Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Genre Fiction

Meet Frankie Marks: the world's least likely fashion PR. She doesn't know the first thing about designers, she's always hungry, and she can't learn to think before she speaks. When Frankie lands a job at the prestigious GGC agency, her friends and family can't believe it - least of all her long-suffering boyfriend James. Frankie quickly realises she must fight with everything she's got to survive life behind the scenes of the glamorous and chaotic industry - with its eccentric characters, towering expectations, and quite frankly ridiculous requests.

A gorgeous and evocative novel about three sisters and a life-changing summer in Corfu. What if your life worked out perfectly...for someone else? It's been 18 years since Ava spent the summer on the Greek island of Corfu, but she has never forgotten what happened during those months—or who she left behind. Now single, estranged from her family, and preparing to wave her daughter off to university, Ava's life seems a million miles away from the one she dreamed about as a teenager—a life now being lived by her sister instead.

Maggie and her new friends Annie, Irene and Sarah come from very different backgrounds, but they've got one thing in common: they've all signed up for the Women's Police Volunteers. They can't wait to show the men just what they're made of. But soon, Maggie realises she's in over her head. Hiding her involvement with the WPV from her tyrannous father is becoming ever more difficult, and when she bumps into an old acquaintance with a big chip on his shoulder, the dangers of her new life become all too clear....

The first novel in the heartwarming, countryside-set Hope Meadows series. Newly qualified vet Mandy Hope is leaving Leeds - and her boyfriend, Simon - to return to the Yorkshire village she grew up in, where she'll help out with animals of all shapes and sizes in her parents' surgery. But it's not all plain sailing: Mandy clashes with gruff local Jimmy Marsh, and some of the villagers won't accept a new vet. Meanwhile, Simon is determined that Mandy will rejoin him back in the city.

London 1929. Very much not a land fit for heroes. Frenchie knows his occasional work for MI5 serves only the ruling classes. But he needs to feed his children. Scruples died in the trenches. When Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's first Labour prime minister, is blackmailed by a former lover, Frenchie must go to Paris to buy her silence. It is clear there are many people who would see MacDonald fall—the Conservatives, their friends in the press, even some of his own colleagues. But his own secret service? When Frenchie hears the other side of the story, everything changes.

An extraordinary reimagining of the life of one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known: a man who knew both adoration and humiliation; who loved and was loved in turn; who betrayed and was betrayed; who never sought to cause pain to others yet left a trail of affairs and broken marriages in his wake...and whose life was ultimately defined by one relationship of such tenderness and devotion that only death could sever it: his partnership with the man he knew as Babe. he is Stan Laurel. But he did not really exist. Stan Laurel was a fiction.

Artist Harriet Burden, consumed by fury at the lack of recognition she has received from the New York art establishment, embarks on an experiment: she hides her identity behind three male fronts who exhibit her work as their own. And yet, even after she has unmasked herself, there are those who refuse to believe she is the woman behind the men.

1944, New Mexico: Alice Katz is a young Jewish physicist, one of the only female doctoral students at her university, studying with the famous Dr Oppenheimer. Her well-to-do family wants her to marry and settle down. Instead, Alice answers her country's call to go deep into the desert and lend her skills to a secret project at the heart of the fight against Germany. At Los Alamos, Alice meets Caleb, who has been assigned to the explosives division. Around them are other young scientists and engineers who have left their ordinary lives behind.

You aren't stupid. You know there's no such thing as a perfect mother. Plenty of other books will tell you there is, but this one won't lie to you. I was weak and I cheated and I was punished, but, my god, I loved my child through all of it. Love means you never break, and it means you're stronger than the things they do to you. I know this is true because I have been through fire, and I am the proof that love survives. I am not a perfect mother but I will tell you the perfect truth, because this is you and me talking. This is my story.

Margot and Will cross paths at the local dog rescue centre where - after a series of misunderstandings and a lot of consternation - they agree to foster Blossom (a gentle Staffy with a giant head, soft, floppy ears and kohl-rimmed brown eyes) together: one week on, one week off. Margot and Will don't get off to the best of starts: he thinks Margot is demanding and needy and Just So Much. And she thinks Will is emotionally unavailable, slightly brittle and very mistrustful. But the more they bicker, the worse Blossom behaves....

