The House Of Brides

Jane Cockram makes her thrilling debut with this page-turning tale of psychological suspense in which a young woman whose life is in tatters flees to the safety of a family estate in England, but instead of comfort finds chilling secrets and lies. Miranda’s life and career has been a roller-coaster ride. Her successful rise to the top of the booming lifestyle industry as a social media influencer led to a humiliating fall after a controversial product she endorsed flopped. Desperate to get away from the hate-spewing trolls shaming her on the internet, she receives a mysterious letter from a young cousin in England that plunges her into a dark family mystery. Miranda’s mother Tessa Summers, a famous author, died when Miranda was a child. The young woman’s only connection to the Summers family is through Tessa’s famous book The House of Brides—a chronicle of the generations of women who married into the infamous Summers family and made their home in the rambling Barnsley House, the family’s estate. From Gertrude Summers, a famed crime novelist, to Miranda’s grandmother Beatrice, who killed herself after setting fire to Barnsley while her children slept, each woman in The House of Brides is more notorious than the next. The house’s current “bride” is the beautiful, effervescent Daphne, her Uncle Max’s wife—a famed celebrity chef who saved Barnsley from ruin turning the estate into an exclusive culinary destination and hotel. Curious about this legendary family she has never met, Miranda arrives at Barnsley posing as a prospective nanny answering an advertisement. She’s greeted by the compelling yet cold housekeeper Mrs. Mins, and meets the children and her Uncle Max—none of whom know her true identity. But Barnsley is not what Miranda expected. The luxury destination and award-winning restaurant is gone, and Daphne is nowhere to be found. Most disturbing, one of the children is in a wheelchair after a mysterious accident. What happened in this house? Where is Daphne? What darkness lies hidden in Barnsley?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Whiter Than Snow and Prayers for Sale comes a novel about the secrets and passions of three generations of women who have all lived in the same Victorian home called the Bride's House. It's 1880, and for unassuming seventeen-year-old Nealie Bent, the Bride's House is a fairy tale come to life. It seems as if it is being built precisely for her and Will Spaulding, the man she is convinced she will marry. But life doesn't go according to plan, and Nealie finds herself in the Bride's House pregnant---and married to another. For Pearl, growing up in the Bride's House is akin to being raised in a mausoleum. Her father has fashioned the house into a shrine to the woman he loved, resisting all forms of change. When the enterprising young Frank Curry comes along and asks for Pearl's hand in marriage, her father sabotages the union. But he underestimates the lengths to which the women in the Bride's House will go for love. Susan is the latest in the line of strong and willful women in the Bride's House. She's proud of the women who came before her, but the Bride's House hides secrets that will force her to question what she wants and who she loves. Sandra Dallas has once again written a novel rich in storytelling and history, peopled by living, breathing characters that will grab hold of you and not let you go.

A celebrated send-up of gothic literature, beautifully adapted into a dark, brooding, and oddly comical graphic novel. Somewhere in the night, a raven caws, an author's pen scratches, and thunder claps. The author wants to write fiction: stories about frail women in white nightgowns, mysterious bumps in the night, and the undead rising to collect old debts. But he keeps getting interrupted by the everyday annoyances of talking ravens, duels to the death, and his sinister butler. Shane Oakley beautifully illustrates New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman's satirical tale.

Laure Beausejour has grown up in a dormitory in Paris surrounded by prostitutes, the insane, and other forgotten women. She dreams with her best friend, Madeleine, of using her needlework skills to become a seamstress and one day marry a nobleman. But in 1669, Laure is sent across the Atlantic to New France with Madeleine as filles du roi. The girls know little of the place they are being sent to, except for stories of ferocious winters and Indians who eat the hearts of French priests. To be banished to Canada is a punishment worse than death. Bride of New France explores the challenges Laure faces coming into womanhood in a brutal time and place. From the moment she arrives in Ville-Marie (Montreal) she is expected to marry and produce children with a brutish French soldier who himself can barely survive the harsh conditions of his forest cabin. But through her clandestine relationship with Deskaheh, an allied Iroquois, Laure finds a sense of the possibilities in this New World. What happens to a woman who attempts to make her own life choices in such authoritative times?

Three generations of women. Three generations worth of secrets. Will a cache of letters from beyond the grave hold the key to unravelling them all? The answer to that question lies at the heart of this addictive and atmospheric novel from the author of The House of Brides. Growing up, the Anderson sisters could not have been more different. Susie, the wild one, had an adventurous life while Camilla— Mills—followed a safer path. When Susie suddenly dies, Mills falls apart. Until she receives a bundle of mysterious letters from her estranged sister to be read in the case of her death. Each letter instructs her to visit a place special to Susie, both to spread her ashes but also to uncover some truths Susie has long kept hidden from her family. Their mother Margaret has secrets of her own. When living in Swinging Sixties London, she too made a decision about her life that not only haunts her, but will reverberate through the generations. One family, three very different women. What choices and secrets connect them? In this novel of truth and lies, concealment and regret, Jane Cockram flips the looking glass to expose our true face, revealing the deep lines of deception that can run through families and how the people we love the most often have the most to hide.

With over 50,000 copies sold of the original edition, A Bride's Book has been a best-selling resource for brides-to-be since 2001, offering floral designer and wedding planner Marsha Heckman's expert guidance on everything from the engagement to the post-honeymoon thank-you notes. Now Heckamn has returned with a revised, redesigned, and updated edition for the modern bride. It includes seven gorgeous new wedding bouquet tabs with complete how-to instructiuons, along with a new cover design. Lavishly illustrated with full-color photographs by Richard Jung from Marsha Heckman's best-selling book Bouquets: A Year of Flowers for the Bride, A Bride's Book is both a hardworking wedding planner and a personal journal. The book is filled with tips for the bride, wedding traditions, and marriage customs. Spiral bound to open flat, with an elastic closure and an inside pocket, A Bride's Book is organized into six sections with fill-in space and prompts to help keep the busy bride organized: "To Do," "Calendar," "Wedding Party," "Key People," "Guests," and "Journal & Keepsake."

The year is 1946, and all over the world young women are crossing the seas in their thousands en route to the men they married in wartime. In Sydney, Australia, four women join 650 other brides on an extraordinary voyage to England - aboard the Victoria, which carries not just arms and aircraft, but a thousand naval officers and men.

SECRETS OF A RUNAWAY BRIDE Valerie Bowman Miss Annie Andrews is finally free to marry the man she loves. With her overprotective sister out of the country on her honeymoon, nothing can prevent her flight to Gretna Green—nothing, that is, but an abduction by the wrong gentleman. When Jordan Holloway, the Earl of Ashbourne, promised to look after his best friend's sister-in-law, he didn't realize she would prove so difficult. But when he spirits her away to his country house to prevent her elopement, he discovers that the tempting beauty knows how to put up a fight. To make matters worse, he's stuck playing the role of honorable protector...when what he really wants is to run away with her himself.