Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Romance

Single mum Jules lives next to a tennis club, but has no plans to play. Especially when her old school crush, handsome doctor Sam Delaney, returns from the USA thirty years after leaving and is now displaying a killer forehand in direct view of her bedroom window. Despite what she tells her personal trainer fiancé, Jules finds exercise as tedious in her 40s as she did as a teenager. But when she's hit by perimenopause and her 19-year-old daughter's solo trip around the world - she's in urgent need of a distraction and rashly agrees to join an amateur women's tennis team.

As the wife of retired ship's doctor Dr Henry Parker, Evelyn is living out her twilight years aboard the Golden Sunset. Every night she dresses for dinner - gown, tiara, runners - and regales her fellow passengers with stories of a glamorous life travelling the world in luxury, as well as showing off her superior knowledge of everything from ships' customs to biographical details of her heroine, Florence Nightingale. The crew treat her with deference. And forbearance.

With four chart-topping albums, Lacey Logan is a superstar whose life no longer feels like her own, her every move photographed, videoed and dissected. Lacey skilfully governs her narrative throughout it all, an expert at showing fans and paparazzi only exactly what she wants them to see. But when she discovers her boyfriend is hiding some devastating secrets, she begins to lose her confidence, and her control over her own story. Then big shouldered baseball player Jimmy Hodges walks into the bar where she's venting to a friend.

Most people travel to Croatia for its endless sunshine, pebbly beaches and crystal clear sea. Kate goes there to disappear. She needs to escape from a life that has fallen apart in spectacular and public fashion, and no one on the beautiful island of Hvar knows who she is or what she's running away from. Until she meets another lonely soul.

The year is 1831. Down the murky alleyways of London, acts of unspeakable wickedness are taking place, and no one is willing to speak out on behalf of the city's vulnerable poor as they disappear from the streets. Out of these shadows comes Hester White, a bright young woman who is desperate to escape the slums by any means possible. When Hester is thrust into the world of the aristocratic Brock family, she leaps at the chance to improve her station in life under the tutelage of the fiercely intelligent and mysterious Rebekah Brock.

Two couples. One reckless night. In the time they've known each other, Sally, Al and Mike have shared - well, almost everything. Sally and Al have been married for seven years, though now their relationship is hanging by a thread. Sally and Mike have been best friends since university. And on many occasions something more. Mike and Al have been friends and colleagues for many years. Yet with Al poised to become Mike's boss, their friendship comes under threat. And now there's Mike and Faye. They haven't been together long, but Mike's pretty sure that this time it's the real deal.

1910. With the disappearance of her mother and the sudden death of her father, Lena instantly loses any security she has within the circus she has known all her life. She is advised to sell the carousel her father cared for like a child and look for a husband, or a job in a factory. Until flame-haired Violet, known to all in the fairgrounds as 'the greatest trapeze artist that ever lived', suggests they go it alone with their own, all-female act. With her outspoken ways and her refusal to marry, Violet is as much an outcast as Lena. What do they have to lose?

In the genteel squares and stuccoed villas of late-Victorian Brighton, Ellen and Reynold Harper - twins, companions, colleagues, - ply their trade as portrait photographers. But at the golden hour, the girls arrive to pose for the lucrative - and dangerous - illicit photographs that really keep the Harpers' business afloat. This is the other, shadowy world of the city: a world of erotic tableaux, boundary-crossing music hall artistes, and the sinister figure of the local gangster, the Croc.

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....

Annie naturally embraces the baby boomer's credo that old age, far from being a biological inevitability, is a mere lifestyle choice. If not downright carelessness. That doesn't stop her marshalling her contemporaries into suitable relationships - before it's too late. Perhaps it's even time she did the same for herself. But while smart, sassy Ms Stoneycroft may temper any romantic fancies with Yorkshire common sense, what she has yet to learn is that love is like the measles. The later it strikes, the harder it hits....

