Sometimes life surprises you with an encore…

Twenty years ago, aspiring performer Gill Piper boarded a bus out of Leatherhead with a spring in her step and stars in her eyes. Things didn't quite pan out…

Back home again, Gill finds much has changed. Young Lights, the youth theatre group which coaxed her out of her shell, is no more. The theatre itself, once the heartbeat of the community, now feels like a has-been; Gill can relate.

When Gill learns the theatre is approaching its hundredth year, she decides to put on a spectacular anniversary show to give it a comeback and unite the town. She has just eight weeks, but if she can persuade some shy newcomers to step into the spotlight, it might just be possible.

But Gill hasn't counted on self-appointed Artistic Director and diva extraordinaire Carla Keswick, who declares war. Can Gill and her unlikely company of amateurs defy Carla's dirty tricks, and prove it's never too late for a curtain call?

Praise for Mel Giedroyc's bestselling novel The Best Things:

'I enjoyed it HUGELY. A real treat' MARIAN KEYES
'A brilliant cast of characters and properly funny!' GRAHAM NORTON
'A warm contemporary fable bursting with colourful characters and comic energy' DAILY MAIL
'Exactly like Mel herself: engaging, uproarious and gleeful. A stonking good read' JO BRAND
'A warm look at a family and what really matters in life. Brimming with hilarious scenes, it is also a redemptive book, and one of hope' WOMAN & HOME

Diana's on the hunt for her fourth husband. Such a shame the others all died so quickly…

'Bella Mackie's books are salacious, gripping and very funny' JOE LYCETT

Diana’s on the hunt and has the perfect new target.

Finally, the type of wealth she’s always dreamed of. A five-storey house in Hampstead, unfettered access to London’s liberal elite and a bloated bank account.

If she can ensnare David Farrand, then she really will have clawed her way to the top.

The only snag? David’s daughter, Cat.

Diana might have got her claws into David, but Cat is sharpening her own. Entitled, suspicious and used to getting her own way, she’s been digging into Diana’s past.

And it turns out Diana’s last three marriages have one thing in common: the silly old fools are all six feet under.

To lose one husband is unlucky. To lose two is careless. But three? Three must be murder.

'Bella Mackie’s books are a sharp magnificence; witty, biting and delicious' KATHERINE RUNDELL

—

When Sage Deverill flees her abusive marriage, she takes her young son to the only place that has ever felt like home: her grandparents’ manor house in Newmarket, the beating heart of the racing world. Surrounded by ivy-clad walls, the kindness of her family and the thunder of hooves on the heath, Sage reconnects with the place, people and creatures she loves most.

Riding beneath the wide Suffolk skies, Sage encounters Rafe Dunbarton – -an ambitious, intriguing trainer with a gentle soul. What begins as friendship soon becomes an irresistible pull between two people who never expected to find each other.

But just as Sage rediscovers her freedom, her ex-husband returns in a tangle of destruction . . .

—

Readers have fallen in love with Tangled Webs:

‘Romantic, atmospheric and full of emotional depth. Tangled Webs is a gorgeous escape’
‘Absolutely enchanting. I can’t put it down’

‘Beautifully written . . . filled me with a deep sense of nostalgia’
‘The author’s talent for bringing characters to life makes them leap off the page’
‘Captivated me form start to finish. I can’t wait for the next in the series’

'Unsparing, exhilarating. This novel boils with brutal insight. Avni Doshi is among the finest prose stylists at work today' Katie Kitamura

'Lush and sharpened to a dagger point… I was consumed by this novel' Amina Cain

‘I married my husband to live in a fairy tale. I imagined us like planets orbiting the sun or gods enacting their myths. Marriage was a solution and I wanted to be dissolved.’

A woman’s husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage, an almost perfect marriage. In the following days, marooned with two young daughters in a hostile suburb, the woman starts coming apart.

As she sifts through the ruins of their shared life, she begins to notice the warning signs which she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into the forest of her own mind, where marital memories intermingle with myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses, messages hidden in the constellations, glimpses of a natural world seething and alive with portents. Over the course of a single summer, as the cicadas that have been buried in the ground for seventeen years prepare to emerge and fill the air with a plague of ecstatic transformation, the woman too is splitting, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae toward the light.

This is a novel about unhappy families – about poison seeping through the domestic space, the bloody battlefield of the home, the enduring threat posed by those closest to us. Stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic, it is a gripping psychodrama of unravelling and rebirth.

** An unforgettable main character **
** A story with twists you won't see coming **
** A quirky and charming read for fans of My Friends by Fredrik Backman, The Wedding People by Alison Espach and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans **

'Funny, twisty and suspenseful' – Harlan Coben

'A twisty page-turning triumph, packed with wit, warmth, nuance and mystery. Brilliant' – Jane Harper

The police are asking questions. The media is circling. Has the past finally caught up with Mad Mabel? Or is it time for her to set the record straight?

