Author: nuwuser

Prolific author Cookson (The Lady on My Left), who died in June of this year after publishing more than 90 books, left this last novel, again concerned with poverty-stricken Northern Englanders in the late 19th century. Alcoholic widower Hector Stewart has subjected the family farm to near ruinous neglect. Though his children, David and Pattie, object to his remarriage to Moira Conelly–she’s Irish, they complain–their kind new stepmum turns out to be a blessing in disguise. Hector, the uncomplicated villain of the tale, treats Moira badly and denies Daniel the education he needs to become a doctor. Daniel makes the best of a bad situation, however, working hard and struggling to keep the farm from total deterioration, while emotionally supporting Moira and the increasing brood of half-brothers and sisters. A decade of births (pregnancy being the constant fact of Moira’s life), deaths (most relieving: Hector’s), good times and bad passes quickly via Cookson’s melodramatic prose. Her fans will not be disappointed.

( Courtesy of Publishers Weekly,   paperback  509 pages )

From the first moment she saw the house on the moors north of Hexham, Conie Stapleton knew she could live there, despite its isolation, despite its lack of basic facilities, and despite her fear of loneliness. Her marriage, on the brink of disintegration, she had already decided to sell the large flat she and her husband Jim shared and she saw the move as a means of initiating the separation she knew was necessary; and now that their son Peter would soon be off to university, there was, she decided, no reason to delay the inevitable. Even if the winters at Shekinah, as the house was called, were as severe as her family had warned, she told herself she could always buy a flat in nearby Hexham. To buy the house, Connie was told that she must negotiate with the nearby O’Connors, one of whom, Vincent appeared to be their spokesman. However, she was somewhat surprised by his abruptness and by his insistence that the deal be closed forthwith; and further taken aback when he asked her if she would be able to sign the papers on the following day. Afterwards, when the house was hers and she had moved in, Connie was to discover that mystery was a way of life with Vincent O’Connor. Despite this, however, he was to have an increasing influence on her life as she settled into the new routine of days and nights at Shekinah. But then, as a result of circumstances over which she had no control, the shocking truth about the man with whom she had shared a life for many years came to light…

Set in the 1970s, The Solace of Sin is the story of a strong and independent woman whose life is transformed by new surroundings and new acquaintances. It is a richly satisfying novel, as powerful as any that Britain’s premier author has written in her long and distinguished career.

( Courtesy of Google Books,   paperback  415 pages )

The most romantic city in the world sets the stage for Barbara Taylor Bradford’s dazzling new novel, a spellbinding story of four remarkable women–each at a turning point in her life, each about to be changed forever by.…

Three Weeks in Paris

In Paris, four young women once shared the time of their lives. Now, seven years after they left the prestigious Anya Sedgwick School of Decorative Arts, they are coming back for the eighty-fifth birthday celebration of the school’s founder and grande dame.

Designer Kay Lenox returns with her career soaring and her marriage crumbling. American Jessica Pierce is determined to unravel the baffling disappearance of the man she loved in Paris. Italian Maria Franconi must face the women whose friendship she lost–and her deepest doubts about herself. And Alexa Gordon knows that Paris is still about a man she can’t resist, even as she is about to become another man’s wife.

In Barbara Taylor Bradford’s enthralling tapestry of relationships, choices, and one haunting mystery, four successful women share three weeks in the city that shaped their lives–and where they will now share a second chance.

( from the Sleeve,   paperback 340 pages )

Cassandra (Casey) Ellis, 34, a single, successful psychotherapist, is the newest of this prolific romance writer’s heroines. The novel opens with a memorial service for Dr. Cornelius Unger, a brilliant and reclusive psychologist who is also Casey’s father. She never knew him personally, since she was the product of her mother’s single encounter with Unger, and is shocked to learn that Dr. Unger has left her a $3 million townhouse on Boston’s Beacon Hill, complete with a maid, Meg, and a gardener, Jordan. Casey has always felt hostile toward her famous, mysterious father, even though her mother never expressed any anger. She’s uneasy at first about living in a luxurious house haunted by her father’s presence, but soon finds its meticulously attended gardens a source of relief from professional stress and the emotional turmoil of caring for her mother, left comatose after a recent accident. Moreover, she is attracted to handsome, virile Jordan. While she’s rooting through Dr. Unger’s personal papers, she comes across the story of Jenny Clyde, a young woman in her 20s who was abused by her father for years before being rescued by a police officer. Casey becomes intrigued: is this incestuous relationship fiction or one of Dr. Unger’s case histories? Why did her father leave it for her to find? Delinsky (The Woman Next Door, etc.) weaves Jenny’s story through the novel, and meshes her and Casey’s fates in a melodramatic climax. Both stories have some lapses in credibility and underdeveloped supporting characters (Meg is particularly weak), but the plot is more sophisticated and fast-moving than some of Delinsky’s earlier work. It will satisfy her fans and may even win her some new readers. Agent, Amy Berkower.

