Old Flames

Beth Robinson is a 40-ish public relations person turned stay-at-home mom, who, aside from an occasional pang of mourning for her lost youth, is pretty well content. That is, until Rachel Klein, a hip young advertising executive, moves into the house next door. When Rachel confides in Beth her ambitious career plans and her intention to rekindle an old flame with man-about-town Tim Donnelly, Beth is envious. So what if Rachel can't cook, knows nothing about gardening and forgets to take out her garbage? She has an exciting job, an attractive love-prospect, and friends like Schuyler LaSalle, a singing stock analyst who reminds Beth of her own long-lost aspiration to be a dancer on Broadway. Soon, Beth realizes she must find a way to build a new flame for herself with the old dancing spark. Rachel -- between career-making moves at work -- tries to light Tim's fire without getting burned. And the garbage starts to show signs of life ... Old Flames is a book you'll want to curl up with in a comfortable chair (dancing optional).

In the mid 1980's, Adam Laughton and Luke Bartel met in the LAPD, where they had just begun working. They found themselves dealing with ghastly circumstances, causing horrendous deaths. Newlyweds, who had just returned from their honeymoon, literally saw their lives go up in smoke, when one of them died as a nonextinguishable fire separated them forever. Two men who had been friends and neighbors growing up in a small community were dealt this same tragedy, when fire from seemingly no where killed one of the men, changing the other's life forever. What caused these deaths and more? Adam and Luke knew there had to be a connection. There was only a limited time to prevent more families from suffering these losses. Those who were guilty must be found soon and punished.

"This solidly written horror story mixes unusual elements with others that are tried and true to create a satisfying read" --Publishers Weekly Struggling to balance a career in music with her obligations as a wife and mom, Tilda Parish’s life is complicated by the return of an old boyfriend, one who died twenty years ago. At 24, Tilda Parish had it all; her own band and a man she knew was ‘the one’ but fate had other plans. A fatal car crash took her boyfriend’s life and sent Tilda into a spiral of grief. Seventeen years later, Tilda is married with a 13-year old daughter but her career as a singer-songwriter has been turbulent and unstable. Unable to balance her volatile career with her obligations to her family, Tilda makes a life-changing decision to walk away from music forever. Yet, after burning her guitar in a ritual bonfire, Tilda discovers that the past isn’t done with her. Hints of her old life pop up mysteriously and ghosts of her past haunt her present. Alone one night, Tilda confronts an intruder she believes to be a stalker but the figure that steps from the shadows almost stops her heart. Her old beau appears, the one who died all those years ago. He hasn’t aged a day. He says that he never stopped loving her and that he wants her back. Despite his death and the intervening seventeen years, Tilda realizes that she never stopped loving him either. And now Tilda Parish is caught between two worlds; the everyday world of her husband and family and this new spooky world of an old lover who has returned from the shadow of death to find her. What’s an ex-musician to do?

TOO HOT TO HANDLE Jane Willoughby has a temper. Sure, in her day job answering calls for 911, she can keep her head no matter what the emergency. But when her ex appears on her doorstep on her first sick day in years, expecting her to act happy he’s her co-chair for the annual fireman’s ball, she feels a little righteous wrath is justified. Chance McGovern broke up with her with a greeting card, for crying out loud. He doesn’t get to just sprout some washboard abs and put on a uniform and behave like any other tasty firefighter. Jane has no idea what’s happened to Chance in the last nine years—and no interest in finding out. Not even a teeny-tiny spark. No matter how hot he is. Or how well he remembers the little things that make her laugh, and cry, and spontaneously combust. And she’s going to be working with him one-on-one. At least there’s a fireman on call . . .

Fibs and squabbles and spells . . . oh my! A small, magical town tucked away in rural Ohio, Moonville is the perfect place for floral witch Romina Tempest to use the language of flowers to help the hopeful manifest love in their lives. After giving up on her own big romance eleven years ago, at least she can bask in others' happily ever afters. When the shop’s potential financier shares news of his wedding, Romina jumps at the opportunity to discuss the business . . . even if it means she has to fake-date her chaotic colleague Trevor to get an invitation. But all hell breaks loose when she discovers Trevor’s soon-to-be stepbrother is none other than Alex King: her high school sweetheart. Her greatest love. The boy who broke her heart. What starts as an innocent misunderstanding becomes a weeklong fake-dating scheme, as Romina quickly finds out she can’t deny her connection with Alex. Caught between her livelihood and her heart, Romina must decide if taking a second chance on first love is worth the risk.

