A powerful, beautifully told and heart-wrenching tale of young love. Tessa has always been 'the quiet one', while her best friend, Matty, is outgoing and constantly has boys flocking around her. But when Tessa falls in love for the first time at sixteen, everything changes. Tessa finds a soulmate in Wolfie, a committed green activist, and she grows more confident and outspoken every day. She also begins to look at the world differently . . . But just when their love is at its strongest, tragedy strikes. How will she ever be able to cope?
“Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.”—Hilary Mantel From the bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past comes a compulsive new novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London. 1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them. With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters’ inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is an irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our selves – a novel that showcases Hadley’s unrivaled ability to “put on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own” (Lily King, author of Euphoria).
One of Oprah Magazine's 22 Romance Novels That Are Set to Be the Best of 2020 + Marie Claire's Best New Books of 2020 New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey returns with a unique, sexy romantic comedy about a young married couple whose rocky relationship needs a serious renovation... Rosie and Dominic Vega are the perfect couple: high school sweethearts, best friends, madly in love. Well, they used to be anyway. Now Rosie's lucky to get a caveman grunt from the ex-soldier every time she walks in the door. Dom is faithful and a great provider, but the man she fell in love with ten years ago is nowhere to be found. When her girlfriends encourage Rosie to demand more out of life and pursue her dream of opening a restaurant, she decides to demand more out of love, too. Three words: marriage boot camp. Never in a million years did Rosie believe her stoic, too-manly-to-emote husband would actually agree to relationship rehab with a weed-smoking hippie. Dom talking about feelings? Sitting on pillows? Communing with nature? Learning love languages? Nope. But to her surprise, he's all in, and it forces her to admit her own role in their cracked foundation. As they complete one ridiculous--yet surprisingly helpful--assignment after another, their remodeled relationship gets stronger than ever. Except just as they're getting back on track, Rosie discovers Dom has a secret... and it could demolish everything.
For all the women who have ever loved too much, Tessa Dahl's brilliant debut novel is a story of innocence prolonged, painful discovery and courageous growth as one woman stages a fierce battle for independence from the men she has struggled for too long to please.
“Filled with exquisitely calibrated gradations and expressions of class, conducted with symphonic intensity and complexity. . . . Extraordinarily well-made.” —New York Times Book Review Married Love is a masterful collection of short fiction from one of today’s most accomplished storytellers. These tales showcase the qualities for which Tessa Hadley has long been praised: her humor, warmth, and psychological acuity; her powerful, precise, and emotionally dense prose; her unflinching examinations of family relationships. Here are stories that range widely across generations and classes, exploring the private and public lives of unforgettable characters: a young girl who haunts the edges of her parents’ party; a wife released by the sudden death of her film-director husband; an eighteen-year-old who insists on marrying her music professor, only to find herself shut out from his secrets. Hadley evokes worlds that expand in the imagination far beyond the pages, capturing domestic dramas, generational sagas, wrenching love affairs and epiphanies, and distilling them to remarkable effect. “Hadley parses the meaning of love in all its paradoxical, panoramic glory.” —Booklist “These stories are gemlike and unforgettable.” —Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe “One of the most interesting writers around.” —Philip Womack, The Spectator “Only Alice Munro and Colm Tóibin . . . are so adept at portraying whole lives in a few thousand words. . . . Hadley joins their company as one of the most clear-sighted chroniclers of contemporary emotional journeys.” —Edmund Gordon, The Guardian “There is a grand sweep and an emotional charge that brings to mind DH Lawrence.” —Elena Seymenliyska, Daily Telegraph (London)) “An exceptional storyteller.” —Library Journal “Shrewd, insightful, unpredictable.” —Kirkus Reviews
She’s hiding from a dangerous threat. He’s hiding from women altogether. When life puts them right next door to each other, will he have any idea what he’s gotten himself into? Tessa and her three year old son can’t seem to escape a dark past, but will Aaron give them a brighter future? Or will her past finally catch up with her? Get this clean beach romance now.
Aged eighteen, Tessa Dunlop went to post-Revolutionary Romania to work in an orphanage - to do something remarkable to help her get into Oxford. Once there she didn't want to leave and ended up staying for nearly a year. She returned the following summer, but this time chose a big industrial city where she taught English and befriended a student and his family. The youngest son, 'Vlad', was only twelve, shy and very intelligent. Once more Tessa was emotionally hooked. Back home in the Scottish Highlands, she organised for Vlad to be sponsored by her old boarding school. He aced his classes, but, conflicted in the wake of his extraordinary experience, turned down a full-time place. They lost touch; however, the pull of Romania eventually proved too much and, five years on, Tessa returned. Life would never be the same again.
You know the old adage "if you love something, set it free?" It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The dumbest thing I've ever done. I loved her. I lost her. Hell, I let her go. And then spent five miserable years without her. To cope with the loss, I put pen to paper and wrote her a love story, knowing when she was ready she'd hear the words I couldn't say all those years ago. Turned out, not only would she hear them, but when Hollywood came calling, I made sure she got the lead role. After all, no one else could portray the character whom she'd inspired. Now she's within arms' reach and finally, she'll know the truth in my heart. Because that other cliché, "Actions speak louder than words?" I'm going to prove it. My words may have brought Ava Banks back into my life; I have to be enough to make her stay.
When rescue looks like a whole lot of trouble . . . The road trip was definitely a bad idea. Having already flambéed her culinary career beyond recognition, Rita Clarkson is now stranded in God-Knows-Where, New Mexico, with a busted-ass car and her three temperamental siblings, who she hasn't seen in years. When rescue shows up---six-feet-plus of hot, charming sex on a motorcycle---Rita's pretty certain she's gone from the frying pan right into the fire . . . Jasper Ellis has a bad boy reputation in this town, and he loathes it. The moment he sees Rita, though, Jasper knows he's about to be sorely tempted. There's something real between them. Something raw. And Jasper has only a few days to show Rita that he isn't just for tonight---he's forever.
"Two weeks before Christmas and all through Manhattan, shop windows are decorated in red and green satin. I'm standing alone in front of the famous Vivant department store, when a charming man named Aiden asks my opinion of the décor. It's a tragedy in tinsel, I say, unable to lie. He asks for a better idea with a twinkle in his eye. Did I know he owned the place? No. He put me on the spot. Now I'm working for that man, trying to ignore that he's hot. But as a down on her luck girl with a difficult past, I know an opportunity when I see one - and I have to make it last. I'll put my heart and soul into dressing his holiday windows. I'll work without stopping. And when we lose the battle with temptation, I'll try and remember I'm just window shopping"--back cover.
