From the peaks of the Himalayas to the historic grounds of Hampton Court, there's always a perfect spot for a picnic! Anne Glenconner invites both old friends and new acquaintances to join her in The Picnic Papers. Featuring contributions from Bryan Adams, Graham Norton, Lorraine, Rupert Everett, Tina Brown, Freya Stark and many more, they explore the curious British obsession with dining alfresco, despite our famously unpredictable weather. Picnics, it turns out, spark strong opinions. HRH Princess Margaret insisted on having hers at a proper table, while the indefatigable John Julius Norwich enjoyed 147 picnics over seven weeks in the Sahara. In stark contrast, writer James Lees-Milne simply loathed them. Brimming with extraordinary tales and a few nostalgic recipes (though this is not a recipe book!) Lady Glenconner's The Picnic Papers is an invitation to a delightful feast of memories and culinary delights.
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
A Silent Tsunami is a unique combination of memoir and medicine – Rowan forensically examines the development of her mother's illness and explores dementia in a frank but illuminating, lyrical and moving way. 'By turns, warm, reflective, angry, but always moving... the perfect balance between scientific context and the mother-daughter narrative' Professor Craig Ritchie, University of St Andrews 'Anthea captures so eloquently the tug of war between a daughter and her mother "who is being erased"' Manni Coe, author of the bestselling brother. do. you. love. me. Anthea Rowan writes about her mother's struggles of living with Dementia, while interpreting the science that surrounds this devestating illness. Grounded in personal observation, she casts an unflinching eye on the realities of living with a mother who has forgotten her daughter and a determination that her children will not face the same. There is hope here, too. As a portratyal of the relationships we share with our mothers, an examinaion of their influences on us, as well as asking questions about how illness impacts lives, A Silent Tsunami is a powerful story of family, life, love and loss.
Readers love Crash Into Me ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'I always love ❤️ a story of second chances with new beginnings.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Great characters... a perfect unfolding and a lot of cheeky one-liners that made me laugh' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'LOVED LOVED LOVED this book!!! It was such a fun engaging read...had a hard time putting it down!!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'This second chance romance has it all -clever banter, memorable characters, and a unique setting in the global world of elite racing.' Fast isn't her thing anymore. No one's more surprised than Mia Rubie when she unexpectedly inherits her father's elite auto racing team. Mia hasn't been near a race car—or a certain Italian driver—since she walked away from a promising racing career fifteen years ago. But with the racing season about to begin and a letter from her father tugging at her heartstrings, she reluctantly puts her life on hold to travel the world with Rubie Racing ... and Luca Toscano, the only man she ever loved. But she can't slow him down. Mia's father Rob had lured Luca back to Rubie Racing with the promise of making his dreams of being world champion finally come true. One of the oldest drivers on the track, Luca was already running out of time on his lifelong quest to be the best of the best. But now Rob's gone ... and Mia—who once nearly took his career along with his heart—is back. Mia can't seem to avoid Luca, and he can't stop thinking about her. But can they move past what drove them apart?
A storm. A disappearance. A race against time . . . Mustique is in a state of breathless calm as tropical storm Cristobal edges towards it across the Atlantic. Most villa owners have escaped the island but a few young socialites remain, unwilling to let summer's partying end. American heiress Amanda Fortini is one such thrill-seeker - until she heads out for a morning swim and doesn't return. Detective Sergeant Solomon Nile is just 28 years old and the island's only fully trained police officer. He quickly realises he needs to contact Lord and Lady Blake, who bought the island decades ago and have invested time, money and love creating a paradise. Jasper is in St Lucia designing a new village of luxury villas but Lady Veronica (Vee to her friends) catches a plane immediately. Her beloved god-daughter, Lily, is on the island and this disappearance has alarming echoes of what happened to Lily's mother many years ago. Lady Vee would never desert a friend in need, and she can keep a cool head in a crisis. When Amanda's body is found, a murder investigation begins. Nile knows the killer must be an islander because flights and ferry crossings have stopped due to the storm warning, but the local community isn't co-operating. And then the storm hits, and someone else disappears . . .
THE INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER How do house flies help save millions of euros? How do the layout of casinos keep you gambling? We are not nearly as rational as we'd like to think – every day we overestimate our ability to resist temptation. Effective advertising experts use this to nudge us, making the most of our natural behaviour to get the results they want. In order to process the millions of decisions we make each day, our brains take shortcuts. We are fooled by drugs that don't contain active ingredients, traffic light buttons that aren't connected, and the obsolete 'save' feature in MS Word – these are all examples of placebos that can be surprisingly reassuring. There are countless things that affect our behaviour: reward and punishment, beauty and attraction, and the human tendency to follow the crowd. THE HOUSE FLY EFFECT reveals how to recognize some of the things that affect our behaviour everyday and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage. It offers an accessible, fun and practical introduction to behavioural science and features insightful examples from the laboratory, advertising, and marketing - as well as from daily life. Sometimes the smallest things can have a surprisingly large effect on your behaviour. 'Tim & Eva have written a brilliant book. They explain to the reader the practical implications of behavioural science with light-hearted charm that will resonate with a broad range of readers'. Richard Shotton, author of the bestseller The Choice Factory
Texas hill country, 1868. As nineteen-year-old Benjamin Shreve tends to business in his workshop, he sees a stagecoach leave a passenger stranded. The man, a treasure hunter, persuades Benjamin to help track down the coach, drawing him into a drama he could never have imagined. On reaching the coach they discover that its passengers include Nell, a pregnant young woman, and her four-year-old son, Tot, who are fleeing Nell's brutal husband and his murderous brothers. Nell is in grave danger. If her husband catches her, he will kill her and take their son. Benjamin offers to deliver Nell and Tot to a distant port on the Gulf of Mexico, where they can board a ship to safety. He is joined in this chivalrous act by two companions: the treasure hunter whose stranding began this endeavour and a restless Black Seminole who has an escape plan of his own. Fraught with jeopardy from the outset, the trek across Texas becomes still more dangerous as buried secrets emerge. And even as Benjamin falls in love with Nell and begins to imagine a life as Tot's father, vengeful pursuers are never far behind.
'Magical, quirky, and romantic' Catherine Tinley 'You won't be able to put it down' Sharon Black Jas saw the light when her ex dumped her treasured vintage fabric all over the street. She's back in her home town with a plan to launch her hat-making business at the Christmas market in the beautiful Georgian square. But the Ballyclane she returns to is not the one she left nine years ago. Her mother has a new man and Jas's old room is a walk-in wardrobe now. Her beloved gran has died and the house Jas hoped to work from is a bonanza for property developers instead. And no one is organising the Christmas market! There's just enough time to manage that and keep her business plan on track. She certainly doesn't have time for Niall, the smoky-eyed, posh boy builder, hell-bent on breaking her heart. With a best friend hiding a secret, a childhood nemesis determined to take her down, and a beautiful French angel enchanting everybody, Jas struggles to get a grip on what's real. Still, she might find everything she needs at the market this Christmas if she can let herself truly believe...
