As always, September is a busy month for book releases not only because Becky Bloomwood is back in Mini Shopaholic by the fab Sophie Kinsella! There are also new books from chick lit stalwarts Sheila O’Flanagan, Cathy Kelly and Carole Matthews. There is a little something for everyone this month so let us know what you’re looking forward to!
Sheila O’Flanagan – Stand By Me – 2nd September 2010
When her husband vanishes, Dominique Delahaye could crumble – or she could start to enjoy a whole new life… An unputdownable read from the No. 1 bestselling author. Dominique (‘Domino’) lives a charmed existence as wife to one of Ireland’s most successful businesssmen, Brendan Delahaye – until the day Brendan disappears, leaving his company in disarray and Domino and their daughter alone to face the music. STAND BY ME is the story of Domino’s recovery and her journey from obliging and dependent wife to a stronger and happier woman, with a new man ready to step into the gap left by her deserting husband. And that’s when Brendan comes home, handsome and charismatic as ever, expecting life to carry on just as it was before…
Elizabeth Buchan – Separate Beds – 2nd September 2010
Annie and Tom’s marriage is in mid-life crisis. They seem to have everything – a lovely home, rewarding jobs and three healthy grown-up children – but, beneath the surface, all is not well. Beneath the surface lies a secret guilt which ensures that whilst they live under the same roof, they sleep in separate beds. Then, as recession strikes, Tom comes home one evening and drops a bombshell that threatens to destroy everything they have left. Will he and Annie be able to leave the past behind and weather this storm together? Or will it push them further apart? Annie is about to discover that out of disaster springs the faint rays of hope. As her family rallies together, for the first time in years, her home is filled with people, conversation, tears – and laughter. And, little by little, Annie and Tom start to open up to one another about the terrible, painful truth they have lived with all these years. Soon a new, unexpected future starts to take shape as Annie and Tom are offered a second chance at happiness. But will they take it?
Heather McElhatton – A Million Little Mistakes – 2nd September 2010
A MILLION LITTLE MISTAKES is no ordinarly novel: it has one beginning and fifty different endings that will variously surprise, shock, and delight readers as they hunt for happiness.
Your story begins when you win twenty-two million dollars in the lottery.
What happens next? It’s entirely up to you. Do you get out of debt? Quit your job?
Travel the world? Go on the shopping spree of a lifetime? The possibilities are endless!
Twenty-two million dollars can buy a lot, but can it buy a happy ending?
Robyn Sisman – The Perfect Couple? – 2nd September 2010
Kate is a rising star in one of London’s top barristers’ chambers. Smart, competitive and driven, she is jubilant when she lands a high-profile case representing the TV talent show mogul Jez Carnaby. Children are involved, as are houses, helicopters, racehorses, private islands, and money – lots of it. Winning this case will guarantee Kate the success and stability she craves. There’s only one problem: on the opposing legal team is her own husband, Rikki. Frost settles on their previously hot marriage. Kate is outraged by Rikki’s sympathy for his female client, whom Kate sees as a negligent mother and freeloader. Rikki is disgusted that contact with Carnaby is making her as selfish as her client. Suddenly issues which they could laugh off or resolve in bed erupt into quarrels, whether about who puts out the rubbish bin or about Kate’s ambivalence towards having children. Fighting the case in the court by day while sharing a bed by night, both must reassess their ideas about parenthood, fidelity and the equality of men and women in a modern marriage. From the leafy quadrangles and panelled chambers of London’s legal heartland to glitzy country mansions, THE PERFECT COUPLE is a fun and fast battle of the sexes, packed with wit and emotional truth.
Melanie La’Brooy – The Wedding Planner – 2nd September 2010
The big day is fast approaching, but so is a big disaster…Sabrina Falks is the golden girl – a star actress engaged to the too-good-to-be-true Edward. Her younger sister Mimi is funny and bright but hopelessly lost, with no career prospects, no money, no love life and a string of disastrous mistakes in her past. When Sabrina asks Mimi to be her bridesmaid, Mimi soon learns that ‘bridesmaid’ actually means ‘unofficial wedding planner – servant, slave and general dogsbody’. And, to her horror, she knows that it’s going to take more than just patience to whip up the wedding of the century, especially when the official wedding planner has a murky secret that could rock Sabrina and Edward’s world…
Sophie Kinsella – Mini Shopaholic – 2nd September 2010
Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood) thought motherhood would be a breeze and that having a daughter was a dream come true a shopping friend for life! But it s trickier than she thought two-year-old Minnie has a quite different approach to shopping.