Praise for Sally Hepworth

‘Fiction at its finest’ – Liane Moriarty

‘An absolute page-turner from first word to last’ – Jane Harper

‘Smart suspenseful, brimming with secrets’ – Kate Morton

‘Clever, chilling and beautifully crafted’ – Adele Parks

'Riveting … I was gripped from the start' Claire Powell, author of All In

'A perfect literary holiday read … You won’t want to put it down' Roxy Dunn, author of Wants and Needs

Since they first met at university twenty years ago, Maggie and Will have spent the last two weeks of every summer in France with their close friends, Lydia and Roland. Both families have been looking forward to this cherished annual ritual. But this year things are different.

Will has been hiding something from his wife, and is struggling to keep his deceit from seeping into the cracks in their marriage.

Maggie is worried about their withdrawn teenage son.

Roland is grappling with grief over the death of his first wife.

Lydia is trying to ignore past chemistry with an old friend while learning to play second fiddle to a ghost.

And then, into this conflicted fray steps Issy, Roland’s beguiling, irrepressible daughter from his first marriage.

As the August heat beats down, and the children find new ways to entertain themselves, it starts to feel as if the fault lines in these relationships might widen; that it might be harder to hide secrets here, under the bright sun.

Praise for Family Friends:

'An intelligent, evocative, elegant novel simmering with tension and drama' Lisa Owens, author of Natural Disaster

'A propulsive story with intrigue, secrecy and drama – I had a wonderful time reading it' Jenny Mustard, author of What A Time To Be Alive

'Sultry and very evocative' Jo Hamya, author of The Hypocrite

'An involving and psychologically acute portrait of marriage, friendship and loyalty tested to the limit. A sophisticated summer page-turner for Tessa Hadley fans' The Bookseller, Editor's Choice

'Brave, graceful and absolutely vital – Mort shoulders away the old trope of the stepmother and replaces her with a host of humane women' SARAH HALL, author of Helm

When a new relationship casts poet Helen Mort in the role of stepmother, she embarks on a personal quest for understanding; moving across verse and personal essay, from fairytale to modern blended family.

Turning a bold and inventive gaze on this neglected dimension of female experience, these are candid dispatches from the shifting terrain of the modern family. As playful as it is moving, STEPMOTHER radiates Mort’s signature empathetic warmth, but with the bite of truth.

Mort interleaves ravishing fragments of lyric essay with gothic flights into verse that draw us deep into the woods of upon-a-time, and back, changed, into the now. Groundbreaking and transformative, tender and uncompromising, STEPMOTHER has much to teach us about female power and the fear it still provokes, our openness to change, and the surprising shapes love can take.

'I was enchanted by her blend of generous lyric and furious cultural critique. A spell for seeing differently’ CLARE POLLARD, author of THE MODERN FAIRIES

'Intense, sharply imagined and fascinating' Colm Toibin

'On that day, ten years ago, I saw my parents for the last time. Since then I’ve changed phone numbers, houses, continents, I’ve erected an impregnable wall and put an ocean between us. They’ve been the best ten years of my life.'

A son is celebrating a bittersweet anniversary. It is a decade since he saw his parents: the father who ruled through petty acts of intimidation and fear, the mother who silently accepted it, fitting herself in the spaces around others’ lives. As he looks back, he recalls the airless family home, unsettled only by the ringing of a telephone, or a visitor who was soon rejected. And he remembers how he became possessed by the irrepressible desire to be free, to live his own life. But can you ever escape the grip of your origins?

At once unflinchingly honest and razor sharp, The Anniversary is above all a novel of liberation which dismantles the tyranny of the family. It becomes a mirror in which we glimpse something that, even if we have not known it, affects us all.

'Magical, whimsical, and full of heart!’ KESHE CHOW
'I loved every page! A new favourite!’ SARAH BETH DURST
'for those who love their fantasy sweet, ethereal, Ghibliesque, with some slightly spooky dark corners’ BRIGITTE KNIGHTLEY

It's time to put down roots…

Evelyn Sharpe is accustomed to dealing with natural disasters as a land witch, but she longs for a life with a little less danger for her and her adopted daughter, Ruby. So when the opportunity to take over as Caretaker of Thornwood House – a sentient home that acts as the magical heart of the village of Iskendra – arises, it seems almost fated.

When they arrive in sunny Iskendra, Evie and Ruby find the house is nothing like what they expected: First of all, it has walked away from the address. Thornwood House is also grumpy, guarded, and extremely hesitant to allow the two witches through its doors.

Armed with gentle hearts and wild magic, Evie and Ruby begin to form tentative bonds with the house and the citizens of the small town. But there’s something deeply damaged about the building seeping into the forests surrounding Iskendra, and Evie will have to use all her power to protect the roots she’s started to grow.