Caribbean, 1720. Two extraordinary women are on the run—from their pasts, from the British Navy and the threat of execution and from the destiny that fate has written for them. Plantation owner's daughter, runaway wife, pirate—Anne Bonny has forged her own story in a man's world. But when she is involved in the capture of a British merchant ship, she is amazed to find another woman amongst the crew, with a history as unconventional as her own. Dressed as a boy from childhood, Mary Read has been a soldier, a sailor, a widow—but never a woman in charge of her own destiny.

Everywhere John looks, he sees Murph. He flinches when cars drive past. His fingers clasp around the rifle he hasn't held for months. Wide-eyed strangers praise him as a hero, but he can feel himself disappearing. Back home after a year in Iraq, memories swarm around him: bodies burning in the crisp morning air. Sunlight falling through branches; bullets kicking up dust; ripples on a pond wavering like plucked strings. The promise he made, to a young man's mother, that her son would be brought home safely....

Life has its ups and downs. From the author of The Universe Versus Alex Woods comes a dark, painful, and witty novel about a woman whose life is spiralling out of control. You're going to find some of my actions frustrating. I'm hard to live with, maddening, uneven - I get that. But I can't stand around listing my faults, or we'll be here for ever. All I ask right now is that you indulge me. For as long as it lasts, this is going to be one hell of a ride.

1915. Patrolling is the last thing on the minds of Women's Police Service recruits Annie, Maggie and Poppy right now, because Annie and her fiancé Richard are about to get married. She's been waiting for this day her whole life, but when it finally comes it brings only heartache and Annie doesn't know if she can go on. The influx of soldiers to the capital means that the WPS's work is more important than ever, though, and Annie's country needs her. She and the girls are posted to the bustling heart of the city and she hopes the new job will distract her from her sorrow.

Left profoundly deaf after an accident, Émile is no stranger to isolation—or heartbreak. Now, as Nazi planes loom over Guernsey, he senses life is about to change forever. Trapped in a tense, fearful marriage, Isabelle doesn't know what has become of Émile and the future she hoped for. But when she glimpses him from the window of the French House, their lives collide once more. Lieutenant Schreiber is more comfortable wielding a paintbrush than a pistol. But he has little choice in the role he is forced to play in the occupying forces—or in his own forbidden desires.

Across the sea in England, Thomas Peach lives in quiet retirement. Some call him a magician, others a madman. But when his friend the poetess Arabella Farthingay falls prey to a sinister seducer, Mr Peach's fading powers are called on once more. He follows her to France - and into a world where reason contends with terror, brotherhood with bloodshed, and the last remnants of faith with the oldest enemy of them all...

I had been so excited for our big New Year's Eve party. Hosting with my best friend Alice and our two beautiful boys - my Leo and her Robbie, who had grown up together like brothers. But then I heard the terrible crash. I remember the flashing lights of the ambulance and how everyone then turned on Leo. Saying that Robbie was dead because of my son. The boys had argued, but Leo still won't tell me why. I know he's keeping a secret from me. I need to find out the truth, need to clear the name of my darling boy before something terrible happens to him, too.

Beneath the stars, on a stony beach, stand two brothers. They are wearing lifejackets that are too big for them and their most precious belongings are sealed in waterproof bags tucked inside the rucksacks on their backs. Turkey is behind them. Two or three kilometres' swim away is the Greek island of Samos, now only a smudge in the moonlight.

Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. His adopted Florida baseball team, the Rays, is going strong. Suddenly, in a seat a few rows up beyond the batter, Evers sees the face of someone he knows from decades past, someone who shouldn't be at the ballgame, shouldn't even be on the planet. And so begins a parade of people from Evers's past, people he has wronged, all of them behind home plate.

Jen is turning 30 and has spent her entire life jumping from man to man. So, when her latest relationship ends without warning, she decides to stop pleasing others and focus on herself. And where better to do that than the famously picturesque Canadian ski resort of Whistler? Okay, she can't ski and desperately needs to find a job fast, but it's nothing she can't handle. Her only rule is to stay single for the entire ski season. While Jen is throwing herself into Whistler life, Art is doing his best to keep his distance from the people who remind him of everything he once lost.