‘Such a lovely, funny read. Smart, witty and full of heart.’ Ruth Jones Natalie and Carl are newlyweds, but the honeymoon period is over already. Carl has just announced he has bought their first home at auction without telling Natalie where it is, never mind showing her a picture of it. Natalie is horrified to discover that the dream home is in Little Wyford, mere minutes away from Carl’s ex-wife Antonia. And to make matters worse, Antonia’s palatial country mansion has a fully-functioning roof (and a heated swimming pool!), unlike the ramshackle cottage Carl has bought for them... Antonia is Little Wyford’s Queen Bee, mistress of the book club, organiser of the Christmas Fair and leader of the ladies-who-lunch. No matter how hard she tries, Natalie just doesn’t fit in, and when Antonia insists on referring to Carl as ‘Our Husband’, Natalie’s dreams of happily-ever-after take another nose dive. Second-hand furniture has much to recommend it, especially when doing up a country cottage, second-hand clothes can be ever-so chic, but second-hand husbands are proving to be a very bad idea indeed... Can Natalie ever escape the label of Wife Number Two or is she destined to share her husband forever? Hilariously funny, wickedly witty, but with a heart of gold and a warmth and wisdom that are all its own, A Second-Hand Husband is Claire Calman’s tour de force. 'So engrossing, you’ll read until four in the morning!' Jilly Cooper 'With her trademark warmth and wit, Calman unpacks the secrets everyone is keeping' Wendy Holden Praise for Claire Calman: 'Don’t take this hilarious, touching and very clever novel to bed if you’ve got to rise very early the next day, because it is so engrossing, you’ll read until four in the morning. Claire Calman’s plot twists and turns with endless surprises...' Jilly Cooper 'I really, really enjoyed it – I devoured it over four nights. Such a lovely, funny read. Smart, witty and full of heart. The characters were so well defined – I felt I knew them intimately. And the cottage and the pond and village – all the locations in fact were so beautifully depicted, I was completely transported there! But also the dialogue was a joy and such great humour - I laughed out loud on many occasions.' Ruth Jones 'A beautifully observed tale of new love and blending families, with a heroine I was rooting for from the very first page.' Shari Low on A Second-Hand Husband 'A beautiful book, so compassionate... and ultimately very hopeful. I enjoyed it hugely.’ Marian Keyes ‘A clever, bittersweet, uplifting novel’ Sophie Kinsella 'Writing with proper heart' Rachel Joyce 'The characterisation is brilliant, and the astute storytelling, punctuated by stiletto-sharp wit, produces an effervescent and spirit-lifting story.' Sunday Mirror 'A poignant and beautifully articulated tale of love and loss, memory and forgetting, grief and guilt, new love and letting go. I was engrossed, often tearful, and finally, uplifted.’ Isobel Wolff ‘Simply wonderful. I was totally enchanted, devoured it in a day, and have been raving about it ever since.’ Fiona Walker

A tender and heartwarming novel that explores the trials of losing what matters most—and how there’s always more than we can imagine left to find—from the New York Times bestselling author of How to Walk Away and Things You Save in a Fire Now a major motion picture starring Leslie Bibb and Josh Duhamel • “A sweet tale about creating the family you need.”—People Dear Libby, It occurs to me that you and your two children have been living with your mother for—Dear Lord!—two whole years, and I’m writing to see if you'd like to be rescued. The letter comes out of the blue, and just in time for Libby Moran, who—after the sudden death of her husband, Danny—went to stay with her hypercritical mother. Now her crazy Aunt Jean has offered Libby an escape: a job and a place to live on her farm in the Texas Hill Country. Before she can talk herself out of it, Libby is packing the minivan, grabbing the kids, and hitting the road. Life on Aunt Jean’s goat farm is both more wonderful and more mysterious than Libby could have imagined. Beyond the animals and the strenuous work, there is quiet—deep, country quiet. But there is also a shaggy, gruff (though purportedly handsome, under all that hair) farm manager with a tragic home life, a formerly famous feed-store clerk who claims she can contact Danny “on the other side,” and the eccentric aunt Libby never really knew but who turns out to be exactly what she’s been looking for. And despite everything she’s lost, Libby soon realizes how much more she’s found. She hasn’t just traded one kind of crazy for another: She may actually have found the place to bring her little family—and herself—back to life.

