‘Heartwarming and poignant’ SUN ‘This book captured my heart’ Bestselling author Christie Barlow Meet Nancy… Single mum Nancy will do anything for her little boy. Jack’s autism makes life difficult at times, but she’s determined to ensure he lives the best life possible. So, when her best friend Harriet suggests a holiday to Ibiza, Nancy is torn: will Jack cope with the change in routine…will she? And Harriet… Workaholic mum Harriet convinces Nancy it’s the break they all need. A chance to have some fun with the kids, away from the stresses of normal life. And she’s determined to switch off her laptop, ignore her inbox, and just have fun with her kids for seven whole days… Cocktails and kids’ club – what could go wrong? Ibiza is beautiful, but Jack struggles with everything, Harriet refuses to put her laptop away, and Nancy begins to think she’s made a huge mistake. And then Nancy meets Cameron and his young son, Aiden and discovers that sometimes the best fun happens when you least expect it… Can these two single-mum’s swap their mummy guilt for sunglasses and sangria?

‘The Summer Theatre by the Sea is … a perfect summery read with sunshine, laughter and bucketloads of fizz – romantic comedy at its sparkling best.’ Rosanna Ley, bestselling author of The Villa and Her Mother’s Secret The Saunders sisters need a bit of Cornish magic this summer… Charlotte Saunders has always loved the buzz of city life. So, when she finds herself abruptly fired and dumped in one fell swoop, she’s devastated to have to swap her London home for the sleepy town of Penmullion, Cornwall, to move in with her estranged sister. But Lauren Saunders has problems of her own. A single mother to twins, the bills are piling up faster than she can pay them. And when what she thinks is a loan from a friend puts her deeper in debt than ever, things are starting to look impossible. In desperate need of a distraction, the two sisters turn to their community drama club. With bit of help from their new friends and lot of help from each other, can the Saunders sisters turn their luck around before the summer ends? The perfect summer read for fans of Lucy Diamond and Rachel Lucas. Praise for The Summer Theatre by the Sea ‘Refreshingly romantic.’ Helen Rolfe, author of the ‘A Year at the Cafe at the End of the Pier’ ‘Enchanting and captivating, I was hooked! An utterly gorgeous story!’ Christie Barlow, bestselling author of ‘A Home at Honeysuckle Farm’ ‘Sunshine in a book!’ The Book Trail ’Sunny, wonderful, entertaining and delightful.’ With Love For Books

A feel-good story that’s as scrumptious as your favourite slice of cake! Emma’s new café will be perfect, with its gorgeous strings of vintage bunting, mouth-wateringly gooey cakes, comforting pots of tea and quirky customers who think of each other as friends. It’s a long road to get there, but as her business fills with freelancing hipsters, stroppy teens, new mums and old neighbourhood residents, Emma realises that they’re not the only ones getting a second chance. She is too. But when someone commits bloomicide on their window boxes, their milk starts disappearing and their cake orders are mysteriously cancelled, it becomes clear that someone is determined to close them down. Will the café be their second chance after all? A deliciously laugh-out-loud story about friendship, second chances and surviving parenthood, perfect for fans of Carole Matthews, Milly Johnson and Holly Martin. Praise for Lilly Bartlett: ‘Fun, flirtatious and fresh’ Alex Brown, bestselling author The Secret of Orchard Cottage ‘Warm, witty, and wonderful – the perfect rom com’ Debbie Johnson, bestselling author of Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe ‘I loved the humour, the settings, the quirkiness, and ALL the characters’ Jane Linfoot, bestselling author of The Little Wedding Shop by the Sea ‘Absolutely wonderful romantic comedy that is guaranteed to lift your spirits’ Rachel’s Random Reads

RITA Award-winning author Leah Ashton never expected to write books. She grew up reading everything she could lay her hands on – from pony books to the back of cereal boxes at breakfast. One day she discovered the page-turning, happy-sigh-inducing world of romance novels… and one day, much later, wondered if maybe she could write one too. Leah now lives in Perth, Western Australia and writes happy ever afters for heroines who definitely don’t need saving. She has a gorgeous husband, two amazing daughters and the best intentions to meal plan and have an effortlessly tidy home. When she’s not writing, Leah loves all day breakfast, rambling conversations and laughing until she cries. She really hates cucumber. And scary movies.

