Jane is a New Yorker to the core, city-based and career-driven. But when her teenage daughter Natalie falls in with the wrong crowd at her Manhattan school, Jane's British husband Andrew decides to relocate from new York to a small village on Britain's Cumbrian coast, buying a vast and crumbling former vicarage. Jane hates everything about her new life: the silence, the solitude, the utter isolation. Natalie is no better, and their son Ben struggles in his new school. Even worse, Jane's difficulties create new tensions between her and Andrew. When Jane finds a scrap of an old shopping list, she becomes fascinated with Alice James, who lived in the vicarage decades before. The Vicar's Wife takes readers on an emotional journey as two very different women learn the desires of their hearts - and confront their deepest fears.
A shy 19th century English vicar wins a jaded American prostitute in a poker game, and then tries to convince his parish that she's he's wife. Inspired by the Book of Hosea.
The New York Times Bestselling novel is now available in modern digital formats, featuring a new, substantive Foreword by Justice Samuel Alito. This book is universally considered to be an unusual, fascinating, and well-written observation of the life of a man who was first a war hero and Medal of Honor winner from the Korean War, then Chief Justice of the United States, later a monk reeling from tragedy, and finally elected to be Pope: Pope Francis I, in fact. His exciting life is described by three men who 'knew him well.' The first narrator is a Marine, telling of their time together in Korea. A constitutional scholar and Supreme Court Justice, appalled at the new Chief Justice, narrates the second phase. The third is a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church: fat, kind, but distracted. The Marine cares for him the most, the Supreme Court Justice condescends and despises him, and the Cardinal is much more interested in food than his subject. But Declan Walsh was a man who earned the Medal of Honor while ordering the death of friends, ruled pragmatically and energetically on the Court but lost his way to death and neglect, and became a miraculous healer, assassinated for challenging the powers that rule the secular world. New ebook edition features proper formatting, active and detailed Table of Contents, and linked notes and URLs in Justice Alito's extensive and informative introduction. What makes this book extraordinary is that it proves itself by paradox — reconciling and weaving together strong, seemingly incompatible elements into a cohesive, memorable work quite unlike any other in recent fiction. Ambitious in length and scope, the stage is nothing less than the contemporary world, its recent history and prophecy; while the focus, from several points of view, is clearly upon a single man — an American — who rises to become Bishop of Rome.
From prim and proper… Seduced, abandoned and pregnant, Arabella Shelley is determined her baby's father will support them. Horrified to discover his death, she is shocked at the demand of his brother, the handsome, inscrutable Viscount Hadleigh. To legitimize her unborn child, she must marry him, instead! …to pleasured by the viscount! As Bella struggles with her unfamiliar, luxurious new lifestyle, and her scandalous desire for her stranger of a husband, will she find a love that matches the passion of their marriage bed?
New York Times bestselling author Julia London presents a “love story that warms the heart” (Fresh Fiction). When the vicar’s beautiful widow attracts the attention of Lord Montgomery, one of the ton’s most eligible bachelors, a jealous young debutante spreads rumors to bring the flirtation to a crashing end. But Montgomery isn’t going to let a little bit of scandal keep him from winning the lovely widow’s well-guarded heart. Don’t miss Julia London’s Lucky Charm. The Vicar’s Widow previously appeared in Talk of the Ton.
Ann Cleeves Classic Crime - engaging mysteries to savour, beloved characters to meet again A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy is the third novel in the Inspector Ramsay series by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series. For Dorothea Cassidy Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own, a welcome respite from the routine duties that being a vicar's wife entailed. But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other. It was the day that Dorothea Cassidy was strangled. As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea's last hours. He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases – a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and a child in care – and even her close family have their secrets to hide. All these people are haunted, in one way or another, by Dorothea's goodness. But which of them could have possibly wanted her dead? It is not until a second body is discovered that Ramsay starts to understand how Dorothea lived – and why she died. With the carnival festivities in full swing and dusk falling in Otterbridge, Ramsay's murder investigation reaches its chilling climax . . . 'Nobody does unsettling undercurrents better than Ann Cleeves' – Val McDermid, author of The Mermaids Singing
For everyone who loved Pride and Prejudice—and legions of historical fiction lovers—an inspired debut novel set in Austen’s world. Charlotte Collins, nee Lucas, is the respectable wife of Hunsford’s vicar, and sees to her duties by rote: keeping house, caring for their adorable daughter, visiting parishioners, and patiently tolerating the lectures of her awkward husband and his condescending patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Intelligent, pragmatic, and anxious to escape the shame of spinsterhood, Charlotte chose this life, an inevitable one so socially acceptable that its quietness threatens to overwhelm her. Then she makes the acquaintance of Mr. Travis, a local farmer and tenant of Lady Catherine.. In Mr. Travis’ company, Charlotte feels appreciated, heard, and seen. For the first time in her life, Charlotte begins to understand emotional intimacy and its effect on the heart—and how breakable that heart can be. With her sensible nature confronted, and her own future about to take a turn, Charlotte must now question the role of love and passion in a woman’s life, and whether they truly matter for a clergyman’s wife.
When Ellie Kent moves to an English village with her new husband Graham, she fears the villagers will always see her as that young American who snared their attractive vicar during his sabbatical in California. But this challenge is nothing compared to what happens when she stumbles across a body in the churchyard. The villagers insist they don't know the murdered man, so suspicion mounts that the killer must be the incomer - the vicar's new wife. As evidence piles up against her, Ellie tries to stay one step ahead of the police to unravel a decades-old literary mystery and love story. Will others die before she can solve it? And what will be left of her new life and marriage, even if she succeeds?
