Showing results for "The Dress" in Genre Fiction

Meet Ella and her mother Fabia Moreno, who arrive in York one cold January day to set up their vintage dress shop. The flamboyant Fabia wants to sell beautiful dresses to nice people and move on from her difficult past. Ella just wants to fit in. But not everyone is on their side. Will Fabia overcome the prejudices she encounters? What's the dark secret she's hiding? And do the silk linings and concealed seams of her dresses contain real spells or is this all just 'everyday magic'?

Pru's husband has walked out, leaving her alone to contemplate her future. She's missing not so much him, but the life they once had - picnicking on the beach with small children, laughing together, nestling up like spoons in the cutlery drawer as they sleep. Now there's just a dip on one side of the bed and no one to fill it. In a daze, Pru goes off to a friend's funeral. Usual old hymns, words of praise and a eulogy but...it doesn't sound like the friend Pru knew. And it isn't. She's gone to the wrong service.

Sophy Stevens is moving to Australia. Turning thirty has found her unexpectedly out of a job, out of a relationship, and just in need of Something Different - and Australia, where she can finally meet her grandparents and surprise them on their wedding anniversary, looks like the perfect answer...if she can save up the money for the plane ticket. So when her feckless, absent dad Johnno offers her a job at his vintage clothes shop in Primrose Hill, she can't turn it down.

From the glamorous San Francisco social scene of the 1920s, through war and the social changes of the ’60s, to the rise of Silicon Valley today, this extraordinary novel takes us on a family odyssey that is both heartbreaking and inspiring, as each generation faces the challenges of their day. The Parisian design houses in 1928, the crash of 1929, the losses of war, the drug culture of the 1960s - history holds many surprises, and lives are changed forever.

Garland Fairford has it all - her dream job as a historical Costumier in London and handsome fiancée, Marco. Whilst creating a replica of a dress worn by a Victorian actress, Garland, an orphan, meets a long-lost relative - Honey Fairford. Garland is delighted and intrigued to discover Honey is planning to open a wedding dress museum in Lancashire. When Garland loses her fiancée and her job in the same week, she accepts Honey's offer to work at the museum. But building a new life for herself is put on hold when a ghost from her past, Thom, reappears.

In the long, hot summer of 1995, 22-year-old Alice Lang rents a caravan on a holiday park on the outskirts of the lively holiday resort of Severn Sands. She befriends Marnie, a shy, damaged little girl whose father is the park's caretaker and whose mother died a few months earlier. Will, whose mother runs the bar, falls in love with Alice and is unbearably jealous of anyone else she sees. Tensions rise until one evening Alice disappears from her caravan. She's never seen again, and only her scarlet dress is found washed up on the shore.

London, 2017. When her beloved grandmother, Sylvie, sends her to Paris to retrieve a dress she wore decades before. But not everything is as it seems, and the long-buried secrets she discovers, hidden in a collection of priceless Dior gowns, could change everything. Paris, 1952. Post-war France is full of glamour and privilege, and Alice Ainsley is in the middle of it all. As the wife to the British ambassador to France, her life is a whirlwind of jewels, banquets and couture dresses, but beneath the glittering façade, Alice is suffocating in a loveless marriage.

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

When hopeful fashionista Meg Julliard must return to her hometown of Chicago to manage her late father’s apartment building, she thinks her dreams of making it in the fashion business are over. Ellie Wade, one of the building’s longtime residents, is also not feeling the Christmas joy this year. Ellie and Meg strike up an unlikely friendship, and the story of Ellie’s dress comes out. Ellie gifts the gorgeous dress to Meg, hoping that it will bring her more luck, on the condition that she wear it to the building’s Christmas party.

Auschwitz, 1942: This unforgettable novel, based on a true story, brings to life history’s most powerful tale of forbidden love. Set within the barbed wire of Auschwitz, a man and a woman fall in love against unimaginable odds. What happens next will restore your faith in humanity and make you believe in hope even where hope should not exist.

Harper Dupree has pinned all her hopes on a future in fashion design. But when it comes crashing down around her, she returns home to Fairhope, Alabama, and to Millie, the woman who first taught her how to sew. As Harper rethinks her own future, long-hidden secrets about Millie's past are brought to light.

