapse in a few weeks’ time—on September 21, at approximately 9:20 p.m.—ending the world as we know it. But the distraught Petra will not have to carry the burden of this terrible news alone for long. Fate intervenes, bringing her into the orbit of a pair of unlikely companions: Johan, a man whose intellectual prowess is remarkably overshadowed by his culinary skills, and Agnes, a seventy-five-year-old widow who has made a fortune posing as a young influencer on social media.

Tilda has done everything she can to make her life neat, protected, tidy. No longer the girl who was scared of everything, whose family pushed her away, who hit rock bottom. Now she runs her life – as she does her successful business – with the utmost organization. As long as she keeps everyone at arm’s length, she will be fine. She will be safe. But then a chance encounter with a man who’s fallen on hard times changes everything.

Lady Georgiana Pendlebury is no stranger to breaking the rules of polite society. But when a so-called ‘friend’ invites her to a clandestine party, Georgiana is shocked to discover the event is more scandalous than even she could have imagined. So when a mysterious stranger offers help, she accepts, not realising their encounter will turn her life upside down.

War strikes close to home for chief librarian Cordelia when her flat is bombed, and her beloved Robert is called up and sent abroad. Fortunately, her colleagues Mavis and Jane can help see her through hard times. The three friends find purpose in making the Silvertown library a friendly sanctuary for their deprived and devastated community. But sinister forces, from callous bureaucrats to crafty criminals, still lurk among the stacks.

She has a loving husband and a successful career–who says you can’t have it all? Miranda Quinn is living her very best life… until she’s not. It’s been two years since her legal advice TV show was canceled, but the former Assistant District Attorney has rebounded with a late-night radio show, Miranda Nights.

At last, 33-year-old Jess has saved enough to move into her own apartment! But troubles at work and the endless disappointments of online dating have made her feel worse than ever. She finally finds a ray of hope when she adopts another soul in need—her rescue dog, Icing. With new purpose and the help of her friends, Jess hopes she's heading in the right direction. Can these two navigate all that life has to throw their way?

Saron Leila and her two friends Julie and Helen embark on what can only be described as complete chaos sprinkled with danger, money, fear but above all else a friendship never broken. Saron's stunning looks and figure you think would be an advantage in today's world but quite often she finds this isn't the case. An adventure which takes Saron around the world and introduces her to some horrendous situations.

The daughter of Irish immigrants and the son of an African slave forge their own destiny in Boston, in this compelling sequel to Shanty Gold.

When three little girls—Anna, Bernie, and Elica—make a pact to be blood sisters for life, they believe nothing can come between them. Anna is from an affluent Jewish family, while Bernie and Elica are from poor Austrian families who barely make ends meet. As they get older, their social differences become all too real. With infectious Jew-hate-laden rhetoric from Nazi Germany spreading into Austria, it is only a matter of time before their bond of friendship gets severely tested.

There is no rulebook for secretly falling in love with your best friend. So when Mitch offers Rosie a bargain that secretly gets her what she’s been pining for…Rosie would be a fool to say no, right? They either find their soulmates by Christmas, or be each other’s fallback. Either way Rosie wins: she finds someone that will finally get her over Mitch, or she can be with him. What she didn’t bargain for was Mitch falling for someone else.

Olivia and Nico were once inseparable best friends with shared hopes, dreams and plans for the future. But as life took its course, they took very different paths – leaving them with a challenging long-distance friendship. When Olivia receives an invitation to Nico's wedding in Italy, she can hardly believe it. Despite her happiness for him, she can't help but reflect on the roads not taken and the promises once made. As she arrives in the picturesque Tuscany, disaster strikes. The wedding venue has fallen through and Nico’s wife-to-be is a total Bridezilla.

As the Great War rages across Europe, twenty-one-year-old Ruby Archer decides to ‘do her bit’ at an East End munitions factory. The work is relentless and deafening, but the camaraderie of the other girls carries her through. As the threat of another Zeppelin attack grows by the day, Ruby cannot ignore the abandoned animals scavenging the local streets. She rescues a stray kitten, Tess, and takes in an injured terrier Mac, but when all the local cats mysteriously disappear, she knows she needs to do more, and with the help of her friends plans to open a weekly animal clinic.

In a small pocket of London, between the houses of No.77 and No.79 Eastbourne Road, lies a neglected community garden. It was a beautiful thing once, a little oasis in a bustling city for neighbors by day and the local foxes at twilight. Now it’s overgrown and neglected, an empty patch of greenery lost to time.