It is just about December, just about Summer, almost school holidays and heading into the festive silly season. Life is getting BUSY! And I looked at my list for book club the other day and December was looking quite light on, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get you all a book but I put the call out to our wonderful publishers and have now got a great list to offer.
We have some great rural offerings, some huge Aussie names and some even bigger international ones. We even have a non-fiction title this month so hopefully, some of you will be interested in checking that one out.
I still have a pile of November things to do so will keep this brief, I’m currently reading a November book club and a Christmas Guide biography; both of which I wanted finished today but I think that might be pushing it. Where on earth did the month go, I’m not ready for it to be December yet.
One More Song – Nicki Edwards
Pan Macmillan – Macmillan Australia – Adult
Harry Baxter and Edwina Campbell lead completely different lives.
A lot has changed for Harry since he escaped his home town of Yallamba ten years ago, headed for the bright lights of the big city. Now he’s the star of Melbourne’s hottest musical, and home is wherever the next standing ovation is – why bother going home to visit his parents when his dad couldn’t care less about his success?
Meanwhile, nothing much has changed for Edwina in the last decade, which is exactly how she likes it. Eddie adores her nursing job and Yallamba community – she can’t imagine living anywhere else. And even if she wanted to, she could never leave her beloved grandparents, who raised her and love her like their very own daughter. She’s not going to abandon them in their old age. Not for anything.
So when Harry and Eddie bump into each other on one of Harry’s flying visits home, their instant mutual attraction seems as pointless as it is intense. There’s no way they could ever work it out… Is there?
Paris Dreaming – Katrina Lawrence
Harper Collins – HarperCollins – AU – Adult
An Australian beauty journalist shares her obsession with Paris – a city which has been her guide through a lifelong journey of self-discovery. Katrina Lawrence first fell in love with Paris at the age of five, and since then her roads have continually led her back to this most beautiful city, the City of Lights.
Telling us the story of why Paris continually fascinates her, Katrina also gives us a mesmerising journey around Paris’s most spectacular sights and most beguiling nooks and crannies, as well as a profound musing on Paris and its people – from feminism to femininity, politics to perfume, and of course, those stylish Parisiennes who captivate us, from Catherine de Medici and Coco Chanel to Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve, making Paris Dreaming the ultimate chic, personal and charming memoir.
Studded with fascinating anecdotes and intriguing tidbits of trivia, Katrina shares the lessons Paris has taught her: everything from her favourites cafes and how to pick the perfect red lipstick to how to eat for pleasure. Written with warmth, gaiety, elegance and very real insight, Paris Dreaming is a book not just for women who love Paris, but for anyone in search of that elusive good life.
Past Perfect – Danielle Steel
Pan Macmillan – Macmillan – Adult
Past Perfect is a spellbinding story of two families living a hundred years apart who open the door to an unimaginable friendship . . .
Sybil and Blake Gregory live a well-ordered, predictable Manhattan life — she as a cutting-edge design authority and museum consultant, he in high-tech investments — raising their teenagers Andrew and Caroline and six-year-old Charlie. But when Blake is offered a dream job as CEO of a start-up in San Francisco, he accepts it, without consulting his wife, and buys a magnificent, historic mansion as their new home in Pacific Heights.
Past and present collide at their elegant mansion, when they meet the large and lively family who lived there a century ago. All long dead but very much alive in spirit—visible to the Gregorys and no one else. Within these enchanted rooms, it is at once 1917 and a century later. Have the Gregorys been given a perfect gift; beloved friends, a chance to relive the past and the wisdom and grace to shape the future?
Six Ways To Sunday – Karly Lane
Allen & Unwin – Arena – Adult
A rip-roaring tale about a woman determined to stand up for her convictions at the risk of jeopardising her future with the man she loves.
When city naturopath Rilee Summers meets gorgeous farmer Dan Kincaid, sparks fly. A whirlwind romance follows, and the next thing Rilee knows she’s married and living on her husband’s family property in a small rural community.
Never one to shy from a challenge, Rilee is determined to win over her in-laws and the townsfolk of nearby Pallaburra, but her city ways and outspoken views only seem to alienate her further.
Opening her own naturopathy practice has always been her dream. Although Pallaburra isn’t Sydney, and despite the fact she’s not exactly inundated with new clients, she’s not ready to give up. Things get even worse for Rilee when she champions the issue of teen pregnancies in the deeply conservative town.
