An Ideal Wife

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Mary Balogh's The Secret Mistress. In this classic tale, New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh introduces a hero like no other: Miles Ripley, London’s most irresistible bachelor, who’s about to lose his heart to the last person he ever expected to love—his wife. When Abigail Gardiner knocks at the door of Miles Ripley, Earl of Severn, the last thing she expects is a marriage proposal. Desperate, she’d come to this charismatic stranger’s home to plead for her future. Instead she shocks them both by saying yes. Her impulsive decision will have consequences neither she nor her new husband can foresee. For Miles has his own reasons for marrying her. And Abigail is harboring a secret of her own. As distrust gives way to desire . . . as, together, they give in to the pleasures of the marriage bed, a devastating scandal threatens their future. Now these two wary hearts will risk ruin and disgrace for a love that has changed them both forever—the kind all seek, but few ever find.

She won’t be able to make him happy, so I will instead… Dr. Gifford is a new doctor who’s just arrived at the clinic where Louisa works as a secretary. His impressive skills and handsome looks instantly make him the center of attention, but Louisa doesn’t bother daydreaming that he’d be interested in someone like her. Though Louisa begins to fall for Dr. Gifford after they spend time working together, he has a fiancée who’s as beautiful as she is spiteful. Louisa knows that Dr. Gifford deserves a much happier relationship, so she vows to do whatever it takes to make that happen!

Jessica Wild-Wainwright, feeling guilty over never telling her husband Max she almost cheated on him before their wedding, decides she is going to be the ideal wife, but Jessica finds herself in a difficult situation when she tries to run his company after he is hospitalized for a broken leg she caused.

Marrying a handsome, wealthy lawyer and living in a Hollywood Hills mansion is a dream come true for 24-year-old Jana. From the first moment they met, Lawrence Collins swept Jana off her feet. She was willing to put her studies at a local Bible college on hold in order to wed after a six month whirlwind romance. Beautiful and vivacious, Jana knows men like Lawrence don't come along every day and she vows to be a perfect companion - the ideal wife - to this sexy, powerful man. But at what price?

Previously published under the title Beautiful Bad In the most explosive and twisted psychological thriller since The Woman in the Window, a perfect love story leads to the perfect crime Things that make me scared: When Charlie cries. Hospitals and lakes. When Ian drinks vodka in the basement. ISIS. When Ian gets angry. . . . That something is really, really wrong with me. Maddie and Ian’s romance began with a chance encounter at a party overseas; he was serving in the British army and she was a travel writer visiting her best friend, Jo. Now almost two decades later, married with a beautiful son, Charlie, they are living the perfect suburban life in middle America. But when a camping accident leaves Maddie badly scarred, she begins attending writing therapy, where she gradually reveals her fears about Ian’s PTSD, her concerns for the safety of their young son, Charlie, and the couple’s tangled and tumultuous past with Jo. From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, 16 years of love and fear, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a frantic 9-1-1 call summons the police to the scene of a shocking crime. But what in this beautiful home has gone so terribly bad? Previously published under the title Beautiful Bad

Pearl’s mother, Aurora, immigrated to the United States to meet her American suitor. As a Filipina, she struggled to be accepted into her new culture. Although, she was quick to learn the foreign ways of her new country; she continued to honor her culture, a knowledge she passes on to her daughter, Pearl. Once Pearl grows up, she decides it is time to see her mother’s birthplace. As soon as Pearl lands in the Philippines, she feels at home. She feels as though she learned about her home country through her mother’s stories. She is at ease in the warm breeze, surrounded by the sound of the native tongue. She immerses herself in the culture and catches the eye of a wealthy local matriarch. The older woman thinks Pearl would make a perfect wife for her grandson. Pearl is soon spoiled and courted by the whole family, but a tragedy steals her dreams. She is cast out and must now find a way to still love the country of her mother’s birth—the country that hurt her. Aurora was a strong woman in a foreign place; her daughter can be too.

How to ruin a perfectly good marriage: become an Ideal Wife! Married to the man she loves—sweet, sexy Max—Jessica Wild-Wainwright is blissfully happy . . . except for one tiny little problem: She never confessed to an (almost) tryst with Max’s biggest rival right before their wedding. Eaten up with guilt and facing down threats of exposure, Jessica decides to give Max what he clearly still lacks: the Ideal Wife. With the help of her friends, she will become perfect in every way: doting, devoted, domestic—everything Max deserves. However, the path to perfection is fraught with peril, from culinary chaos to a boudoir disaster that puts Max in the hospital with a broken leg and a sexy nurse (who is certainly Ideal in every way that Jessica is not). When Jessica rallies to run Max’s company—and is met with overt hostility by an obsessive co-worker and by an auditor determined to uncover everyone’s secrets, things become decidedly less than Ideal. Toss in a semiretired Russian stripper turned stay-at-home mom and strange men watching her apartment, and Jessica fears Project Ideal Wife has backfired miserably. Can a less than perfect wife save the day?

In Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes, Virginia Nicholson tells the story of women in the 1950s: a time before the Pill, when divorce spelled scandal and two-piece swimsuits caused mass alarm. Turn the page back to the mid-twentieth century, and discover a world peopled by women with radiant smiles, clean pinafores and gleaming coiffures; a promised land of batch-baking, maraschino cherries and brightly hued plastic. A world where the darker side of the decade encompasses rampant prostitution, a notorious murder, and the threat of nuclear disaster. Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes reconstructs the real 1950s, through the eyes of the women who lived it. Step back in time to where our grandmothers scrubbed their doorsteps, cared for their families, lived, laughed, loved and struggled. This is their story.