Download or read book Flappy Entertains written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beloved bestselling author Santa Montefiore comes a new novel filled with humour and heart. For fans of The Temptation of Gracie, Flappy now takes centre stage, more charismatic and competitive than ever. ‘Fresh, fun and fabulous! Flappy certainly kept me entertained!’ Heidi Swain, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Winter Garden Underneath her graceful exterior lies a passion nobody knew about, least of all Flappy herself… Flappy Scott-Booth is the self-appointed queen bee of Badley Compton, a picturesque Devon village. While her husband Kenneth spends his days on the golf course, she is busy overseeing her beautiful house and gardens, and organising unforgettable events, surrounded by friends who hang on to her every word. Her life is a reflection of herself – impossibly perfect. Until the day that Hedda Harvey-Smith and her husband Charles move into the village. Into an even grander home than hers. Taking the front seat on the social scene, quite literally. That simply will not do. Flappy is determined to show Hedda how things are done here in Badley Compton. But then she looks into Charles’s beautiful green eyes. And suddenly, her focus is elsewhere. She is only human, after all… Praise for Flappy Entertains: ‘Santa Montefiore is a born storyteller’ Woman’s Weekly ‘A friendly, undemanding read in unfriendly, demanding times’ Daily Mail ‘A keeping up with the Joneses tale that will life your spirits in no time’ New! ‘Another winner from the author who writes about relationships so astutely’ Belfast Telegraph 'Packed with wickedly funny insights and throwaway lines and written with an extra-large helping of heart, this is the perfect escape for anyone in need of of a book hug!' Lancashire Post ‘With its air of nostalgia, gentle humour and snobbery, this is a super but also surprising read’ NFOP magazine Praise for Santa Montefiore: 'Nobody does epic romance like Santa Montefiore' JOJO MOYES 'An enchanting read, overflowing with deliciously poignant moments' DINAH JEFFRIES 'Santa Montefiore hits the spot for me like few other writers' SARRA MANNING 'One of our personal favourites' The Times ‘Accomplished and poetic’ Daily Mail ‘Santa Montefiore is a marvel’ Sunday Express

Download or read book Flappy Investigates written by Santa Montefiore and published by . This book was released on 2023-10-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Something is amiss in the village of Badley Compton... Binoculars at the ready, Flappy Scott-Booth is set to investigate. Newcomers have moved in, a young couple from London, delightful no doubt but they do need to know their place. Who better to teach them the ways of this close-knit community than Flappy herself? But Flappy has other distractions. An ardent admirer, a New Year's Ball to organize and manifold appearances to be kept up. How much time and effort it all takes! Add to the mix the sudden arrival of her son Jasper with his utterly charming persona and total lack of ambition and drive, accompanied by his pretentious wife and their two highly-strung children - and Flappy is on ultra-high alert. Endlessly entertaining, fabulously fun and gorgeously gossipy, Flappy Investigates is the pitch-perfect follow-up to the bestselling Flappy Entertains.

Download or read book The Temptation of Gracie written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon & Schuster UK. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unforgettable tale of love lost and rediscovered, set in the enchanting backdrop of Italy—from internationally bestselling author Santa Montefiore, whose books have sold more than 6 million copies worldwide. Love may be lost, but it’s not gone forever. When Gracie Burton stumbles upon a weeklong cooking course at Castello Montefosco, a castle in the sun-kissed Tuscan countryside, she cannot resist the opportunity to revisit the past she left behind in Italy. Since her husband’s death eight years earlier, Gracie has grown apart from her daughter, Carina, a high-powered businesswoman in London and her granddaughter, Anastasia, who would rather spend her time on her phone than with her family, but both women decide to join her. Little do they know that a lifetime of secrets await them in Italy. Over the course of the week, Gracie reveals the truth about what has drawn her back to the castle and its owner, the mysterious Count Bassanelli. Carina and Anastasia are shocked to discover that Gracie spent fifteen years in Italy as an apprentice to her uncle, a renowned art restorer and collector. While there, she fell madly in love. Now, forty-one years later, she has returned in hopes of righting past wrongs. With the help of Mamma Bernadetta’s magical recipes and the kindness of her fellow guests, Gracie reconnects with her family and together, all three women learn that love once lost, is not gone forever. The Temptation of Gracie is a poignant, timeless tale of grand romance, a story of women through the generations, and a reminder that it’s never too late to love.

Download or read book Other People s Houses written by Lore Segal and published by Sort of Books. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'First published 54 years ago and yet feels as timely as any book I've read this year' Observer Nine months after the Nazi occupation of Austria, 600 Jewish Children assembled at Vienna station to board the first of the Kindertransports bound for Britain. Among them was 10 year old Lore Segal. For the next seven years, she lived as a refugee in other people's houses, moving from the Orthodox Levines in Liverpool, to the staunchly working class Hoopers in Kent, to the genteel Miss Douglas and her sister in Guildford. Few understood the terrors she had fled, or the crushing responsibility of trying to help her parents gain a visa. Amazingly she succeeds and two years later her parents arrive; their visa allows them to work as domestic servants - a humiliation for which they must be grateful. In Other People's Houses Segal evokes with deep compassion, clarity and calm the experience of a child uprooted from a loving home to become stranded among strangers.

