English Houses

In this superb novel - an Oprah Book Club selection - a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house to strangers and her heart to the simple miracle of possibility.

A door slams, and the echoes never fade. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) is a play that doesn't shout—it lingers, unsettling and undeniable. Beneath the surface of a seemingly ordinary household lies a quiet storm, gathering strength with every polite exchange, every carefully placed smile. Nora Helmer is a wife, a mother, a woman adored. Her home is warm, her life is comfortable, her husband sings her praises. But when a long-kept secret begins to unravel, so does the delicate balance of her world.

Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium. This should have been the end of her story . . . Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses.

The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, is an authoritative Bible translation, rendered faithfully into today’s English from the ancient texts by 90 leading Bible scholars. The NLT’s living language breathes life into even the most difficult-to-understand Bible passages—but even more powerful are stories of how people’s lives are changing as the words speak directly to their hearts.

On their first meeting, Varic Maedoc, prince of the vampyrs, told Jason Thorpe that loving him was not for the faint of heart. He wasn’t kidding. In the past two years, Jason has been kidnapped, lived through several attempts on his life, and foiled a coup. Now, his new life as the prince’s consort and adviser to the king is made even harder by Varic’s prolonged absence. With his prince off hunting down a traitor, Jason must fend for himself.

The New York Times best-selling author of Whiter Than Snow, Sandra Dallas delivers a novel about the secrets and passions of three generations of women who live in a Victorian Colorado house. While the house is under construction in 1880, a 17-year-old servant imagines living in the “Bride’s House” with one of her several suitors. Decades later, the legacy and secrets of earlier Bride’s House women cause the current occupant to question what she really wants and who she truly loves.

Matt is a clone of El Patrón, a powerful drug lord of the land of Opium, which is located between the United States and Mexico. For six years, he has lived in a tiny cottage in the poppy fields with Celia, a kind and deeply religious servant woman who is charged with his care and safety. He knows little about his existence until he is discovered by a group of children playing in the fields and wonders why he isn't like them.

London’s Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their careers. The “Slow Horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly, or got in the way of an ambitious colleague. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing these failed spies have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. Now the Slow Horses have a chance at redemption.

The witch known as the Patron has been controlling Tessa since childhood with compulsion and pain magic, but she's come to realize that she isn’t the only one. Tessa now knows that if she fails and dies before she can stop him that there may never be another detective good enough to find him, which would leave thousands of victims enslaved to him forever. But with the weight of his magic ripping her mind apart, Tessa may already be too far gone to keep fighting. Will she have the strength to give her all one last time, or will she fall and take the Hidden down with her...?

Simon can only watch, helpless, as his family is killed and his friends captured by enemy Travelers—men and women who can summon mystical powers from otherworldly Territories. To top it off, another young man from Simon's village discovers that he's a savior prophesied to destroy evil and save the realm. Prophecy has nothing to say about Simon. He has no special powers, no magical weapons, and no guarantee that he'll survive. But he sets off anyway, alone, to gain the power he needs to oppose the Travelers and topple their ruthless Overlord.

Perched on a hill overlooking San Francisco, the house was magnificent, built in 1923 by a wealthy man for the woman he adored. For her and for this house, he would spare no expense and overlook no detail, from the endless marble floors to the glittering chandeliers. Almost a century later, with the once-grand house now in disrepair, a young woman walks through its empty rooms. Sarah Anderson, a perfectly sensible estate lawyer, is about to do something utterly out of character.

Months have passed since Michael first entered the Forever Kingdom, and while a great deal of the Game remains a mystery, his own place in it grows surer. Yet, survival—much less success—is by no means assured, and Michael will have to tread a delicate path to forge a place for himself. Ancient mysteries resurface. And long-buried truths are uncovered. The Forever Kingdom’s past is as murky as the Game, and there are nearly as many truths as factions. But if Michael is to emerge victorious, he must separate fact from fiction.

When Winona rents a room at the eccentric Mirror House, she hopes to make new friends. What she gets instead is a “family” led by the charismatic psychologist Simon Spellmeyer. But if she wants to stay at Mirror House, Winona must join in following Simon’s strange protocols for self-improvement. Warning bells chime inside her, but the allure of transformation keeps her hooked. While his methods are disturbing, the results are undeniable.

Kate Hannigan's in charge of her late mother's estate, and she has a plan: divide everything evenly, including the old family house on the harbor. What she doesn't realize is that her mother changed the will. Meanwhile, her sister, Amelia, a struggling off-Broadway actress, enlists her hapless construction boyfriend to help with a local project, but he's more interested in summer tourists. Second-youngest, Megan, is preoccupied with her divorce, but not too preoccupied to make a dating profile, much to her sisters' mortification. Baby of the family, Clara, is single, refusing to date.

There’s more to the swamplands than meets the teeth. In this supernatural tale of magic and mysticism, Henry Lemarchand grew up in Philadelphia knowing very little of his family—his father disappeared when he was young, leaving behind only a strange pouch of animal teeth. When he is sent to the Louisiana bayou to spend the summer with his eccentric uncle and cousin in their decaying ancestral mansion, Henry learns about his family’s supernatural legacy.

At ten years old, Chelsea opened a lemonade stand and realized she’d make more money if the drinks were spiked. So she added vodka to her recipe and used her earnings to upgrade herself to first-class on a family vacation—leaving her parents and siblings in coach. She moved to Los Angeles and got fired from her temp job when she admitted she didn’t know how to transfer calls. She’s played pickleball with the scions of an American dynasty. She’s sexted a governor. She shared psychedelics with strangers in Spain.

It is 1934. Returning to the West Country after their latest adventure in London, lady's maid Verity Hunter and cook Joan Hart are ready to embrace a quieter life. Their mistress, the glamorous young heiress Dorothy Drew, is attempting to rein in her enthusiasm for too many cocktails and takes up the offer of a place to rest and recuperate from an old family friend, Mrs Ashford. All seems well, until the day after they arrive, when everyone in the house is struck down by what appears to be mushroom poisoning. The deadly dish proves fatal for one unlucky soul.

In this exciting prequel to bestselling author Anne Stuart's House of Rohan series, when Kathleen Strong interviews for a job that offers a chance at proper employment, a mysterious group of aristocrats proposes a scandalous offer that she can't refuse.

The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, Carrie, and little Grace bravely face the hard winter of 1880-81 in their little house in the Dakota Territory. Blizzards cover the little town with snow, cutting off all supplies from the outside. Soon there is almost no food left, so young Almanzo Wilder and a friend make a dangerous trip across the prairie to find some wheat. Finally a joyous Christmas is celebrated in a very unusual way in this most exciting of all the Little House books.

From early on, we are taught that there's only one path to getting ahead: do well at school, get a certain kind of job, and avoid failure at all costs. We're so busy trying to follow these rules that we never stop and ask ourselves: What's my purpose? Is my 9-5 really what I want to do? What kind of job or business do I really want to pursue? Do I have the power to make it happen? With Simon Squibb’s incisive new book, you can make it happen.