Juanita McMahon

"Detective Manon Bradshaw is five months pregnant and has officially given up on finding romantic love. Instead, she is in hot-pursuit of the work-life balance and parked in a cold case corridor--the price she's had to pay for a transfer back to Cambridgeshire. This is fine, she tells herself. She can devote herself to bringing up her motley collection of children--the new baby, and her adopted 12-year-old son Fly Dent. He needed a fresh start--he...

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby's household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves-fingersmiths-for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives-Gentleman, a somewhat elegant con man, who carries with...

When Beatrice receives a call to say that her sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home. But as she learns about Tess's disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life. Everyone around her accepts they have lost Tess, but Beatrice refuses to give up, embarking on a dangerous journey to discover the shocking truth, whatever the cost...

Alba always feels like an outsider. She hardly knew her Italian mother and her English father acts as if Valentina never existed. She despises country life almost as much as she despises her stepmother and stepsisters. On board the houseboat named after her dead mother, Alba's life is little more than a selfish search for fun and pleasure. But the discovery of her mother's portrait sends the girl back to Italy to find her family--and the truth about...

Hadleyis a lovely, subtly teasing writer. - New York Times Book Review Long-listed forthe Orange Prize Twolives, stretched between two cities, converge in a chance meeting withimmediate and far-reaching consequences in this compelling, sophisticated talefrom acclaimed New Yorker writer Tessa Hadley, author of Accidents inthe Home and The Master Bedroom. As father struggles to reestablisha relationship with his estranged daughter in London, surrendering...

Named Author of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards, Sarah Waters is the author of Tipping the Velvet (H1470), a New York Times Notable Book. Once inside the concrete walls of Millbank Prison, Margaret Prior, hired to speak with the female inmates, becomes all too aware that what she perceives to be reality may not be so. Bringing new ideas to her mind is the beautiful, but dangerous criminal Selina Dawes.

Sophie Mills has worked her Manolo Blahniks off to reach the near-top of her profession. And she's very happy with her priorities in life - her job, her neurotic cat Artemis and her passion for shoes. After all, relationships only get in the way. And as for children? She hasn't even begun to think about them yet. Until one day an unexpected visitor brings news of a strange inheritance and Sophie is suddenly, out of the blue, in sole charge of two...

Six months ago, city girl Sophie Mills gave up everything to move to Cornwall. All to be with the man she thinks she loves, and his two daughters who she knows she loves. But adjusting to life as a semi-permanent mother in the countryside isn't quite as easy as Sophie imagined it would be. Designer shoes aren't nearly so readily available - not that she ever has any occasion to wear them - and her best pair of vintage Manolo's have already found their...

In 1960s Marrakech, French student Vicky Baudin and her cousin, Bea, throw themselves into Morocco's wild and glamorous party scene until a murder takes place and Bea goes missing, forcing Vicky to turn to her mysterious grandmother, who has dark secrets of her own, for help.

Beginning with an account of her first marriage to a man she describes as a "fool," Roxana tells the tale of her unusual life in a poignant first-person narrative. As her respect for her husband's intelligence and character decline, Roxana and her husband grow apart, and he eventually abandons her to fend for herself. As a result, Roxana forsakes her virtue and turns to a life of prostitution. At first she does this only to ensure her survival, but...