Download or read book The Selected Works of T S Spivet written by Reif Larsen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal-is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls. T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself. As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery. All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find. T.S.'s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut. Now a major motion picture directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Kyle Catlett and Helena Bonham Carter.

Download or read book Here and Now written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon & Schuster UK. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From internationally bestselling author Santa Montefiore—a touching and bittersweet intergenerational story about family and the power of memory. Meet Marigold and Dennis, two happily married empty-nesters in their late sixties. They should be enjoying their golden years in the idyllic English village where they live. But when their two grown daughters, Daisy and Suze, move back into the family home, both mother and father must learn how to deal with the upheaval. Meanwhile, as Daisy and Suze soak in the familiar comforts of home, they soon discover that their mother isn’t quite the same woman she was a few years ago. Sure, she is still kind-hearted and always willing to help, but something about their mom is different, and it’s becoming harder and harder for the family to ignore. For the first time in their lives, Dennis and his daughters find themselves caring for Marigold rather than the other way around. Here and Now is a gorgeously evocative novel brimming with characters who are so recognizable they’ll walk right off the page and into your heart. This is a novel about what it means to grow up and to grow wise, and how the new generation learns to carry family memories and hope into the future.

Download or read book The French Gardener written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spellbinding novel about marriage, passion, loss, renewal, and the healing power of love from the number one bestselling author of Songs of Love and War. Married couple, Miranda and David, move out of London into a beautiful country house with an idyllic garden. But reality turns out to be very different from their bucolic dream. Soon the latent unhappiness in the family begins to come to the surface, isolating each family member in a bubble of resentment and loneliness. Then a mysterious Frenchman arrives on their doorstep. With the wisdom of nature, he slowly begins to heal the past and the present. But who is he? When Miranda discovers his secret in the cottage by the garden, the whole family learns that a garden, like love itself, can restore the human spirit, not just season after season, but generation after generation. Wise and winsome, poignant and powerfully moving, The French Gardener combines the savvy of contemporary women's fiction with an old fashioned sensibility steeped in the importance of family and the magical power of love.

Download or read book The Women Who Ran Away written by Sheila O'Flanagan and published by Review. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *LOSE YOURSELF THIS SUMMER IN THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER* 'One of my favourite authors' MARIAN KEYES Deira isn't the kind of woman to steal a car. Or drive to France alone with no plan. But then, Deira didn't expect to be single. Or to suddenly realise that the only way she can get the one thing she wants most is to start breaking every rule she lives by. Grace has been sent on a journey by her late husband, Ken. She doesn't really want to be on it but she's following his instructions, as always. She can only hope that the trip will help her to forgive him. And then - finally - she'll be able to let him go. Brought together by unexpected circumstances, Grace and Deira find that it's easier to share secrets with a stranger, especially in the shimmering sunny countryside of Spain and France. But they soon find that there's no escaping the truth, whether you're running away from it or racing towards it . . . *LOSE YOURSELF THIS SUMMER IN THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER* Praise for Sheila O'Flanagan's irresistible novels: 'Brilliantly written and with plot twists popping out like Prosecco corks' Woman and Home 'An exciting love story with a deliciously romantic denouement' Sunday Express 'A feel-good story told by a funny and down-to-earth heroine' Woman's Weekly 'If you're seeking an escape of your own, this sunny, evocative story is the perfect place to hide away' S Magazine A NO. 1 IRISH BESTSELLER (JULY 2020) A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER (MARCH 2021)

Download or read book Skin a Cat written by Isley Lynn and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every teenager thinks they’re the only one not having sex. But for Alana, it may well be true. Every time she gets close to doing it, something just seems to get in the way… Soon she can’t help wondering: Is it this tricky for everyone else? Because no one ever said it was going to be this complicated. With a kaleidoscope of off-kilter characters, SKIN A CAT follows Alana on an awkward sexual odyssey: from getting her first period at nine years old and freaking out her frantic mother, to watching bad porn at a house party with her best friend’s boyfriend, to a painful examination by an overly cheery gynaecologist—all in the pursuit of losing her virginity and finally becoming a woman. Whatever that means…

Download or read book The Distant Shores written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From internationally bestselling author Santa Montefiore, whose books have sold more than six million copies worldwide, comes The Distant Shores, a new story in the sweeping Deverill saga, about a family torn apart and the woman who will bring them back together. Margot Hart travels to Ireland to write a biography of the famous Deverill family. She knows she must speak to the current Lord Deverill, JP, if she is to uncover the secrets of the past. A notorious recluse, JP won’t be an easy man to crack. But Margot is determined—and she is not a woman who is easily put off. What she never expected was to form a close bond with JP and be drawn into his family disputes. Shouldering the blame for running up debts that forced him to sell the family castle, JP is isolated and vulnerable. With help from his handsome son Colm, it seems as though Margot might be the only one who can restore JP’s fortunes. Will the family ever succeed in healing rifts that have been centuries in the making?