And the prince wore spurs! A bourbon-tinged evening turns into a night of spur-jangling passion. And wrapped in the arms of hunky cowboy Zane Phillips, Lucy Campbell feels like her dreams have come true all at once! But she knows Zane needs a chance to let their move from friends to lovers sink in. That is, until reality knocks…and Lucy discovers she's pregnant. This wasn't how Zane imagined daddy-hood would happen. And with pretty Lucy…his best friend's little sister! He wants to do right by her and the baby, but Lucy wants the fairy tale, not a marriage of obligation. And while this simple cowboy isn't sure he can measure up as her Prince Charming, the real magic is that he's had her heart all along…

Falling for the enemy! Italian movie star Javier Russo needs to escape his Hollywood life. Isola dei Fiori is the perfect retreat—a lush island in the glittering Mediterranean. What he didn't expect was having to share his peaceful hideaway with the infuriatingly beautiful Portia Marlowe! Celebrity reporter Portia is intrigued by her unwelcome and mysterious visitor, and the secrets he's clearly holding back. Villa Rosa isn't big enough for both of them, and soon there's nowhere to hide from their simmering chemistry! Summer at Villa Rosa - Book 2 of 4

Expecting the sheikh's baby… When one magical night with gorgeous and enigmatic Majed leaves Sarah pregnant, she's torn apart over whether to reveal her secret. She already loves this baby, but will confirmed bachelor Majed feel the same? Discovering he's going to be a father changes everything for Majed. It's time to face the music and unveil his true identity as Prince of Keddah Jaleel! He'd love to make Sarah his sheikha, if only he can convince her she'll be much more than his convenient bride…

His fake fiancée? Artist Holly Motta arrives in New York to make a new start…only to find billionaire Ethan Benton occupying the apartment where she is meant to be staying! But there's another surprise in store… Ethan needs a fake fiancée – fast! – and he wants her to fill the role! But Ethan's got no intention of trusting any woman with his heart. Until he lets beautiful Holly into his world…and discovers she is the only woman he'd really like to make his wife!

“You have the luck of Croesus on stilts (as my Auntie Vi would have said) if you’ve had the sort of career, ups and downs, warts and all that I have in that wondrous little corner of show business called musical theatre.” One of the most successful and distinguished artists of our time, Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over the musical theatre world for nearly five decades. The winner of numerous awards, including multiple Tonys and an Oscar, Lloyd Webber has enchanted millions worldwide with his music and numerous hit shows, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera―Broadway’s longest running show―and most recently, School of Rock. In Unmasked, written in his own inimitable, quirky voice, the revered, award-winning composer takes stock of his achievements, the twists of fate and circumstance which brought him both success and disappointment, and the passions that inspire and sustain him. The son of a music professor and a piano teacher, Lloyd Webber reveals his artistic influences, from his idols Rodgers and Hammerstein and the perfection of South Pacific’s ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ to the pop and rock music of the 1960s and Puccini’s Tosca, to P. G. Wodehouse and T. S. Eliot. Lloyd Webber recalls his bohemian London youth, reminiscing about the happiest place of his childhood, his homemade Harrington Pavilion―a make-believe world of musical theatre in which he created his earliest entertainments. A record of several exciting and turbulent decades of British and American musical theatre and the transformation of popular music itself, Unmasked is ultimately a chronicle of artistic creation. Lloyd Webber looks back at the development of some of his most famous works and illuminates his collaborations with luminaries such as Tim Rice, Robert Stigwood, Harold Prince, Cameron Mackintosh, and Trevor Nunn. Taking us behind the scenes of his productions, Lloyd Webber reveals fascinating details about each show, including the rich cast of characters involved with making them, and the creative and logistical challenges and artistic political battles that ensued. Lloyd Webber shares his recollections of the works that have become cultural touchstones for generations of fans: writings songs for a school production that would become his first hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; finding the coterie of performers for his classic rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar; developing his first mega-hit, Evita, which would win seven Tonys Awards, including Best Musical; staking his reputation and fortune on the groundbreaking Cats; and making history with the dazzling The Phantom of the Opera. Reflecting a life that included many passions (from architecture to Turkish Swimming Cats), full of witty and revealing anecdotes, and featuring cameo appearances by numerous celebrities―Elaine Paige, Sarah Brightman, David Frost, Julie Covington, Judi Dench, Richard Branson, A.R. Rahman, Mandy Patinkin, Patti LuPone, Richard Rodgers, Norman Jewison, Milos Forman, Plácido Domingo, Barbra Streisand, Michael Crawford, Gillian Lynne, Betty Buckley, and more―Unmasked at last reveals the true face of the extraordinary man beneath the storied legend.

