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House-flipping sensation and YouTube star Maggie Nichols can't wait to dig into her next challenge. Arriving in a tiny American town with only a coffeemaker, Maggie is prepared to restore a crumbling Victorian mansion in four months or less. She has her to-do lists, her blueprints and her team. What she doesn't have is time for sexy, laid-back landscaper Silas Wright. The man takes flirtation to a whole new level. And he does it shirtless.

Best known today for his comic masterpiece, Vanity Fair, W. M. Thackeray was regarded in his time as the only rival to his contemporary, Charles Dickens. This collection includes a selection of his finest satirical fiction, as well as two fascinating programmes exploring his life and writings.

The phone rang, and like a fool I answered. Mistake number one. Then I agreed to do a job for the Hidden Council. Definitely mistake number two. Now I've lost count of my bad choices, same as I have the bodies, as they're piling up faster than a troll after free chalk. As I get to grips with this new magic I've been gifted, the city remains under a spell of violence, and it's down to yours truly to deal with it. But I'm a noob at this job, ill-prepared and with my own personal demons to fight.

The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills - artificial and real - and in the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century.

Robert Poste's child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labelled 'Quiete Retreate' and 'Greate laundrie'. It is, Flora winces, 'exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time'. Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group - a group made up of the 'sadistic owl' Mr Peccavi, loathsome Mr Mybug and the overpowering Mrs Ernestine Thump.

When Elizabeth drops her beloved only daughter off at college, she holds back the tears…fighting her worries about an empty nest with the thought of all the adventures that she and her husband Joel can now enjoy together. But as soon as they sit down to eat dinner that evening, Joel drops a bombshell. He wants a break. Searching for an escape, Elizabeth discovers an apartment in Rome that is only available for three months rental to ‘an English woman of a certain age’.

“Sometimes love happens when you least expect it.” That was what my husband’s mistress told me the day I found out about their affair. I didn’t believe it until five minutes later when mouthwatering celebrity chef Tanner Reese walked up, tossed his arm around my shoulders, and told my cheating husband to take a hike. Tanner and I couldn’t have been more different. Our relationship shouldn’t have worked, but it did. That is until Tanner proved to me that even though love happens when you least expect it so does heartbreak.

For years, Emma Carey was a regular young adult who would wake up and go about their day on autopilot, someone who would look at a sunset and feel unaffected, someone who was living, but not really alive. That is, until something happened that enabled her to really see life for the gift it is. Emma was in a skydiving accident that made her a paraplegic. This book is not just about Emma's fall from the sky and how she learned to walk without ever regaining feeling in her legs but also about the beliefs and ideas that helped her survive.

By the age of 13, vulnerable Sheffield teenager Samantha Owens had fallen through the cracks in the care system. Bounced around numerous foster carers after her home life became too chaotic, Samantha thought she had found a friend in the streetwise Amanda Spencer. The older girl bought her clothes, styled her hair and found her places to stay. Samantha's welfare was the last thing on Spencer's mind, however, as in reality she was grooming the young girl for exploitation of the worst possible kind.

St Philomena's military hospital has been abandoned for over three years. Now Lilian Chesterfield, who works for one of the most successful building companies in England, is in charge of developing it into a luxury housing complex. But as soon as she and her colleagues start work in the Jacobean-style mansion, their dream turns into a nightmare. They hear screaming from wards full of empty beds. They hear doors slamming and find cutlery scattered over the kitchen floor. Then they see faces peering at them from the mullioned windows.

With her first husband dead and the war still ferocious, Victoria finds herself nursing injured soldiers on the Burma front. There she meets charismatic American, Captain Taylor King and, impulsively, marries a man she barely knows. But when Victoria becomes pregnant with his child, she must leave the only security she knows to start a new life as Henry’s wife in Boston. But Taylor is not the loving, gentle husband Victoria hoped for and the arrival of an unexpected visitor changes their lives forever.

38-year-old Abigail Patterson put her promising tennis career on hold years ago, but after a wild card entry to Wimbledon, suddenly finds herself swept up in a world she thought she'd left behind - and what's more, she's winning! Yet Abi knows that it's only a matter of time before the press start digging into her past and uncover the secret she's kept hidden for so long.

Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.

A new land has been discovered to the east. Winterkeep is a land of miracles, a democratic republic run by people who like each other, where people speak to telepathic sea creatures, adopt telepathic foxes as pets, and fly across the sky in ships attached to balloons. But when Bitterblue's envoys to Winterkeep drown under suspicious circumstances, she and Giddon and her half-sister, Hava, set off to discover the truth - putting both Bitterblue's life and Giddon's heart to the test when Bitterblue is kidnapped.

The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself - and is coming close to a breakdown.

She’s too damn hot, but also rude and unprofessional... yet that doesn’t stop me from becoming her fake boyfriend. I pride myself on never doubting my decisions. It’s why my business runs so smoothly. But when a disgruntled supplier tracks me down, and I discover that she lost business because of me, I’m determined to make things right. First step—I invite Georgie to a Mardi Gras party, to wave the proverbial white flag.

No one knows who did it, least of all the police. Somewhere, in this tight-knit Irish Catholic community, someone must know something. Fourteen-year-old Kitty Doherty, pregnant with the dead man's child, is a danger to everyone who needs to keep the secret. Her mother, Maura, and best friend Nellie's grandmother decide the girls must be spirited away to Ireland to await the birth of the baby. But it isn't easy to keep a secret that big.

Frances Reilly and her sisters were abandoned by their mother outside Nazareth House Convent - a Belfast orphanage run by nuns. Little did they know the unimaginable cruelty they'd endure within its walls. Frances suffered horrifically at the hands of the Sisters: brutally beaten, worked like a slave, abused and molested, the convent regime stripped her of everything - education, innocence and childhood. But the hope of rescue or escape never left her. Years later, Frances would face her demons in court, bringing to account those who so viciously stole her youth.

Never fall for your best friend. That’s the rule. The code. Claire Harlow always follows rules—except this one. However, when an attack leaves both of their worlds shaken, she decides to walk away from what could have been and hide within her own shadows. Kingston Montgomery is the man who saves the day. At least that’s what he’s always told himself—until one day he was too late. Now he’s trying to find his purpose while also ignoring the heat between him and Claire.

In these short stories, it's the ordinary things that turn out to be most extraordinary. Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance; a child awake in the night explores her home; a housekeeper caring for an elderly man uncovers secrets from his past. The stories focus in on crucial moments of transition. Small acts have large consequences, and some of them reverberate across decades. The real things that happen to people and the accidents that befall them are every bit as mysterious as their longings and their dreams.