“This collective and collaborative novel proves that writers share much more than just an interest in, as one of the authors puts it, ‘the idea of creating something of rare beauty out of nothing at all.’ They share a Creative Unconscious that, when working on a common text, comes up with startling and unpredictable imaginative delights and insights.” — Isagani R. Cruz, Philippine Star.

When Ava was six, she already knew that her life was not going to be easy. Her homelife was not like other kids she knew, and she struggled throughout her childhood as a result of it. From an abusive home to a life of violence, her life quickly escalated down the wrong path. While in her twenties, she already had three young children to care for and became addicted to heroin. While addicted, Ava lost everything until she finally managed to get sober after being arrested. Sobriety brought back two of her children, and life did get easier, but something was missing. New love and marriage followed sobriety and brought great happiness, but still something was missing. She struggled spiritually having no religious upbringing, and even started practicing witchcraft. Having not found the spiritual connection she was looking for, Ava searched further. After years of spiritual dead ends, Ava found God and became a Christian, and her life finally became complete.

Celebrated and maligned with equal vigor, the Bloomsbury Group is the best-documented artistic coterie in twentieth-century literature. The novelists Virgonia Woolf and E.M. Forster, the artists Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Vanessa Bell, and the economist John Maynard Keynes were among this charmed circle that emerged in London before the First World War and came to exercise a complex, lingering influence on English art and letters. Theirs was a world of great talent--even genius--sexual intrigue, and gossip; they cultivated an atmosphere in which it was possible to say anything, do anything. Their peak of influence in the 1920s was followed by forty years of sustained sidelong derogation, and occasional frontal attack, from such famously hostile critics as D.H. Larence and Wyndham Lewis, until, in the 1960s, the idea of Bloomsbury exploded in the public imagination, transforming the Group into an almost mass-market attraction. Not in their darkest nightmares could Bloomsbury's contemporary detractors have imagined that Charleston Farmhouse, where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant once lived and painted, would eventually attract some 15,000 visitors each year, or that a high-profile film, Carrington, would be based on Lytton Strachey's largely platonic love affair with an obscure artist on the fringes of the hallowed Group. Bloomsbury Pie examines the persistent allure of Bloomsbury--a fascination driven by nostalgia, adoration, and antipathy--and tracks the resurgence of interest in the Group, from a handful of biographies in the 1960s through the feminist discovery of Virginia Woolf in the 1970s and the enshrinement of the Bloomsberries as cultural icons in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on a wealth of material generated by this revival, Regina Marler chronicles the story of the Bloomsbury boom--its scholars, collectors, and fanatics and explores the industry it has spawned among writers, publishers, and art dealers. In the proces she creates an impressive social history of a tenacious and unwieldy cultural phenomenon.

Emotional family saga following the Angelotti food dynasty, from household name Prue Leith. Perfect for fans of Penny Vincenzi and Barbara Taylor Bradford. A new generation. It is 1968. Angelica Angelotti has grown up in her parents' Italian restaurant. Now she is striking out on her own in Paris. There she falls in love with her charismatic but unpredictable cousin Mario. A fresh challenge. Navigating a blossoming career, from the Savoy hotel to the world of television, alongside an increasingly toxic relationship proves impossible. The offer to run the pub on her family's estate as a restaurant seems like the perfect escape. Chorlton has called her home... A brighter future. Soon she has a thriving business, and even the chance of a new love. But when Mario reappears, determined to win her back, will Angelica be able to hold on to everything she's sacrificed so much for?