Roy Porter is Professor of the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He is the editor of the Fontana History of Science series, and the author of over sixty-five books, including the acclaimed bestseller ‘London: A Social History’. His book on the history of madness in England, ‘Mind Forg’d Manacles’, won the Leo Gershoy Prize.

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands? With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies. Enemies Within is a new history of the influence of Moscow on Britain told through the stories of those who chose to spy for the Soviet Union. It also challenges entrenched assumptions about abused trust, corruption and Establishment cover-ups that began with the Cambridge Five and the disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean on the night boat to Saint-Malo in 1951. In a book that is as intellectually thrilling as it is entertaining and illuminating, Richard Davenport-Hines traces the bonds between individuals, networks and organisations over generations to offer a study of character, both individual and institutional. At its core lie the operative traits of boarding schools, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Intelligence Division, Foreign Office, MI5, MI6 and Moscow Centre. Davenport-Hines tells many stories of espionage, counter-espionage and treachery. With its vast cope, ambition and scholarship, Enemies Within charts how the undermining of authority, the rejection of expertise and the suspicion of educational advantages began, and how these have transformed the social and political temper of modern Britain.

Rachel Allen was brought up in Dublin and at the age of eighteen left to study at the prestigious Ballymaloe Cookery School. Today, she not only teaches at the school, she also writes regular features for national publications, presents highly acclaimed television programmes which have been broadcast internationally. She is the winner of the 2012 Irish Book Award for Best Non-Fiction for Easy Meals.

Born and bred in the Bronx, Chris Bianco is a second generation New York Italian. He established a pizzeria in Arizona after taking the first flight to a city he liked the sound of. Pizzeria Bianco was born, inside the back corner of a local grocery store, and has had queues around the block since.In 2005 Chris opened Pane Bianco, serving foccacia breads and sandwiches, then his Italian Restaurant.Chris’ food meccas have attracted fans from around the world and in 2011 he joined forces with Jamie Oliver to open Union Jacks in the UK. He is a James Beard award-winning chef, has appeared on TV shows as diverse as Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, and now lives between London and Pheonix.

A brilliant study of a brilliant woman' LUCY WORSLEY History has forgotten Caroline of Ansbach, yet in her lifetime she was compared frequently to Elizabeth I and considered by some as ‘the cleverest queen consort Britain ever had’. The intellectual superior of her buffoonish husband George II, Caroline is credited with hastening the Enlightenment to Britain through her sponsorship of red-hot debates about science, religion, philosophy and the nature of the universe. Encouraged by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, she championed inoculation; inspired by her friends Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, she mugged up on Newtonian physics; she embraced a salon culture which promoted developments in music, literature and garden design; she was a regular theatre-goer who loved the opera, gambling and dancing. Her intimates marvelled at the breadth of her interests. She was, said Lord Egmont, ‘curious in everything’. Caroline acted as Regent four times while her husband returned to Hanover, and during those periods she possessed authority over all domestic matters. No subsequent royal woman has exercised power on such a scale. So why has history forgotten this extraordinary queen? In this magnificent biography, the first for over seventy years, Matthew Dennison seeks to reverse this neglect. The First Iron Lady uncovers the complexities of Caroline’s multifaceted life: the child of a minor German princeling who, through intelligence, determination and a dash of sex appeal, rose to occupy one of the great positions of the world and did so with distinction, élan and a degree of cynical realism. It is a remarkable portrait of an eighteenth-century woman of great political astuteness and ambition, a radical icon of female power.