She can create havoc everywhere from Harrods to Harvey Nicks to her own christening. She hires taxis at random, her favourite word is Mine , and she s even started bidding for designer bags on ebay.
On top of everything else, there s a big financial crisis. People are having to Cut Back including all of Becky s personal shopping clients and she and Luke are still living with Becky s Mum and Dad. To cheer everyone up, Becky decides to throw a surprise birthday party on a budget but then things become really complicated.
Who will end up on the naughty step, who will get a gold star and will Becky s secret wishes come true?
Nina Bell – Lovers and Liars – 16th September 2010
A passionate love affair. A happy young family. And a successful 30-year marriage. But which one will be destroyed by the truth? Sophie and her sister, Jess, grow up knowing that a few little lies are necessary: You look great. It was only a joke. He’s just stressed. It doesn’t matter. Everything’s fine.
Everybody does it, don’t they? But what about the big lies ? about love, power and money? When Sophie discovers her father’s secret, and Jess falls in love with the charismatic Jake, Sophie has to look at her own life again. Should she keep quiet or tear her family apart with the truth? And if she tells, who will pay the ultimate price?
Catherine Ryan Hyde – Second Hand Heart – 16th September 2010
One girl: Vida is nineteen, very sick, and has spent her short life preparing for death. But a new chance brings its own story, because for Vida to live, someone had to die.
One man: Richard has just lost his beloved wife in a car accident. He hasn’t even begun to address his grief, but feels compelled to meet the girl who inherited his wife’s heart.
Someone else’s heart: In hospital Vida sees Richard and immediately falls in love. Of course he dismisses her as a foolish child. But is she? Can two people be bound by a second hand heart?
Lesley Lokko – One Secret Summer – 16th September 2010
In the perfect family, there’s a thin line between love and hate, especially when there’s so much to hide… The Keelers are one of those families that seem to have everything. Glamorous, wealthy and privileged, life has always been easy for them, on the outside at least. But even the happiest of families have their secrets. Maddie, the scatty American actress, is swept off her fee by Rafe Keeler. A brilliantly talented surgeon, Rafe is handsome, steady and dependable – everything Maddie has sought in a man. So why does she feel so dangerously adrift? Julia loathed Aaron Keeler on sight when they met at Oxford. She was a working-class girl, he was the privileged posh boy handed everything on a plate. But a lethal attraction has set them on a collision course. Niela has been running all her life. Betrayed and abandoned by her own family, her whirlwind marriage to Josh Keeler has given her a place to call ‘home’. But Niela knows how easily the past can come back to ruin your life…
Carole Matthews – The Only Way Is Up – 16th September 2010
What do you do when there’s nothing left to lose?
Lily and Laurence Lamont-Jones had it all: lavish holidays in exotic locations, a top private school for their two children and a beautiful home in the Buckinghamshire countryside.
Then Laurence loses his job, and their house and all their belongings are repossessed. With nowhere else to go, the family move into a flea-ridden council house on a notoriously rough estate and start to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. But will Lily’s dream of returning to a world of luxury ever come true – or have her priorities changed? For with the help of new friends, a little luck and a lot of determination she’s about to learn what really matters.
Victoria Connelly – A Weekend With Mr Darc
y – 16th September 2010
Katherine Roberts is fed up with men. As a lecturer specialising in the works of Jane Austen, she knows that the ideal man only exists within the pages of Pride & Prejudice and that in real life there is no such thing. Determined to go it alone, she finds all the comfort she needs reading her guilty pleasure – regency romances from the pen of Lorna Warwick – with whom she has now struck up an intimate correspondence.
Austen fanatic, Robyn Love, is blessed with a name full of romance, but her love life is far from perfect. Stuck in a rut with a bonehead boyfriend, Jace, and a job she can do with her eyes shut – her life has hit a dead end. Robyn would love to escape from it all but wouldn’t know where to start.
