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 ...

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...

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...

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...

Saturated in Southern ambiance and written in the vein of other literary bestsellers like Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Julie Cantrell’s New York Times bestselling Into the Free that will sweep you away long after the novel ends.In Depression-era Mississippi, Millie Reynolds longs to escape the madness that marks her world. With an abusive father and a “nothing mama,” she struggles...

“A haunting, magical, modern-day fairytale. A feast for the senses.” —Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author of First FrostWith echoes of the alchemy of Practical Magic, the lushness of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, and the darkly joyful wickedness of the Witches of Eastwick, Ellen Herrick’s debut novel spins an enchanting love story about a place where magic whispers just beneath the surface and almos...

From a writer praised by Junot Díaz as “the fire, in my opinion, and the light,” comes a mesmerizing novel that follows one woman’s rise from circus rider to courtesan to world-renowned diva.Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singer’s chance at immortality. When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betr...

This witty and compassionate national bestseller shows us how two generations in a seemingly ordinary small town navigate extraordinary rites of passage during a single, fateful week in autumn.Close to Hugh is a glorious, exuberant, poignant comic novel about youth and age, art and life, love and death--and about losing your mind and finding your heart's desire over the course of seven days one September.As the week opens, fifty-something Hugh Argyl...

The New York Times bestselling author of Promise Not to Tell returns with a simmering literary thriller about ghostly secrets, dark choices, and the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters . . . sometimes too unbreakable.West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after ...

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 herbwife on a mule may go where warriors cannot—she may see what warriors cannot see and hear what warriors cannot hear!”The Monastery at Whitby is ruled over by the powerful and independent Abbess Hild. But when she needs someone to confide in, she turns to the honest warmth of her friend Fridgyth, the half-pagan herb-wife.A divisive and life-altering decision taken at the Great Synod is swiftly overshadowed as the monastery is ravaged by a deadly plagu...