A classic Golden Age crime novel, and one of the first to feature a serial killer. Investigating the disappearance of a vicar’s daughter in London, the popular novelist and amateur detective Roger Sheringham is shocked to discover that the girl is already dead, found hanging from a screw by her own silk stocking. Reports of similar deaths across the capital strengthen his conviction that this is no suicide cult but the work of a homicidal maniac out for vengeance – a desperate situation requiring desperate measures. Having established Roger Sheringham as a brilliant but headstrong young sleuth who frequently made mistakes, trusted the wrong people and imbibed considerable liquid refreshment, Anthony Berkeley took his controversial character into much darker territory with The Silk Stocking Murders, a sensational novel about gruesome serial killings by an apparent psychopath bent on targeting vulnerable young women.

One of the earliest psychological crime novels, back in print after more than 80 years. Mrs Bentley has been arrested for murder. The evidence is overwhelming: arsenic she extracted from fly papers was in her husband’s medicine, his food and his lemonade, and her crimes are being plastered across the newspapers. Even her lawyers believe she is guilty. But Roger Sheringham, the brilliant but outspoken young novelist, is convinced that there is ‘too much evidence’ against Mrs Bentley and sets out to prove her innocence. Credited as the book that first introduced psychology to the detective novel, The Wychford Poisoning Case was based on a notorious real-life murder inquiry. Written by Anthony Berkeley, a founder of the celebrated Detection Club who also found fame under the pen-name ‘Francis Iles’, the story saw the return of Roger Sheringham, the Golden Age’s breeziest – and booziest – detective.

Tom Jackson started putting old postcards on Twitter in 2016. He lives in South London. @pastpostcard

The heart-warming story of one little dog’s big adventure, and the lives he changes along the way. This Christmas, anything could happen… When their pet corgi goes missing on a trip to London, the Walker family search everywhere. But Henry has ended up in the one place they never think to look… Henry has been mistaken for a royal corgi by the Queen’s Guard, and found himself in a very different sort of family home. In no time, Henry is getting the royal treatment in Buckingham Palace, from velvet thrones to a personal chef. If this is a dog’s life, he doesn’t mind it one bit. But as Christmas spirit fills the palace, Henry knows he must somehow get back to the Walkers. Because true family is for life, not just for Christmas… The feel-good Christmas story to read on your holidays, perfect for fans of Debbie Johnson and Erin Green.

Writer and canine behaviourist Carol Price has owned, trained and bred Border Collies for over 15 years. She is a member of The UK Registry of Canine Behaviourists, specialising particularly in Border Collies and rescue dogs, and the author of the best-selling books Understanding the Border Collie and Understanding the Rescue Dog. She has written extensively for The Times on canine and other animal behaviour subjects, and is a regular contributor and training advisor for both of the UK’s top-selling dog magazines, Dogs Today and Your Dog.

By picking up this book, you are probably either considering keeping exotic pets, or you already have an interest in them. Not only are many of these creatures extremely beautiful to look at but they are also much simpler to look after than some of the more traditional pet mammals and birds with whom we choose to share our lives.Among the most popular pet amphibians, tree frogs are remarkably easy to look after and many species are suitable for handling by keepers.

The breakthrough novel from one of Britain's most brilliant critics. 'The Mulberry Empire' is a seemingly straightforward historical novel that recounts an episode in the Great Game in central Asia -- the courtship, betrayal and invasion of Afghanistan in the 1830s by the emissaries of Her Majesty's Empire, which is followed by the bloody and summary expulsion of the Brits from Kabul following an Afghani insurrection (shades of the Soviet Union's final imperial fling in the very same country in the 1980s). The novel has at its heart the encounter between West and East as embodied in the likeable, complex relationship between Alexander Burnes, leader of the initial British expeditionary party, and the wily, cultured Afghani ruler, the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan.