Carole Boyd

With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding school in the small town of Villette. There she struggles to retain her self-possession in the face of unruly pupils, an initially suspicious headmaster, and her own complex feelings, first for the school's English doctor and then for the dictatorial professor, Paul Emmanuel. Charlotte Brontë's last and most autobiographical novel is a powerfully...

Unable to stop killing off the heroines of his novels, celebrated writer Mr. Fox is confronted by a living embodiment of his muse, Mary, who challenges him to join her in fairy-tale stories where they must stay together in spite of disparate character traits.

Catherine de Medici's father-in-law, King Francis of France, was the perfect Renaissance knight, the movement's exemplar and its Gallic interpreter. An aesthete, diplomat par excellence, and contemporary of Machiavelli, Francis was the founder of modern France, whose sheer force of will and personality molded his kingdom into the first European superpower. Arguably the man who introduced the Renaissance to France, Francis was also the prototype Frenchman--a...

The new No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller from the master storyteller, Josephine Cox. Family secrets can weigh the heaviest... Although she's surrounded by a loving family, Marie is lonely. The secret she has been carrying for many years is a burden - it's telling could ruin the lives of those she loves most. Marie's granddaughter, Cathy, is a cheerful young woman and in the first flush of love. Her grandmother's secret will not only change Cathy's future...