Cressida Collins is the queen of makeovers. With a well-placed stitch, button or seam, she can transform any frock in The Vintage Dress Shop and give customers their Cinderella moment. Like her beautifully organised workroom under the eaves, Cress's life away from the shop is just as orderly and mapped out. But when her boyfriend of fifteen years drops a bombshell, it explodes all the carefully laid plans Cress had for her future. It's going to take more than needle and thread to put Cress's own life back together. Will she ever be brave enough to say goodbye to her old dreams and start over?

Ever feel like everyone but you has their life under control? Isabella, Mary ,and Lauren feel like everyone they know has a plan, a good job, and a nice boyfriend. Isabella, on the other hand, thinks she might hate her own boyfriend; Mary is working so hard she's hoping to get hit by a car just so she can have some time off work; and Lauren is dating a man who can't spell her first name.

In 1809, at the age of 18, Henriette Faber enrolled herself in medical school in Paris - and since medicine was a profession prohibited to women, she changed her name to Henri in order to matriculate. She would spend the next 15 years practicing medicine and living as a man. Drafted to serve as a surgeon in Napoleon's army, Faber endured the horrors of the 1812 retreat across Russia. She later embarked to the Caribbean and set up a medical practice in a remote Cuban village, where she married Juana de León, an impoverished local.

In the small town of Celeste, Texas, Mitzi Taylor has never quite fit inside the lines. Nearly six feet tall, flame-haired, and with a plus-size spirit to match every curve, she’s found her niche: a custom wedding-dress boutique catering to big brides-to-be with big dreams. Taking the plunge alongside her two best friends, she’s proud they’ve turned The Perfect Dress into a perfect success. Just when Mitzi has it all pulled together, Graham Harrison walks back into her life, looking for bridesmaid dresses for his twin daughters.

Lucy Duff Gordon knows she is talented. She sees color, light, and texture in ways few people can begin to imagine. But is the male dominated world of haute couture, who would use her art for their own gain, ready for her? When she is deserted by her wealthy husband, Lucy is left penniless with an aging mother and her five-year-old daughter to support. Desperate to survive, Lucy turns to her one true talent to make a living. A

Four brides. One dress. The New York Times best-selling tale of faith, redemption, and timeless love. Charlotte owns a chic Birmingham bridal boutique. Dressing brides for their big day is her gift - and her passion. But with her own wedding day approaching, why can’t she find the perfect dress - or feel certain she should marry Tim? Then Charlotte purchases a vintage dress in a battered trunk at an estate sale. It looks brand-new, shimmering with pearls and satin, hand-stitched and timeless in its design. But where did it come from? Who wore it?

Lizzie has just arrived in London, determined to make the best of her new life. Her mother may be keen that she should have a nice wedding in the country to a suitable man chosen by her, and Lizzie may be going to cookery school to help her become a good wife...but she definitely wants to have some fun first. It's 1963, and London is beginning to swing as Lizzie cuts her hair, buys a new dress with a fashionably short hemline and moves in with two of her best friends, one of whom lives in a grand but run-down house in Belgravia that has plenty of room for a lodger.

Frances is an artist in her forties living a quiet life in a remote mountain town in NSW, far away from the glittering lights and famous personalities of the Sydney art world she once knew. When an invitation arrives from a former lover to attend his exhibition at a state gallery, Frances is plunged back into the past, where a single irrevocable act changed the course of her story. Told across two time periods, Frances's story wrestles with themes of power and privilege, womanhood and motherhood, artistic doubt, the male gaze upon the female body, and the commodification of art.

Suzanne is engaged to be married to the man of her dreams - except the lead up to her wedding is beginning to feel more like a nightmare. Can Suzanne uncover the truth about her fiancé ahead of her big day? Bella's life was on track until the day of the hen party when everything changed. Now she must find the strength to rebuild her future - and decide who she wants to spend it with. Mandy's grandmother has fallen in love, but her family don't approve. For her grandmother's dreams to come true, Mandy has a secret wedding to plan, and a very special dress to find.