They all met again at the Drama School Reunion: the Hollywood celebrity, the out-of-work soap star, the understudy, the Shakespearian hero.Thirty-six years ago, they dreamed of the great parts awaiting them. What they did not know was that the parts would soon dry up, for the actresses. Because they had stopped being young.But: once an actress, always an actress and on this hot, summer's day it becomes clear that age does not wipe out ambition. Or desire. Or memory. Or love...

This vivid memoir by well-known New Zealand actor and novelist Barbara Ewing covers her tumultuous childhood, adolescence, and young-adulthood in Wellington and Auckland in the 1950s and early 1960s—a very different time—and ends in 1962, when she boards a ship for London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. It draws heavily on the diaries she kept from the age of twelve, which lead her to some surprising conclusions about memory and truth. Ewing struggled with what would now be ...

The Victorian gossipmongers called them The Petticoat Men. But to Mattie Stacey, they are Freddie and Ernest, her gentlemen lodgers. She admires their sparkling gowns, and laughs at their stories of attending society balls dressed up as the glamorous 'Fanny' and 'Stella'. But one fateful night Fanny and Stella are arrested. Outraged, Mattie is determined to save her friends and expose the establishment's hypocrisy…

This vivid memoir by well-known New Zealand actor and novelist Barbara Ewing covers her tumultuous childhood, adolescence and young-adulthood in Wellington and Auckland in the 1950s and early 1960s — a very different time — and ends in 1962, when she boards a ship for London, to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. It draws heavily on the diaries she kept from the age of twelve, which lead her to some surprising conclusions about memory and truth. Ewing struggled with what would now...

Travel, houseparties, smugglers, spies--and a mysterious highwayman. Who is the infamous Captain Moonlight? And how many lives will he change--for good or for ill?

London 1849. The capital city is living in fear. Cholera is everywhere. Eminent MP Sir Charles Cooper decides it is too risky for his younger daughter, the strangely beautiful and troubled Harriet, and sends her--but not her beloved sister Mary--to the countryside.Rusholme is a world away from London, full of extraordinary relations: Harriet's cousin Edward and his plans for a new life in New Zealand; Aunt Lucretia, reliant on afternoon wine and laudanum; the formidable Lady Kingdom...

Legendary thriller writer David Morrell transports readers to the fogbound streets of London, where a killer plots to assisinate Queen Victoria.The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The Empire teeters. Amid this crisis comes opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, one of the most notorious and brilliant personalities of Victorian England. Along with his irrepressible daughter, Emily, an...

Anna Hope’s brilliant debut unfolds over the course of five days, as three women must deal with the aftershocks of World War I and its impact on the men in their lives.Wake: 1) Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep. 2) Ritual for the dead. 3) Consequence or aftermath.London, 1920. The city prepares to observe the two-year anniversary of Armistice Day with the burial of the unknown soldier. Many are still haunted by the war: Hettie, a dance instructr...

From the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Paris Apartment and The Guest List, an evocative love story set along the Italian Riviera about a group of charismatic stars who all have secrets and pasts they try desperately—and dangerously—to hide.Rome, 1953: Hal, an itinerant journalist flailing in the post-war darkness, has come to the Eternal City to lose himself and to seek absolution for the thing that haunts him. One evening ...

In Chaucer's London, betrayal, murder, royal intrigue, mystery, and dangerous politics swirl around the existence of a prophetic book that foretells the deaths of England's kings. Bruce Holsinger's A Burnable Book is an irresistible historical thriller reminiscent of the classics An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and The Crimson Petal and the White.London, 1385. Surrounded by ruthless courtiers—including his powerful uncle, John of Gaun...

A first-rate choice for fans of intelligent historical romances."-- Library Journal , starred review Amid the mayhem of the Civil War, Iris Dunleavy is put on trial by her husband, convicted of madness, and sent to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a compliant Virginia plantation wife. But her husband is the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of disagreeing on notions of cruelty and property. On this remote Florida island, Iris meets a wonderful collection of inmates in various s...

In the tradition of The Cookbook Collector comes a funny, romantic novel about a young woman finding her calling while saving a used bookstore.Maggie Duprv®s, recently "involuntarily separated from payroll" at a Silicon Valley startup, is whiling away her days in The Dragonfly's Used Books, a Mountain View institution, waiting for the Next Big Thing to come along.When the opportunity arises for her to network at a Bay Area book club, she jumps at th...