A book about a Tudor Queen and a contemporary heroine - linked through their affinity over 500 years. Flora Chapman is in her fifties when her dashing and infuriating husband, Edward, dies in a bizarre ballooning accident. Ever pragmatic, Flora seizes upon her new freedom and decides to finish Edward’s history of Hurcott Ducis, the village where they’ve spent their married life. A reference to Anna of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife, unkindly called ‘The Flanders Mare’, captures Flora’s attention and later her affection as she sets about her own research in the hope of elevating Anna’s place in history. Meanwhile, in the Louvre, Holbein’s portrait of Anna senses the tug of a connection and she begins to tell the real story of how she survived her disastrous Tudor marriage. This novel about two intelligent, accomplished women who lived in the shadow of the men they married, interweaves a fascinating and little-known part of history with a broader contemporary tale of love, marriage, self-preservation and motherhood with all their pains, pleasures and humour. **

SUMMARY: Patrick Parker, golden child of bomb-devastated Coventry, adored and encouraged by his mother, fulfils his dream destiny to be a bridge builder as great as Brunel. Audrey Wapshott, born at the same time, feels her destiny is to become the wife of handsome, brilliant Patrick. But Patrick has other plans and Audrey, miserable and abandoned, is left to follow her own journey to self-fulfilment beginning in Paris, and sinfulness, in the arms of a much older man. When their paths cross years later, wicked Audrey plots a grand and satisfying retribution.

This "wonderfully funny" novel goes behind the scenes at a British beauty salon (Vogue). Tabitha's Beauty Parlour is a haven. The women who cross its portals enter a gentle, perfumed world, hoping for a touch of transformation. For Tabitha, the power of being beautiful—or at least at little less dumpy and dowdy—is the intangible, invaluable product she has to offer her customers. But when Chloe, Tabitha's trainee, sets out to prove that she can give her clients the makeover of a lifetime, the quest for feminine perfection achieves hilarious consequences. "A sharply observed social satire . . . wacky yet profound . . . Be wary, this book won't do much for your laughter lines." —Chic "A clever and funny novel." —The Times (London)

SUMMARY: Janice Gentle, under pressure from her money-obsessed agent, writes delicate, romantic novels with one goal in mind: to make enough money to find the man she loved and lost twenty years ago.But when Rohanne Bulbecker, a sucessful New York publisher, asks for Janice's help with an extremely marketable idea, it's an opportunity for Janice to abandon her usual predictable genre and try something entirely new . . .

A London woman's perfect life starts to fall to pieces as her fortieth birthday looms in this "delicious, wickedly funny" novel (Library Journal). Celia has an elegant house, a lovely family, and no major worries aside from private schooling and the misplaced zeal of neighborhood-watch vigilantes. But just as she turns forty, the house of cards starts to collapse around her—as her sister and her friends suddenly turn edgy and fickle; a long-time admirer turns into a crude jester; and Celia spies her husband embracing an utterly ghastly woman . . . "Should be welcomed warmly by readers who devour fiction by satiric writers of the Fay Weldon and Patrick Gale variety. Cheek writes with a particularly brittle and dead-on wit that skewers her subjects, English yuppies who have contrived comfortable lives in the just-right suburb of Bedford Park . . . Cheek's command of absurd situations and her razor-sharp dialogue is dazzling—this is the stuff...

Aunt Margaret, surrogate mother to teenage Saskia, has just waved goodbye to her niece. She has sent her to Canada for a year. Now, buoyed up by an unexpected legacy that's given her a year of freedom, Aunt Margaret decides to kick up her heels a little and have some fun...

Angela Fytton -- wonderwife and supermother -- has been unceremoniously dumped by her husband. Like many a good wife before her, she has been replaced for a younger model. Now, divorced but determined, she rediscovers the iron in her soul and decides to fight. She moves to the country, leaving her entirely selfish teenage children with their father and his sweet new bride, and waits. One day, she knows, her husband will return. Meanwhile, she yields herself up to the notion that country life is pure and good and country people are next to angels -- and finds that this is very far from the truth....

When city girl Molly Bonner arrives in the village of Lufferton Boney, she creates quite a stir. With her non-country-style boots, determined manner and alluring looks, she sets off a wave of intrigue that ripples through the lives of everyone there, from Julie the barmaid at the Holly Bush to antiques dealer Dryden Fellows and Montmorency the cat. For Molly is a girl on a mission: to discover the truth behind Lufferton Boney's most notorious resident, the giant (and slightly obscene) Gnome etched into the face of Pound Hill. And along the way, she has some personal demons to settle...

Nina Porter seems to have it all: husband, home, family and security. But her life turns upside down when a marital row over truthfulness sets her thinking. Isn't she dishonest herself, always playing the good wife? The perfect mother and daughter? The supportive friend? Should she, instead, try to live without the little white lies that support us all?Her husband thinks it can't be done. But he goes away on a business trip. And when a glamorous few days of research in Venice are suddenly on offer, there seems no reason for Nina to refuse them. Or to resist the attentions of the handsome Italian who wants to show her the city.As Nina entangles herself in a web of deceptions, it starts to look as though honesty might not always be the best policy... Mavis Cheek's sparkling new novel is about shaking your life up, striking out and learning to be true to yourself. It's told with all the brio and humour that her readers have come to love.