Archives de catégorie : Women’s Fiction

THE PIECES OF US de Claire Alexander

Three generations of women. Three life altering events. As they discover the truth of their heritage, they’ll discover what makes the pieces of us…

THE PIECES OF US
by Claire Alexander
Penguin Michael Joseph UK, August 2025
(via Mushens Entertainment)

At fifty-eight Minnie McAllister isn’t an old woman. But as Alzheimer’s ravages her mind, her brain says otherwise.

Cat McAllister is tackling everything life can throw at her. And just when she thinks it can’t get any worse, she’s faced with the discovery that Minnie might not be the mother she once knew.

Meanwhile, Cat’s daughter, Ruby McAllister, who is staring at a two very blue lines, faces a decision that will change the course of her life.

As three generations of women are pulled in three different directions, each are forced to learn lessons about themselves that they never could have imagined.

Claire Alexander lives with her young family on the west coast of Scotland. A freelance journalist, she has written about parenting, sobriety, mental health and wellbeing for publications including The Washington Post, The IndependentThe Huffington Post and Glamour. When she’s not writing or parenting, she’s on her paddle board, thinking about her next book. Claire is the author of Meredith, Alone and The Pieces of Us is her second novel.

THE SADDEST GIRL ON THE BEACH de Heather Frese

Grieving her father’s death, Charlotte McConnell seeks solace at the Outer Banks inn owned by her best friend’s family, but she finds them dealing with their own family drama and soon lands in the center of an unexpected love triangle.

THE SADDEST GIRL ON THE BEACH
by Heather Frese
Blair Publishing, Spring 2024
(via Harvey Klinger, Inc.)

Her hotel family welcomes Charlotte with chowder dinners and a cozy room, but her friend Evie has a looming life change of her own, and soon Charlotte seeks other attractions to navigate her grief. Will she, like in some television movie, find her way back through a romance, or are there larger forces at play on Hatteras Island? Heather Frese, winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize and author of The Baddest Girl on the Planet, sets Charlotte on a beautifully rendered course through human frailty and longing, unrelenting science, and the awesome forces of the Carolina coast.

A metaphor-rich, coming-of-age, contemporary novel about finding your equilibrium while experiencing overwhelming grief.”Booklist

Heather Frese’s debut novel, The Baddest Girl on the Planet, won the Lee Smith Novel Prize, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and was named one of the Women’s National Book Association’s Great Group Reads of 2021. She attended Ohio University for her M.A. followed by an M.F.A. in fiction from West Virginia University. A freelance writer, Heather worked with Outer Banks publications as well as publishing short fiction, essays, poetry, and interviews in various literary journals, including Michigan Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles ReviewFront Porch, the Barely South ReviewSwitchback, and elsewhere. Coastal North Carolina is her longtime love and source of inspiration, her writing deeply influenced by the wild magic and history of the Outer Banks. She currently writes, edits, and teaches in Raleigh, North Carolina.

INTO THE STORM de Cecelia Ahern

A storm lies ahead of her. Freedom lies beyond it …

INTO THE STORM
by Cecelia Ahern
HarperCollins UK, October 2024
(via Park & Fine Literary and Media)

Enya is driving home on a dark and rainy night in the Dublin mountains when she stumbles across an accident. As a fierce storm rages, a teenage boy her own son’s age lies between life and death. A doctor, Enya provides life-saving CPR. But soon the police are asking her about the accident, the taxi driver first to the scene is stalking her at work and at home, and her soon to be ex-husband is wondering why she was on those Dublin mountain roads in the first place.

Fixated on the teenage boy who now lies in a coma, Enya leaves her husband and takes a temporary physician’s gig in a small rural village. Her life spiraling, she hopes to anchor and empower herself again in a new community. But as the wheel of the year turns and she tries to reconcile her past and forge a new future, the secrets that drove her from Dublin begin to rise, and Enya is faced with an inevitable choice that could lead to the destruction of life as she knows it.

A terrific story! It had me completely gripped from the very first page.” —Karin Slaughter, NYT Bestselling author of Pretty Girls

Cecelia Ahern was born and grew up in Dublin. Her novels have been translated into thirty-five languages and have sold more than twenty-five million copies in over fifty countries. Two of her books (Ps, I Love You and Love, Rosie) have been adapted as films and she has created several TV series. She and her books have won numerous awards, including the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction for The Year I Met You. She lives in Dublin with her family.

CARTIER de Sophie Villard

Love, intrigue and the most desirable jewellery in the world – the first instalment in a two-book series about the Cartier family’s glamorous life.

CARTIER: Der Traum von Diamanten
(Diamond Dreams)
The Cartier Saga, Book 1
by Sophie Villard
Penguin Germany, November 2024

Paris, 1910. Now that her engagement to an aristocrat has been called off, Jeanne Toussaint tries to make ends meet as a seamstress in unsavoury Montmartre. One night, she meets jeweller Louis Cartier in a nightclub. He and his brothers have shops in Paris, London and New York where anyone who’s anyone buys their jewellery. Louis immediately recognises that Jeanne has a sure sense of style and is immensely talented. But it’s more than that: he can’t deny his attraction to this charming, vivacious young woman. But storm clouds are gathering on Europe’s horizon, and the Cartier family are in danger of losing everything.

Sophie Villard is the pen name of a successful German author. She studied journalism and political science, and lives near Dresden with her family. Her novel about the famous art collector Peggy Guggenheim was a Spiegel bestseller. After Madame Exupéry und die Sterne des Himmels (‘Madame Exupéry and the Starry Skies’) and Mademoiselle Eiffel und der Turm der Liebe (‘Mademoiselle Eiffel and the Tower of Love’), she has now turned to writing an exciting saga about the Cartiers.

THE OTHER SIDE OF NOW de Paige Harbison

A hilarious and heartfelt novel about how loves and lives are never truly lost, for fans of Rebecca Serle and Taylor Jenkins Reid.

THE OTHER SIDE OF NOW
by Paige Harbison
St. Martin’s Press, June 2025

With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath the layers of makeup and hairspray, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a small breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip where she knows the grass is greener: Ireland. Specifically, the quaint little village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving―a dream that fell apart when an accident claimed Aimee’s life a decade ago.

When Meg arrives, the people in town are so nice, treating her not as a stranger, but a friend. Except for the (extremely hot) bartender giving her the cold shoulder. Meg writes it all off as jetlag until she looks in the mirror. Her hair is no longer bleached within an inch of its life, her skin has a few natural fine lines, and her nose looks like… well, her old nose. Her real nose.

Her phone reveals hundreds of pictures of her life in this little town: with an adorable dog she doesn’t know; with the bartender who might be her (ex?) boyfriend; and at a retail job unrelated to acting. Eventually, she comes to accept that she somehow made a quantum slide into an alternate version of her life. But the most shocking realization of all? In this life, her best friend Aimee is alive and well…but wants nothing to do with Meg.

Despite her bewilderment, Meg is clear-eyed about one thing: this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reconnect with her friend and repair what she broke. She finagles an opportunity to act in the play Aimee is writing and directing and as the project unfolds, Meg realizes that events as she remembers them may not be the only truth, and that an impossible choice looms before her.

Paige Harbison is the author of three YA novels, the first of which was published in 2011 when she was just nineteen years old. More recently, she’s worked on several celebrity projects as a ghostwriter. The Other Side of Now is her adult debut. A woman of many talents, she’s also a beautiful artist (check out the pet portraits on her website) and has a solid social media presence, amassing millions of views on her one-minute-movies. She lives in L.A. with her boyfriend and their dog Tarot.