When the bombers appear like a flock of birds over the horizon, Sibil Helinger, 17, is enjoying market day in the small Spanish town of Guernica. With no warning, clouds of German planes are upon them and bombs fall on the town like rain. Reeling with shock, Sibil spends the next few days frantically searching for her relatives in the smouldering rubble. Though she finds her little sister trapped in the ruins, she discovers her mother and the others are dead.

Jane Pyre was once part of the famous rock 'n' roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she's the most hated - and least understood - woman in music. She was never as popular as her bandmate (and soulmate) Elijah Hart, despite writing the songs that catapulted them to fame. But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band's rise to fame came crashing down, public hatred of Jane has risen to new levels and all she wants is to retreat. The last thing she expects is for the teenage girl next door - a Lightning Bottles super fan - to claim that Elijah is still alive.

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....

Veterinary nurse Helen Steer adores her job at Animal Ark, and with the summer ahead things couldn't be better. That is until her best friend goes travelling, leaving Helen unexpectedly jealous and questioning her own stable life with her boyfriend Seb. Charming new vet Toby Gordon, with his flirtatious wit and mysterious family background, suddenly seems a much more exciting prospect. But just as Helen and Toby's friendship starts to become something more, Sunrise Farm, the beautiful fruit farm where Helen lives, is hit by crisis, leaving its future in the balance.

The first novel in a provocative romance series that will captivate, exhilarate and intoxicate you like no other, perfect for those who loved the bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey but were left wanting more...It started with a spark...Everything changed when I met Dominic. My heart had just been broken, split into jagged fragments that can jigsaw together to make me look enough like a normal, happy person. Dominic has shown me a kind of abandonment I've never known before. He takes me down a path of pure pleasure, but of pain, too - his love offers me both lightness and dark.

Liverpool 1942. Seventeen-year-old Frankie Franconi falls in love with charismatic British officer Nick Harper as quickly and certainly as the bomb that falls on their shelter. He is impressed by her good looks and intelligence, and the fact that, like him, she speaks fluent Italian. When she insists on staying to help rescue others who have been trapped he realises that she has courage, too. He gives her a business card with a Baker Street address, and suggests she put her skills to good use.

In the little village of Welford, flowers are blooming, the lambing season is underway...and love is in the air. Mandy Hope is on cloud nine. Hope Meadows, the animal rescue and rehabilitation centre she founded, is going really well. And she's growing ever closer to handsome villager Jimmy Marsh. What's more, James Hunter, her best friend, is slowly learning to re-embrace life after facing tragedy. But when an unexpected crisis causes Mandy to lose confidence in her veterinary skills, it's a huge blow.

The clock is ticking on Hollywood actress Edie O'Dare's contract with FWM Studios. Her acting career is going nowhere, and she's running out of time to find a new role in the industry - other than providing salacious details of the latest party or premiere to the press. So when an up-and-coming starlet hands her an explosive letter - alleging an assault by an A-list actor - Edie helps get the story into print, and buys herself a new career as Tinseltown's new reigning gossip columnist.

1916. Poppy is being transferred to an enormous new munitions complex in Gretna, on the Scottish border. Even though it means moving far away from her best friends, Maggie and Annie, she is excited for the challenge. As a member of the Women's Police Service, it's her job to maintain law and order so that the factory workers can safely carry out their vital war work. She soon makes friends and even starts to open herself up to the possibility of love. But then she sees something in the dead of night, and suddenly the dangers of the war are no longer far away on distant shores.

Philippa Taylor (Pepper to her friends) has big dreams. When she closes her eyes, she can picture exactly who she ought to be. The problem is, it's about as far away from her real life in a small coastal town in Suffolk as she can imagine. So when her elderly friend Josephine persuades Pepper to accompany her on a trip to Europe, she jumps at the chance to change her routine. And when Pepper bumps (literally) into the handsome Finn in Lisbon, it seems as though she might have finally found what she's been looking for.