( Courtesy of Publishers Weekly,   paperback 533 pages )

Literature often offers escape. The bookshelves are full of stories that place us in exotic settings surrounded by beautiful people living exciting lives — elevating us, if only briefly, above the mounting piles of laundry and the meals to be made. These tales fill our need to explore “otherness” for a while. But it’s the more true-to-everyday-life stories that are often the most satisfying because they provide the recognizable, the familiar themes that we can all identify with on some level. It is here — in the telling of stories about common, ordinary people — where Barbara Delinsky excels.

In AN ACCIDENTAL WOMAN, Delinsky returns to Lake Henry, the scene of an earlier novel, and revisits a few characters that you’ve met before, if you follow Delinsky’s work. (Don’t take that to mean that this is part of a series; it is not. It’s stands alone as a strong mystery and compelling character piece.) A 14-year resident of the town, Heather Malone, has become the focus of national attention. A quiet, well-liked woman who has made a life with widower Micah Smith and his two children, Heather is at the center of a 15 year old murder case and is suspected of being someone else, someone entirely different.

As the town struggles to come to grips with the fact that they might not truly know this woman that they have lived among these many years, her friends stand beside her. Poppy Blake, in particular, comes to the foreground as Heather’s greatest supporter. The story in many ways is more about Poppy than Heather, who surfaces only infrequently to add tension to the unraveling of the murder mystery, but whose true character we never really get to know. It’s Poppy, wheelchair-bound after a snowmobile accident and now running the town’s telephone messaging service, who, despite physical limitations, charges forth to help Heather and at the same time find true love with Griffin Hughes, an investigative reporter. Griffin helps Poppy come to terms with the accident that left her a paraplegic and shows her that she can have the future and love she thought were out of her reach. It is Poppy that we see grow and change throughout the book.

The mystery is a backdrop to the relationships that grow out of bonds forged in trying times, in times of loss and helplessness. For instance, Heather’s imprisonment leaves Micah without a partner during the maple harvesting season, but Delinsky delivers a town of caring, helping hands reminiscent of another time period, a town that steps forward to assist one of its own. In AN ACCIDENTAL WOMAN, Delinsky gives us refreshingly realistic folk facing the same issues and problems we all face — loss and love.

Wine makers call its meritage: the commingling of several varietal wines into a product that can be marketed as a brand name, year after year. With this novel, the latest of 60-plus, veteran writer Delinsky has once again done exactly that, producing a fan-pleasing blend. At 35, Olivia Jones is a restorer of old photographs, and the mother, via a brief relationship, of a dyslexic, unhappy and bratty 10-year-old named Tess. Herself the daughter of a single mother who checked out as soon as Olivia turned 18, Olivia fantasizes about being related to Natalie Seebring, a client who is the strong-willed and manipulative matriarch of a dysfunctional family of Rhode Island wine makers. When Natalie offers to hire Olivia to be her memoirist and “”personal buffer”” for a summer, she jumps at the chance. Soon she is embroiled in the turmoil caused when septuagenarian widow Natalie decides to marry former vineyard manager Carl Burke. Natalie’s middle-aged children object loudly, and several family employees resign in protest. Meanwhile, Olivia is attracted to Carl’s son (and successor as vineyard manager), Simon, who has become a solitary workaholic since the death of his entire family four years earlier in a sailing accident. The only suspense in the slow-moving plot comes at the end, when a hurricane threatens the wine crop, coinciding with the emotional storms produced by Natalie’s easily anticipated revelations about her early life; the style is undistinguished, replete with clich s and italics. Readers who prefer full-bodied novels are likely to find this story bland, thin and cloying. Those fond of literary Beaujolais nouveau, however, to be gulped down on a summer’s day without critique, will enjoy this practiced blend of pop psychology, wine-making lore, learning-disability theory and sensuality.

( Courtesy of Publishers Weekly,   paperback 488 pages )