Scotland Yard’s Inspector Troy returns in a Cold War spy thriller hailed as “stylish, sophisticated, suspenseful . . . A fictional tour de force” (Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post). In April 1956, at the height of the Cold War, Khrushchev and Bulganin, leaders of the Soviet Union, are in Britain on an official visit. Chief Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard is assigned to be Khrushchev’s bodyguard and to spy on him. Soon after, a Royal Navy diver is found dead and mutilated beyond recognition in Portsmouth Harbor. Troy embarks on an investigation that takes him to the rotten heart of MI6, to the distant days of his childhood, and into the dangerous arms of an old flame. “If Troy is the character at the heart of this novel, its soul is England as it was during the Cold War years, a country fueled by paranoia and espionage, overrun with agents and counter-agents, caught up, as Troy says, in ‘an age that specialized in thinking the unthinkable.’” —Anne Stephenson, USA Today

Divorcée Dora Welles, a New York City antiques dealer who's unlucky in love, decides to track down her old high school squeeze, Jim Weybourne, through a detective agency that specializes in locating lost lovers. When Jim turns out to be happily married with two children in California, the resourceful Dora finds a way to insinuate herself casually into their lives. Dora soon begins scheming how to supplant Jim's wife and reclaim him for her own.

*Shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize 2019* ‘A strange and joyous marvel.’ Richard Flanagan *Shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize 2019* In Robbie Arnott’s widely acclaimed and much-loved first novel, a young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his sister, Charlotte—who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire. The answers to these riddles are to be found in this tale of grief and love and the bonds of family, tracing a journey across the southern island. Utterly original in conception, spellbinding in its descriptions of nature and celebration of language, Flames is one of the most exciting debuts of recent years. Robbie Arnott was born in Launceston in 1989. He was a 2019 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist, and won the 2019 Margaret Scott Prize, the 2015 Tasmanian Young Writers’ Fellowship and the 2014 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers. His widely acclaimed debut, Flames, was published in 2018. The Rain Heron, his second novel, will be published in 2020. Robbie’s writing has appeared in the Lifted Brow, Island, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin and the anthology Seven Stories. He lives in Hobart. ‘Ambitious storytelling from a stunning new Australian voice. Flames is constantly surprising—I never knew where the story would take me next. This book has a lovely sense of wonder for the world. It’s brimming with heart and compassion.’ Rohan Wilson ‘Arnott confidently borrows from the genres of crime fiction, thriller, romance, comedy, eco-literature, and magical realism, throws them in the air, and lets the pieces land to form a flaming new world.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘This is a startlingly good first novel, stylistically adventurous, gorgeous in its descriptions and with a compelling narrative that should find a wide readership.’ Australian ‘An Australian literary fabulist classic – well, it certainly deserves to be.’ Avid Reader ‘Visionary, vivid, full of audacious transformations: there’s a marvellous energy to this writing that returns the world to us aflame. A brilliant and wholly original debut.’ Gail Jones ‘Robbie Arnott is a vivid and bold new voice in Australian fiction.’ Danielle Wood ‘Arnott skilfully switches between different voices and genres in a trick reminiscent of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. The range he displays is impressive, swinging from fable to gothic horror to hardboiled detective story.’ Books+Publishing ‘Flames is an exuberantly creative and confident debut. This is a story that sparks with invention...Invigorating, strange and occasionally brutal.’ Australian Book Review ‘This is the kind of book that you’ll be able to read a second, third, even fourth time, and it will still never reveal all its secrets. Composed with meticulous attention to detail, and a mastery of form rarely found in a debut novel, Flames will keep you stewing long after you’ve finished reading it.’ Readings 'A surprising story with a definite feminist edge...the novel’s playfulness and poetry make for a fresh and entertaining read.' Saturday Paper ‘It will be immediately apparent to anyone even vaguely familiar with Tasmania that Arnott is on intimate terms with his island, and his exquisite descriptive prose definitely does this gem of a place justice...More please, Mr Arnott.’ BookMooch ‘A gloriously audacious book. It runs astonishing risks and takes on the biggest emotions...It bowled me sideways.’ New Zealand Herald ‘The quirkiness of the characters—a staple of novels set in small-town Australia—allows for good-natured humour as well as biting satire, but it’s the mythic qualities of this novel that make it special. It’s as if Arnott has invented a whole mythology that is all our very own. If you like the fiction of Jane Rawson, I think you will like this one too.’ ANZ Lit Lovers ‘An extremely evocative and imaginative work...Undeniably powerful...it is refreshing to see the Australian landscape written about so vividly.’ Good Reading ‘[A] novel you will want to read more than once, not so much to plumb its depths as to savour its wild variety of styles and voices, to revel in its breathtaking descriptions of Tasmanian wilderness and to grasp its intricate structure...There is no doubt that a poetically wild and wicked imagination is at work here. More please!’ SA WEEKEND ‘It's not hard to see where the hype came from. This is an assured, funny and highly imaginative work. Flames is strange from the first, arresting sentence.’ Stuff NZ ‘Highly innovative...[A] finely built and realised first novel.’ Otago Daily Times ‘Unique and memorable...Extraordinary energy...A rich and memorable picture with prose of an exceptionally high quality. You won’t read another Australian literary novel like this anytime soon.’ Kill Your Darlings ‘Flames is brilliant...Enjoy it for its prose poetry, its vivid imagery, its brilliant turns of phrase on nearly every page.’ NZ Listener