Worn down by the ill-will towards her and what she sees as Dan’s lack of support, Rilee flees the station to think about the future. Can her marriage survive – or is she destined to leave Dan and move back to the city?
Six Ways to Sunday is a rip-roaring tale about a woman determined to stand up for her convictions even at the risk of jeopardising the future she envisaged with the man she loves.
Set on the beautiful island of Islay, The Christmas Secret is a gripping story filled with tension from Karen Swan, author of Christmas Under the Stars
Alex Hyde is the leaders’ leader. An executive coach par excellence, she’s the person the Great and the Good turn to when the pressure gets too much; she can change the way they think, how they operate, she can turn around the very fortunes of their companies.
Her waiting list is months’ long, but even she can’t turn down the unorthodox but highly lucrative crisis call that comes her way a few weeks before Christmas, regarding the troublesome – and troubled – head of an esteemed whisky company in Scotland: Lochlan Farquhar, CEO of Kentallen Distilleries, is a maverick, an enigma and a renegade, and Alex needs to get inside his head before he brings the company to its knees.
It should be business as usual. She can do this in her sleep. Only, when she gets to the remote island of Islay, with the winter snows falling, Alex finds herself out of her comfort zone. For once, she’s not in control – Lochlan, though darkly charismatic, is unpredictable and destructive, her usual methods gaining no traction with him – and with Christmas and her deadline fast approaching, she must win his trust and find a way to close on this deal.
But as she pulls ever closer to him, boundaries become blurred, loyalties loosen and Alex finds herself faced with an impossible choice as she realizes nothing and no-one is as they first seemed.
The Stolen Marriage – Diane Chamberlain
Pan Macmillan – Macmillan – Adult
In 1944, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina. Hickory is a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II. Tess’s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows no interest in making love. Tess quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.
The people of Hickory love and respect Henry and see Tess as an outsider, treating her with suspicion and disdain, especially after one of the town’s prominent citizens dies in a terrible accident and Tess is blamed for the death. Tess suspects people are talking about her, plotting behind her back, and following her as she walks around town. What does everyone know about Henry that she does not? Feeling alone and adrift in a hostile town, Tess turns to the one person who seems to understand her – a local medium who gives her hope but seems to know more than he’s letting on.
When a sudden polio epidemic strikes the town, taking the lives of some of its children, including a boy well known to the Kraft family, the townspeople band together to build a polio hospital in less than three days. Tess, who has a nursing degree, bucks Henry’s wishes and begins to work at the hospital, finding meaning in nursing the young victims. Yet at home, Henry’s actions grow more baffling and alarming by the day. As Tess works to save the lives of her patients, can she untangle her husband’s mysterious behavior and save her own life?
Where The Murray River Runs – Darry Fraser
Harlequin – Mira – Adult
A nineteenth-century story of greed, honour and an overwhelming love
Bendigo 1890
Ard O’Rourke is Linley Seymour’s perfect man. They’ve known each other since they were children and she has never wanted anyone else. But when she discovers Ard has fathered a child with another woman, her dreams turn to dust.
Then fate takes a hand. Linley and her Aunt Cee Cee run a women’s refuge and Linley finds herself unexpectedly and painfully the guardian of Ard’s baby: a child that needs her protection from the greed-filled schemes of a violent man.
Ard knows he has no hope with Linley and decides to follow his own path: one that brings him close to redemption. But when he learns Linley and the child are in danger, his own child at that, he cannot stop himself speeding to their aid.
Will he prevail? Can Linley find it in her heart to forgive him? Or will their love come to nothing at the hands of a violent man?
A compulsively readable historical adventure, set on the banks of the mighty Murray River.
A huge thanks goes out to the publishers without whom we could not offer such great reads. Harlequin, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan and Allen and Unwin we are so grateful for the support you show us, we couldn’t do it without you.
If you aren’t yet a member of the Beauty and Lace Club there is still time to join, head over to the signup page and take a look: yoursay.beautyandlace.net.
Keep an eye out for the reviews to start coming in! Good luck and happy reading!
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
OH MY GOODNESS – where do you start?!! Wonderful end of year selection – can you rate 3 as 1, 1, 1???? Sorry, my weird sense of humour in overload!! Thanks again, Beauty and Lace – so pleased to get back from holidays just in time for this, I hope.
I’m not ready for December either!