Download or read book Wait for Me written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-07-06 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Sunday Times bestselling author of An Italian Girl in Brooklyn comes a captivating new novel of enduring love and devastating secrets, based on a true story. 'Nobody does epic romance like Santa Montefiore' JOJO MOYES Rupert promised he was going to come back. All Florence had to do was wait. Cornwall, 1944 When Rupert Dash is declared missing, presumed dead during the Battle of Arnhem, his wife, Florence, is devastated. She can’t accept that he has gone from her life forever, and so when she finds a poem called ‘Wait for Me’ hidden in an old book, she believes it’s a sign from her husband. A promise that he will return to her. London, 1988 Since childhood Max has suffered from a recurring nightmare. Surrounded by the horrific chaos of World War Two, he has an urgent mission he knows he must complete. But time after time, the dream ends with him awaking in terror, his heart pounding from the horror of the battlefield. Desperate to understand why he is haunted by such terrible visions, Max embarks on a journey that leads him to Cornwall and a man named Rupert Dash. Australia, 1995 Florence receives a letter from someone she has never met, who lives on the other side of the world. This stranger says he remembers a life that belonged to another before him. Could this be the one person Florence has waited over fifty years to meet again? 'Based on a true story this gorgeous sweeping romance crossing time and continents is completely captivating as Florence epitomises the enduring power of love' My Weekly

Download or read book The Sea written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

Download or read book Birds of America written by Lorrie Moore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-03-07 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the bestselling author of A Gate at the Stairs: A collection of twelve stories that’s “one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability" (The New York Times Book Review). A volume by one of the most exciting writers at work today, the acclaimed author of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Self-Help. Stories remarkable in their range, emotional force, and dark laughter, and in the sheer beauty and power of their language. From the opening story, "Willing"—about a second-rate movie actress in her thirties who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being—Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. In the story "Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People" ("There is nothing as complex in the world—no flower or stone—as a single hello from a human being"), a woman newly separated from her husband is on a long-planned trip through Ireland with her mother. When they set out on an expedition to kiss the Blarney Stone, the image of wisdom and success that her mother has always put forth slips away to reveal the panicky woman she really is. In "Charades," a family game at Christmas is transformed into a hilarious and insightful (and fundamentally upsetting) revelation of crumbling family ties. In "Community Life,"a shy, almost reclusive, librarian, Transylvania-born and Vermont-bred, moves in with her boyfriend, the local anarchist in a small university town, and all hell breaks loose. And in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens," a woman who goes through the stages of grief as she mourns the death of her cat (Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Häagen Dazs, Rage) is seen by her friends as really mourning other issues: the impending death of her parents, the son she never had, Bosnia.

Download or read book Last Voyage of the Valentina written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-05-23 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Originally published in Great Britain in 2005 by Hodder and Stoughton"--T.p. verso.

Download or read book An Italian Girl in Brooklyn written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From #1 internationally bestselling author Santa Montefiore comes a spellbinding new novel about dark secrets and hidden sorrows—set in war-torn Italy and the streets of New York. New York, 1979. It is Thanksgiving and Evelina has her close family and beloved friends gathered around, her heart weighted with gratitude for what she has and regret for what she has given up. She has lived in America for over thirty years, but she is still Italian in her soul. Northern Italy, 1934. Evelina leads a sheltered life with her parents and siblings in a villa of fading grandeur. When her elder sister Benedetta marries a banker, to suit her father’s wishes rather than her own, Evelina swears that she will never marry out of duty. She knows nothing of romantic love, but when she meets Ezra, son of the local dressmaker, her heart recognises it like an old friend. Evelina wants these carefree days to last forever. She wants to bask in sunshine, beauty, and love, and pay no heed to the grey clouds gathering on the horizon. But nothing lasts forever. The shadows of war are darkening over Europe and precious lives are under threat…

Download or read book The Long Way Home written by Fanny Blake and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Daughters of Castle Deverill written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously published in the US as The Daughters of Ireland. The second book in the #1 international bestselling series about the powerful ties between three women and their determination to return home. The war is over. But life will never be the same... It is 1925 and Castle Deverill has burned to the ground. War and deception have divided the daughters of Ireland, but Celia vows to return her ancestral home to its former glory. Kitty raises a young family but longs for something more, and Bridie flourishes as a New York socialite consumed by revenge. Celia works to reunite her childhood friends and restore the place they once called home, but soon everything she knows is cast into doubt as the Great Depression looms. In the second installment of Santa Montefiore’s sweeping generational epic, Celia, Kitty, and Bridie must once again face the dark shadows of history. Daughters of Castle Deverill is an unforgettable story of enduring friendship and the inner strength needed to start again.