They both decide to attend the annual Jane Austen Conference at sumptuous Purley Hall, overseen by the actress and national treasure, Dame Pamela Harcourt. Robyn is hoping to escape from Jace for the weekend and indulge in her passion for all things Austen. Katherine is hoping that Lorna Warwick will be in attendance and is desperate to meet her new best friend in the flesh.
But nothing goes according to plan and Robyn is aghast when Jace insists on accompanying her, whilst Katherine is disappointed to learn that Lorna won’t be coming. However, an Austen weekend wouldn’t be the same without a little intrigue, and Robyn and Katherine are about to get much more than they bargained for. Because where Jane Austen is concerned, romance is never very far away…
Cathy Kelly – Homecoming – 16th September 2010
Eleanor Levine left Ireland seventy years ago with little more than a suitcase and her mother’s handwritten recipe book. Now, a lifetime later, she’s returning from New York with hard won wisdom and memories of her own. A renowned psychoanalyst, Eleanor knows there’s one final journey she has to make… Lovely young actress Megan Bouchier didn’t have to chase success – it arrived effortlessly. Fame was what she always wanted until a disastrous affair made her the wrong kind of headlines – now Megan needs a place to hide… Darkly beautiful Rae is a wonderful wife, a loyal friend and a dedicated community carer. From Titania’s Tea Rooms she dispenses tea and sympathy to everyone – until a painful secret from her past threatens everything she holds dear.
Big-hearted teacher Connie O’Callaghan has given up on love. She’s cheerfully approaching forty and besides, why does no man ever match the heroes in her beloved romantic novels? As Eleanor re-reads her mother’s comforting words and watches life unfold from her window in Dublin’s pretty Golden Square, she slowly becomes drawn into the lives of Megan, Rae and Connie. But can treasured wisdom handed down from mother to daughter really be relevant today? And what are the ingredients for a life well lived?
Louise Patten – Good As Gold – 30th September 2010
Edie Quentance is the ugly duckling in a family of charming conformists. For generations, Quentance Bank has managed the wealth of its rich and aristocratic clients, and when Edie is pushed into joining the family bank, she finds the work very dull indeed. She passes the time trying to uncover the truth about her great-grandfather Kit, whose love of the sea she has inherited. Kit Quentance was rumoured to have carried a fortune into the Titanic lifeboat with him – money that has never been found. Edie’s excavations in the family archive unearth some shocking and far more recent secrets. She realises that Quentance Bank is not the paragon of old fashioned probity it pretends to be. As she tries to right her family’s wrong-doings, Edie’s position becomes increasingly dangerous. Her twin brother, her parents, her uncle – she no longer knows whom she can trust.
Sara Shepard – Everything We Ever Wanted – 30th Se
ptember 2010
How do you choose between your family and your history? Emotional and compelling storytelling from Sara Shepard, author of All the Things We Didn’t Say.
A late-night phone call on a Sunday evening rarely brings good news. So when Sylvie, a recently-widowed mother of two, receives a call from the head teacher of the school she’s on the board of, she knows it won’t be something she wants to hear. The school was founded by her grandfather, and she’s inherited everything he strived to build up – a reputation, a heritage, the school and the grand old family house. And with this inheritance comes responsibility.
So when her son Scott is whispered to be involved in a scandal that led to the death of one of the boys he coaches at the school, it throws the family into chaos: Sylvie has to decide between her loyalty to the school that has been part of her family legacy for years and her son who she feels wants nothing to do with her. She starts spying on the dead boy’s father, making an unlikely connection.
Sara Shepard’s compelling new novel tells how hard it can be to really, truly connect to people, how making quick, easy judgments can come back to haunt you, and how the life you always planned for – and always dreamed of – often doesn’t always turn out the way you imagined at all…
Jessica Ruston’s second novel, after her debut Luxury, is due out in hardback on the 9th December 201o and although originally titled Decadence, it will now be called To Touch The Stars. Personally, I preferred Decadence because it’s a beautiful word but To Touch The Stars works for me. I also think the cover is stunning, definitely one of my favourites and the book itself sounds just as fab. Here’s the synopsis:
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