Women Friendship

Brooklyn Hewett hasn't set foot in Cape Harbor for fifteen years - not since an accident claimed the love of her life, Austin Woods. Desperate to move forward, Brooklyn has focused on raising her daughter for the past fourteen years. But when the opportunity comes along to renovate the old Driftwood Inn, Brooklyn knows it's time to go home. But it won't be easy. For one, Austin's best friend, Bowie Holmes, still lives in Cape Harbor. Brooklyn hasn't quite been able to forget him: not since the night they spent together

Abandoned by first her father and then her mother, as a girl Tessa is left to live with her abusive stepfather and stepbrother. She survives by finding reserves of strength in herself, and by the transformative love of another teenage girl, Mel, who sees through Tessa’s tough exterior to the loving woman inside. When she suddenly loses Mel, too, Tessa stumbles into a kind of refuge with Henry and his mama, becoming a mother and finding herself in a familial existence that somehow carries her into adulthood—until the day she runs into Mel, who has just returned to Perris after years away.

Olivia Strauss is turning thirty-nine. No major milestone. She still considers herself young. At least young enough to assume she has decades (emphasis on the plural) to check the unchecked boxes of her life’s to-do list. Ballerina? Too late. But not too late for poet. Or for reigniting the romantic spark in her marriage, spending more quality time with her son, switching careers, learning to cook, or even dyeing her hair a bright bohemian pink. She’ll get to that one. There’s time—until Olivia’s best friend, Marian, gives her a birthday present she could have lived without.

The inhabitants of the Inventor's Housing Estate keep themselves to themselves. There are the friendly 'Hellos' when commutes coincide and the odd cheeky eye roll when the wine bottles clank in number seven's wheelie bin, but it's not exactly Ramsay Street. The dilapidated community centre is no longer the beating heart of the estate that Becky remembers from her childhood. So the new pottery class she's helped set up feels like a fresh start. And not just for her.

Two women’s lives are forever entwined by the love for the same child and by the agonizing choices they will both have to make. A Mother’s Choice will make listeners ask themselves what it truly means to be a parent and whether they could make an ultimately selfless decision when it comes to their child’s future.

TV reporter Kate Bradley arrives in Manhattan ready to take on a challenging new position as a national news correspondent. When a massive power outage plunges New York City into darkness, the disaster she expected to cover takes an unexpected turn. Someone is leaving thousands of mysterious gifts throughout the city, and the only clue to the giver's identity is the occasional note from "A Stranger."

For fans of Catherine Ryan Hyde and Sue Monk Kidd, a debut literary fiction novel about an unlikely friendship between a damaged girl and a mysterious old woman and the quest for love and healing through the telling of fairy tales. Early one summer morning, nine-year-old Sherry Gallagher flees in panic into the woods behind her house to hide from her abusive father. Following the death of their mother, her older brothers and sisters have all left home, leaving Sherry to deal with her father alone.

Zoe always knew this day would come. After all, no one can live for ever. She may not be ready, but Zoe knows the importance of goodbye. Harriet doesn't know where she fits anymore. It's not in Cornwall with the new family her mum is building, and it's certainly not in the job she hates. Ange was doing fine. Well, she was coping. Like she has been for the past fourteen years because her daughter needed her. Then, the last person any of them expects to see suddenly turns up, and soon it seems the only way to move forward is to revisit the past.

Wren and Thessaly collide when they land coveted jobs at a glamorous New York City boutique wine importer. Hardworking, by-the-book Wren comes from a modest background and has everything to prove while Thessaly hails from a family of prestigious California growers—but she is plagued by self-doubt. Thrown together at work, where they're expected to have exquisite palates, endless tolerance for alcohol and socializing, and the ability to sell, sell, sell, they regard each other with suspicion.

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.

Villa Dolce Vita, a rambling stone house on the Amalfi Coast, sits high above the Gulf of Naples amid dappled lemon groves and fragrant, tumbling bougainvillea. Kim, Colette and Annie all came to the villa in need of escape and in the process forged an unlikely friendship. Now, years later, Kim has transformed the crumbling house into a luxury retreat and has invited her friends back for the summer to celebrate.