Sara had been in love with her colleague Ian for the past ten years…until the day he introduced her to his new fianc?e. Heartbroken, Sara ran away, back to her hometown, only to discover that her parents are no longer there. Instead she finds a rugged young man, covered in dirt, named Stuart. He’s recently moved in down the street, and to Sara’s surprise, he treats her like a princess, taking care of her in her time of distress. She falls instantly in love with this tall, muscular, kind stranger, but can he heal the years of loneliness and heartbreak she carries deep inside?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions—a history of the soul.” Alexievich’s distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation. In Secondhand Time, Alexievich chronicles the demise of communism. Everyday Russian citizens recount the past thirty years, showing us what life was like during the fall of the Soviet Union and what it’s like to live in the new Russia left in its wake. Through interviews spanning 1991 to 2012, Alexievich takes us behind the propaganda and contrived media accounts, giving us a panoramic portrait of contemporary Russia and Russians who still carry memories of oppression, terror, famine, massacres—but also of pride in their country, hope for the future, and a belief that everyone was working and fighting together to bring about a utopia. Here is an account of life in the aftermath of an idea so powerful it once dominated a third of the world. A magnificent tapestry of the sorrows and triumphs of the human spirit woven by a master, Secondhand Time tells the stories that together make up the true history of a nation. “Through the voices of those who confided in her,” The Nation writes, “Alexievich tells us about human nature, about our dreams, our choices, about good and evil—in a word, about ourselves.” A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Financial Times, Kirkus Reviews

"[A] BRILLIANT, WITTY AND PROVOCATIVE NEW NOVEL." --San Francisco Chronicle As a young woman, the brilliant and eternally curious Magda Danvers took the academic world by storm. Then, to everyone's surprise, she married Francis Lake, a mild, midwestern seminarian, who has devoted his life to taking care of his charismatic wife. Now, Magda's grave illness puts their marriage to its ultimate test. Though facing her "Final Examination," Magda continues to arouse her visitors with compelling thoughts and questions. Into this provocative atmosphere comes Alice Henry, retreating from family tragedy and a crumbling marriage to novelist Hugo Henry. But is it the incandescence of Magda's ideas that draws Alice, or the secret of "the good marriage" that she is desperate to discover? For Alice, Hugo, Francis, and Magda will learn that the most ideal relationship--even a perfect marriage--doesn't come without a price.... "COMPELLING WRITING...REMARKABLY SKILLFUL...Gail Godwin shows herself to be at the height of her considerable power as a storyteller and a writer." --The Boston Globe "ONE OF HER FINEST BOOKS...It is not only a well-written story, but a mature and wise one, affirmative in its vision of love, unblinking in its portrayal of tragic loss." --Atlanta Journal & Constitution "FASCINATING...[A] BIG SUMPTUOUS BOOK...HER BEST NOVEL." --Entertainment Weekly "A BRILLIANTLY CRAFTED NOVEL, full of fun and mischief and resonating with wisdom and moral depth." --New Woman A Featured Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club

'A beautiful book, so compassionate... and ultimately very hopeful. I enjoyed it hugely.’ Marian Keyes ‘A clever, bittersweet, uplifting novel’ Sophie Kinsella 'Writing with proper heart' Rachel Joyce It’s not easy being a grown-up, but Eleanor hoped she’d be better at it by now... When Eleanor waves her daughter off for a gap-year trip, she finds herself stuck as a satellite wife, spinning in faithful orbit around her domineering husband, with only her clever but judgmental father Conrad for comfort. Andrew isn’t mastering the art of growing up either. But when he finds his belongings dumped in bin bags on the drive, even he can see that his girlfriend is hinting he should move out. With no other options, he moves back in with his parents. Backing onto their garden lives artist Cecilia, living in chaotic clutter and dreaming of her ex-lovers, still acting like a stroppy teenager at the age of 66. Four lives are drawn together by long-buried secrets of the past, and it is time for them all to grow up... before it’s too late. What readers are saying about Growing Up for Beginners: 'The characterisation is brilliant, and the astute storytelling, punctuated by stiletto-sharp wit, produces an effervescent and spirit-lifting story.' Sunday Mirror 'A poignant and beautifully articulated tale of love and loss, memory and forgetting, grief and guilt, new love and letting go. I was engrossed, often tearful, and finally, uplifted.’ Isobel Wolff ‘Simply wonderful. I was totally enchanted, devoured it in a day, and have been raving about it ever since.’ Fiona Walker