If you were looking for the definitive Christmas anthology, consider yourself lucky, because you just found it! This book is everything you want Christmas to be — loving, warm and celebratory. Timeless and adorable, beautifully designed, "The Big Book of Christmas" is a great big stocky book — stuffed with novels, novellas, short stories, poems, carols and songs. Inside you'll find: · Novels, novellas and short stories from Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Hans Christian Andersen, O. He...

Is a happy ever after impossible?FracturedAlison is the ugly duckling of her family and has always been treated with disdain by her mother. After years of being bullied, she is drawn to the one man who shows her affection. But when he brutally rapes her, leaving her pregnant, she is cast out.ForgottenShunned by her family, Alison must start to make her own way and plan a life for herself and...

A startling, moving magic realist debutAlmost immediately upon Julie Bird’s return to the small port town where she was raised, everyday life is turned upside down. Julie’s Gulf War vet father, Marty, has been on the losing side of a battle with PTSD for too long. A day of boating takes a dramatic turn when a majestic blue whale beaches itself and dies. A blond stranger sets up camp oceanside: she’s an agitator, musician-impersonator, and armchair philosopher named...

Bullied by everyone around her for years, has Mavis Jackson finally found happiness? Or is it a case of going from the frying pan straight into the fire?BULLIEDTaunted by everyone around her, including her mother Lily, 15-year-old Mavis Jackson is devastated when her only ally, her father Ron, leaves home to beat his gambling addiction. Forced to walk the streets in search of junk to sell, the future seems bleak.BRIBEDUntil an unexpected fairy godmother arri...

You can never leave a bad man behind…Mavis Pugh has had a hard life. Despised and abused throughout her teenage years, she turned to the first man who showed her kindness. But her new husband, Alec, quickly revealed himself to be a violent bully.When Mavis escapes from Alec, she thinks the worst is behind her. Moving to a large family house with her two children is more than she ever dreamed of, and when handsome sign-writer Tommy takes an interest in her, she can't believe...

Happiness comes at a price…Though besotted with one another, Amy Miller and Thomas Frost have never had it easy. From very different sides of the tracks, their romance was doomed from the moment Thomas’s overbearing mother Celia vowed to separate them.Celia writes to her eldest son, asking him to come home and help to split the pair up. But when Jeremy returns to Battersea it’s clear he wan...

Can she keep her son safe?**Previously published as A Father’s Revenge**When Pearl’s ex-husband Kevin was sent to prison, she left her old life in Battersea behind, determined to protect her son from the truth about his father. But when her dear friend Bessie dies, she is forced to return to the one place she’d rather forget.While Pearl makes plans to take over Bessie’s shop, Kevin is released from jail and...

Abandoned and alone, you'll do anything to survive…ABANDONEDOn the cold stone steps of an orphanage, only a few hours old and clutching the object which was to give her name, Pearl Button had a hard start to life.ALONENow 16, she's finally managed to escape the cruel confines of the orphanage. Finding work at a nearby café, Pearl is thrilled to start earning her own money, even if she must contend with sharp-tongued Dolly Do...

Desperate times call for desperate measures…SWINDLED…Val Thorn, Paula Richardson, Cheryl Cutter and Betty Grayson have one thing in common – they have all been betrayed by men.SHAMED…Rape victim Paula has been terrified ever since her brutal attack.High-flyer Val's life has fallen to pieces since she was forced out of her job.Grief-stricken by her grandmother's death, nurse Cheryl was tricked out of her inher...

Will she ever find a home where she can belong?ALONEJennifer Lavender was a lonely child. She always felt like second best and desperately craved her parents’ love. When Jenny learns she was adopted everything falls into place. But her dream of finding her real family can never be fulfilled – her mother died alone giving birth.ABANDONEDNow a grown woman and married to Marcos, she feels loved. But when the police show up, Jen...

You can’t choose your family…From the Sunday Times bestselling author Kitty Neale comes an emotional family saga about two women whose bravery and kinship will see them through the toughest times.CRUEL When her beloved Gran has a stroke, Sally and her family move back home to look after her. But Sadie's illness has made the wise woman they once knew bigoted and bad-tempere...

Library of Masterpieces—100 Books to Read in a Lifetime offers an ambitious cross-cultural canon of enduring literature, philosophy, drama, and narrative art. Moving from classical epic, tragedy, and political thought to the novel, Gothic romance, detective fiction, modernist experiment, children's literature, and existential reflection, it reveals how literary forms continually remake questions of power, desire, faith, justice, memory, and freedom. Monumental epics, psychologically intric...