When they posed for a photo at their high school graduation, they vowed they'd be friends forever, but teenage promises are so easily broken, and now, thirty years later, they're practically strangers. Cici—stuck in a rut, married to a cheating husband. Genie—caring for her ailing father but never getting any thanks. Kate—everyone knows people who look perfect on Instagram are not. And Laurie—the most successful of them all—now tragically gone. So, to celebrate Laurie's life, three former friends in a 1962 red Lincoln Continental convertible take the road trip of their lives.

Eva has spent the past three years burying herself in her work, trying to forget the heartbreaking events of the Christmas that ripped her world apart. This year, the last thing she wants is to attend her friend’s weekend-long Christmas party. But at her husband James’ insistence, here they are. When Eva—overwhelmed by bittersweet memories—tries to sneak back to London in the middle of the night, she is visited by the ghost of her beloved grandmother. Gran tells Eva that if she doesn’t face her fears head-on and stop shutting out her loved ones, she risks losing them all forever.

Drawing on letters and diaries, some of which have never been published before, this book will reveal Jane Austen's bond with a family servant, the amateur playwright Anne Sharp, how Charlotte Brontë was inspired by the daring feminist Mary Taylor, the transatlantic relationship between George Eliot and the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the underlying erotic charge that lit the friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield - a pair too often dismissed as bitter foes.

Anna, 39, is reeling from the loss of her fiancé, who ran off with a much younger woman. Her pride in tatters, these days Anna finds it difficult to leave the house. So when a handsome, mysterious stranger takes an interest in her, she's not sure whether she can learn to trust again? Then there's Grace, in her 50s, trapped in a loveless marriage with a man she married because, unable to have children of her own, she fell in love with his motherless brood.

The timely, never-before-told story of five brilliant, passionate women who, in the early 1960s, converged at the newly founded Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study and became friends as well as artistic collaborators, and who went on to shape the course of feminism in ways that are still felt today.

Meet the Geller sisters: Beck, Claire, and Sophie, a trio of strong-minded women whose pragmatic, widowed mother, Marti, will be dying soon and taking her secrets with her. Marti has ensured that her modest estate is easy for her family to deal with once she’s gone—including a provision that the family’s summer cottage on Mount Desert Island, Maine, must be sold, the proceeds split equally between the three girls. Enter C.J. Reynolds, an enigmatic Southern ex-con with his own hidden past, who complicates the situation. All is not what it seems, and everything is about to change.

Thirty-two-year-old Jess Abbot has lost everything: her job, her apartment, and - most heart-wrenching - her eight-year-old son, Chance, to a tragic accident. Haunted by memories and grief, Jess packs what’s left and heads for the small mountain town of Pine Lake, where she takes a position as caregiver to an eccentric old woman. A rumored clairvoyant, Lucy is strange but welcoming and immediately intuits Jess as a “loose end” in need of closure. But Jess isn’t the only guest in Lucy’s large Victorian home.

Childhood friends Hannah, Maya, Blue, and Renee share a bond that feels more like family. Growing up, they had difficult home lives, and the summers they spent together in Montauk were the happiest memories they ever made. Then, the summer after graduation, one terrible night changed everything. Twelve years have passed since that fateful incident, and their sisterhood has drifted apart, each woman haunted by her own lost innocence. But just as they reunite in Montauk for one last summer, hoping to find happiness once more, tragedy strikes again.

Florence Stanville is a woman with a past. When she moves to Guisethorpe on the east coast of England, the townsfolk are intrigued by the glamorous and mysterious stranger, with her flame-red hair and abrupt manners. Florence doesn’t care about the gossips—she’s drawn to the peaceful seaside town by the pull of her childhood, when she lived for a brief but happy time with her beloved late mother. The riddle of those days remains, and now Florence can only snatch at half-remembered memories and shadowy figures in her dreams.