From the best-selling and acclaimed author Barbara Else, Laughing at the Dark is a funny, moving memoir about how she rebelled against being a ‘good girl’. By the time she was in her forties, Barbara was married to a globally recognised academic physician and had two beautiful teenage daughters. As her writing career developed, her husband became angry at the prospect of her being anything but a housewife. In a moment of madness — or realisation — she packed her c...

Combining essential information, professional insights, and lived experiences, this book offers a unique overview of the use of music therapy with active-duty service members, veterans, and other military-connected populations in the United States. Contributors include music therapists specializing with the military, as well as military personnel, veterans, and their families, providing an in-depth review of the impact that music therapy can have within this community.Detailing the...

Accessible, warm and witty, Barbara Else's fifth novel is her most effervescent. Suzie, a thirty-seven-year-old single mother, is the youngest of three sisters and a stubborn misfit. While Lara is now going for a top job in the Ministry of Customs and Philippa runs the charity organisation 'Suite Three', Suzie is an on-call chef with a bank account at zero, has a fifteen-year-old son in trouble at school and a ballet-crazy seven year old with head lice. Her love life shoul...

This poignant, funny novel explores the intricate influences of memory and experience, invention and deception. 'Delia's body lay flat as a piece of paper, blank, as if everything on it had scurried off over the side.' Delia Whittborne finds herself in a hospital bed but can't recall how she got there, or even who she is. As her memory slowly returns, she realises it's not just her recent past and love-life she needs to make sense of but also her early childhood o...

The Warrior Queen is a subversive, funny novel about modern middle-class marriage. Kate Wildburn is in trouble. She is an extrovert, a lateral thinker and a talented pianist. She is also a good wife and mother, and an attractive woman who enjoys being a woman. Richard, her surgeon husband, is balding, aggressive, hard on his children – and is he having an affair? The Warrior Queen is a subversive look at modern middle-class marriage, a guerrilla war of t...

A delicately layered, humorous novel, deliciously written, ranging over time and place. In the aftermath of Barnaby Rivers' death, complictions arise for three beautiful women: Bella, Ruth and wicked old Jocasta. Now nothing can go on in the old way. Crisis looms. In her funniest novel yet, Barbara Else contrasts attitudes to beauty, motherhood . . . and men. Looking down on it all is Barnaby himself, not sure if he's an angel or ghost.

A touching, tender and witty novel about men and women and family life. Sophie Redlove has a crumbling Gothic mansion to restore, three children to manage, a distraught friend - as well as possums in the laundry at midnight. She loves her absent husband, Russell - but there's an importunate older man who's after her, a slightly sycophantic younger one, an angel and a Viking on the scene . . . And what the hell is Russell up to? And indeed what's the story in Sophie's grad...

Headline news: Bridget’s expecting!Rescued during a raging storm, sensible Bridget blushes scarlet when she finds herself seduced by a captivating stranger. How un-Bridget-like – she’s mortified! But little does she know her rescuer is ultra-wealthy…and ultra-exclusive! Until she reads the newspaper headlines…Bridget’s mystery man is none other than the notorious Adam Beaumont, heir to the Beaumont Empire. Now Bridget has to find the words – and the courage...

Gabriella Midwinter used to have a home. She wasn’t invisible back then…For fans of Cathy Cassidy and Jacqueline Wilson, a stunning new novel from the author of SHINE, GLITTER, SEA OF STARS and A MILLION ANGELS.“What’s strange is that the day it actually happened, everything seemed so normal.”Caught between arguing parents and moving house, twelve-year-old Gabriella somehow slips through the cracks. Now she’s more alone than ever before. The city streets are no plac...

A hilarious, heart-warming read from the No.1 bestselling author of The Christmas Invitation…When Tansy Poole inherits a run-down shoe shop tucked away in the village of Sticklepond, ‘Cinderella’s Slippers’ is born – providing the footwear to make any fairytale wedding come true…Carrying everything a bride would want to walk down the aisle in, Tansy’s shop soon expands to carry shoe-themed wedding favours, bridesmaid gifts and even delicious chocolate shoes. It’s t...

Two suburban women. Two dark secrets. The almost perfect murder.Everybody needs good neighbours…Melissa and Hester have lived next door to each other for years. When Melissa’s daughter was younger, Hester was almost like a grandmother to her. But recently they haven’t been so close.Hester has plans to change all that. It’s obvious to her that despite Melissa’s outwardly glamorous and successful life, she needs Hester’s help....

Don’t miss the brand new Caroline Roberts’ novel, RACHEL’S PUDDING PANTRY, the first in a gorgeous new series. Available for pre-order now!‘Cakes, castles and oodles of charm: this book is huge fun and pure escapism’ Cathy BramleyCan Ellie bake her way to a happy ever after? Perfect for fans of Lucy Diamond and Milly Johnson.When Ellie Hall lands her dream job running the little teashop in the beautiful but crumbling Claverham Castle, it’s the perfect escape from he...