Search results for ""Author Imogen Clark""

From million-copy bestselling author Imogen Clark comes a story of two families, two babies and one maddeningly hot day that will change their lives forever. It’s the hottest day of the 1976 heatwave and there’s not a breath of fresh air in the labour ward at Lincoln County Hospital. Michelle is having her fourth child, a girl, while beloved husband Dean is sipping a cold pint in the pub. Their little house is already bursting at the seams, but Michelle is sure they’ll find a way to stretch their budget and continue life as a blissfully chaotic happy family. They name their new baby Donna. In the next bed, exhausted and wearing a perfectly impractical lace-trimmed white nightgown, Sylvie has just given birth to her first child at forty and wants to sleep, while her oblivious husband Jeremy hovers and suggests he sketch this ‘perfect moment’. The midwife thinks she’ll feel more like bonding with her baby when she’s had some rest, but Sylvie isn’t so sure. She and Jeremy call their daughter Leonora. When the two little girls are taken to their respective homes, the date of their birth seems to be the only thing to connect them. But one day, years in the future, their paths will cross again when Michelle comes looking for Sylvie—because something happened that blistering hot day, something they both deserve answers to…

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From million-copy bestselling author Imogen Clark comes a story of three siblings and a suitcase full of cash. Will the unexpected windfall tear them apart? When their father dies unexpectedly, siblings Max, Ellie and Nathan can’t even contemplate emptying his house—not least because he spent his last decade curating what feels like a museum to his polished public image. So it is Max’s wife, Caroline, who finds the suitcase under a bed… A suitcase stuffed full of an awful lot of cash. The source of the money is a mystery to them all, and each has a strong opinion about what to do with it. Ellie and her husband James have an expensive lifestyle to maintain and could do with their share of the windfall—James in particular, for reasons he doesn’t dare reveal. Nathan can’t be trusted with money, as the others all know; he’s desperate to get his hands on some (or all) of the cash. But Caroline is the one guarding the suitcase, and she’s insisting to Max that they take it to the police. The three siblings have always been close. But now, with this money from nowhere threatening to rewrite what they thought they knew about their father and their family, nothing seems certain. Could it really tear them apart?

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Home is where the heartache is.Eve has always had a tricky relationship with her mother, Agatha, and returning to Fox House, the family home, hasn’t made it any easier. When Eve’s daughter, Lyra, and granddaughter, Skye, unexpectedly turn up, it becomes clear that four generations of women under one roof is a recipe for trouble. Not least because Lyra clearly needs help but refuses to say why.Lyra decides she wants to live in the ramshackle cottage in the grounds, but when Agatha announces she’s promised it to a man called Dylan, Eve and Lyra are mystified. Who is he, and what reason could Agatha possibly have for giving him the cottage?Because it seems that it’s not only Lyra hiding things. Agatha has secrets she has never had the courage to tell Eve. Is now the right time to finally reveal the truth? And if she does, will it give them the relationships they’ve all longed for—or will it drive them further apart?

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In this poignant novel from the bestselling author of Where the Story Starts, an extraordinary final wish brings five lives together forever. Just turned eighteen, Romany is on the cusp of taking her first steps into adulthood when tragedy strikes, and she finds herself suddenly alone without her mother, Angie, the only parent she has ever known. In her final letter, Angie has charged her four closest friends with guiding Romany through her last year of school—but is there an ulterior motive to her unusual dying wish? Each of the four guardians possesses an outlook on life that Angie wants to give her daughter as a legacy. Three of them have known each other since university: the eternally nomadic and exotically named Tiger; the shy and practical Leon with his untapped musical genius; and Maggie, a brilliant lawyer who doesn’t know her own abilities. But the fourth guardian is a mystery to the others: they’ve never even heard of former model Hope before… As the guardians reflect on their friendship with Angie, it becomes apparent that this unusual arrangement is as much about them as it is about Romany. Navigating their grief individually and as a group, what will all five of them learn about themselves, their pasts—and the woman who’s brought them all together?

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Shortlisted for the RNA’s Goldsboro Books Contemporary Romantic Novel Award. A strange encounter. An unlikely friendship. But will it survive when they both know the truth? As single mother Leah struggles to get her children ready one morning, the doorbell rings. Standing on the doorstep of their terraced house in Whitley Bay is a well-dressed stranger, Clio, who feels an emotional tie to the house that she can’t explain. The story should end there, but a long-buried secret is already on its way to the surface? In some ways the two women couldn’t be more different: Leah’s a mother of two and the daughter of a barmaid; Clio’s a perennially single heiress to her baroness mother’s estate. But where Leah lacks grown-up company, Clio lacks any experience of the real world, and the unlikely friendship sparked by their curious first meeting offers both of them a welcome respite from the routine of their lives. It is a friendship that will answer questions neither of them knew to ask, uncovering secret stories from the past that have stayed hidden for decades. But will it also be the catalyst for them to finally feel that they belong?

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From the bestselling author of Where the Story Starts comes a tale about dealing with the past—and finally facing the future. Pip Appleby seems to have it all, with her prestigious job as a human rights lawyer and her enviable London home. But then a tragic accident stops her life in its tracks, and in an instant everything changes. Retreating to her family’s rural farm and the humble origins she has been trying to hide, Pip is haunted by what she has done. When she discovers the diary of actress Evelyn Mountcastle in a box of old books, Pip revels in the opportunity to lose herself in someone else’s life rather than focus on the disaster that is her own. But soon she sees parallels—Evelyn’s life was also beset by tragedy, and, like Pip, she returned to Southwold under a dark cloud. When Pip and Evelyn’s paths cross in real life they slowly begin to reveal the hidden stories that are holding them back. Can they help each other forgive what happened in the past and, perhaps, find happiness in the future?

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A sudden departure. A story decades in the making. The chaotic but happy equilibrium of the Nightingale family is thrown into disarray when Cecily—whose children can’t remember her ever being remotely spontaneous—disappears to a Greek island with no warning or explanation. Her reasons for doing something so out of character are a total mystery to her three daughters, high-powered executive Felicity, unfulfilled GP Julia and organised mother-of-five Lily. What connection could she possibly have with Kefalonia? But Cecily has gone to continue a story she thought ended decades ago—one that could have a huge impact on her family. And when she returns, she’ll have to tell them the truth. Will Cecily be able to hold her family together once she reveals her big secret? And might she discover that she’s not the only one with a story to tell?

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A dying wish. A devastating secret. Should the truth really stay buried? The four Bliss siblings have a loving but complicated bond, but when their mother, Dorothy, dies seemingly without a will, this relationship is put to the test. As the mourning siblings try to make sense of the situation, one of them is caught with a secret: before she died, Dorothy entrusted her favourite daughter with her will and a letter—and told her to destroy them both. Of course it was Anna their mother turned to for this mission. Miriam, the eldest, is far too sensible; Sebastian, the baby, too sensitive; and Clare, the middle child, has always been too rebellious to rely on, and long ago cut herself out of her siblings’ lives. But what Anna finds in the documents could change everything. Do the other siblings not deserve to know what it is about them that their mother was so desperate to hide? And if it is revealed, will the Bliss family ever be the same again?

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