Ma Am Darling

The funny and tragic, bestselling biography of The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, perfect for fans of Netflix’s The Crown. A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR • A DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘I honked so loudly the man sitting next to me dropped his sandwich’ Observer

A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR * A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR * A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR * A DAILY MAIL BOOK OF THE YEAR 'An original, memorable and substantial achievement' TLS'A masterpiece' Mail on Sunday'I honked so loudly the man sitting next to me dropped his sandwich' ObserverShe made John Lennon blush and Marlon Brando clam up. She cold-shouldered Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor. Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. John Fowles hoped to keep her as his sex-slave. Dudley Moore propositioned her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was in love with her. For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy. "If they knew what I had done in my dreams with your royal ladies" he confided to a friend, "they would take me to the Tower of London and chop off my head!" Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures. To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding. In her 1950's heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. By the time of her death, she had come to personify disappointment. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman. The tale of Princess Margaret is pantomime as tragedy, and tragedy as pantomime. It is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues and essays, Ma'am Darling is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography, and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society. 'Brown has been our best parodist and satirist for decades now ... Ma'am Darling is, as you would expect, very funny; also, full of quirky facts and genial footnotes. Brown has managed to ingest huge numbers of royal books and documents without losing either his judgment or his sanity. He adores the spectacle of human vanity' Julian Barnes, Guardian

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF NPR’S ‘GREAT READS’ OF 2017 A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR AN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Impossible to put down." —NPR "A novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.” —The Washington Post "The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." —Stephen King A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul. Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father. Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption. With Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, the reader watches, heart in throat, as this teenage girl struggles to become her own hero—and in the process, becomes ours as well. Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.

SHORTLISTED for the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020 A Spectator Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the Year

Discover untold secrets with this extraordinary memoir of drama and tragedy by Anne Glenconner—a close member of the royal circle and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the 5th Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact. A unique witness to landmark moments in royal history, Maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret until her death in 2002, Anne's life has encompassed extraordinary drama and tragedy. In Lady in Waiting, she will share many intimate royal stories from her time as Princess Margaret's closest confidante as well as her own battle for survival: her broken-off first engagement on the basis of her "mad blood"; her 54-year marriage to the volatile, unfaithful Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, who left his fortune to a former servant; the death in adulthood of two of her sons; a third son she nursed back from a six-month coma following a horrific motorcycle accident. Through it all, Anne has carried on, traveling the world with the royal family, including visiting the White House, and developing the Caribbean island of Mustique as a safe harbor for the rich and famous-hosting Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Raquel Welch, and many other politicians, aristocrats, and celebrities. With unprecedented insight into the royal family, Lady in Waiting is a witty, candid, dramatic, at times heart-breaking personal story capturing life in a golden cage for a woman with no inheritance. New York Times Bestseller USA Today Bestseller The Sunday Times Bestseller The Globe and Mail Bestseller ABA Indie Bestseller The Times (UK) Memoir of the Year One of Newsweek's Most Anticipated Books of 2020

He always gets his lady… Billy Darling doesn’t enjoy being a wanted man until the day a duke’s prim and proper granddaughter comes marching into the Tumbleweed Saloon and points her derringer at his heart. Lucky for him, she's a mighty poor shot. She always gets her man… Instead of killing him, Esmerelda Fine hires him to find her runaway brother. Billy knows he should turn down her offer. He should resist her charms. But he doesn't. Because there comes a time in every man's life when he's got nothing left to lose...but his heart. Book 4 of the ROGUES AND GENTLEMEN series, which includes Yours Until Dawn, Thief of Hearts, Once an Angel and Nobody’s Darling “Nobody’s Darling has a little something for everyone. No wonder all of Medeiros’s romances have been national bestsellers.”—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel “A lively passionate adventure generously peppered with Medeiros’s trademark humor and sense of fun.”—Library Journal “Another fine read from one of romance’s greats!”—Painted Rock “One of the Top Ten Best Romances of the Year.”—Amazon.com ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDITION Victorian romance, Western romance, Humorous romance, Cowboy romance

Perfect for fans of The Crown, this captivating biography from a New York Times bestselling author follows Queen Elizabeth II and her sister Margaret as they navigate life in the royal spotlight. They were the closest of sisters and the best of friends. But when, in a quixotic twist of fate, their uncle Edward Vlll decided to abdicate the throne, the dynamic between Elizabeth and Margaret was dramatically altered. Forever more Margaret would have to curtsey to the sister she called 'Lillibet.' And bow to her wishes. Elizabeth would always look upon her younger sister's antics with a kind of stoical amusement, but Margaret's struggle to find a place and position inside the royal system—and her fraught relationship with its expectations—was often a source of tension. Famously, the Queen had to inform Margaret that the Church and government would not countenance her marrying a divorcee, Group Captain Peter Townsend, forcing Margaret to choose between keeping her title and royal allowances or her divorcee lover. From the idyll of their cloistered early life, through their hidden war-time lives, into the divergent paths they took following their father's death and Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, this book explores their relationship over the years. Andrew Morton's latest biography offers unique insight into these two drastically different sisters—one resigned to duty and responsibility, the other resistant to it—and the lasting impact they have had on the Crown, the royal family, and the ways it adapted to the changing mores of the 20th century.

SOON TO BE CLAIRE DARLING—A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CATHERINE DENEUVE! When a wealthy woman decides to sell all of her worldly possessions, she unearths the secrets of her family’s past in this charming debut. On the last day of the millennium, sassy Faith Bass Darling, the richest old lady in Bass, Texas, decides to have a garage sale. With help from a couple of neighborhood boys, Faith lugs her priceless Louis XV elephant clock, countless Tiffany lamps, and everything else in her nineteenth-century mansion out onto her long, sloping lawn. Why is a recluse of twenty years suddenly selling off her dearest possessions? Because God told her to. As the townspeople grab up five generations of heirlooms, everyone drawn to the sale—including Faith’s long-lost daughter—finds that the antiques not only hold family secrets but also inspire some of life’s most important questions: Do our possessions possess us? What are we without our memories? Is there life after death or second chances here on earth? And is Faith really selling that Tiffany lamp for $1? READERS GUIDE INCLUDED