Five children meet on the first day of kindergarten. In the years that follow, they become friends and more than friends. Together, they will find strength, meet challenges, face life’s adventures, endure loss, face stark realities, and open their hearts. In this moving novel, #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel traces their unforgettable journey—full of tests and trials—as three boys and two girls discover the vital bonds that will last a lifetime.

Danielle Steel's forty-seventh bestselling novel is very much about the tides of our times, changes and responsibilities in the workplace pull two people in different directions, sweeping them into new lives and changed worlds----. Irresistible Forces For fourteen years, Steve and Meredith Whitman have sustained a marriage of passion and friendship - despite the demands of two all-consuming careers. Meredith, an investment banker, has achieved partnership in one of Wall Street's top firms. Steve A gifted physician, chose an urban trauma ward over the big money he could have earned elsewhere. The only thing missing in their lives is children. Steve longs for them. But Meredith keeps putting off motherhood, saying she isn't ready and doesn't have time. Not yet. Especially now that she has been offered an extraordinary opportunity, a chance to reach for the brass ring - in San Francisco, three thousand miles away. Meredith is thrilled and surprised when Steve urges her to accept a top position at an exciting young high-tech company. Traditionally, men's careers forces families to move to new cities, compelling their wives to abandon friends, home, and lives to follow. But Steve is more than willing to uproot himself. Saying he'll join her as he can find a new job himself, they can begin their family at last. Neither Steve nor Meredith had reckoned on the frustrations of a bi-coastal marriage, as Steve's job keeps him in New York for months longer than planned. Weekends together, their lifeline, fall prey to their hectic schedules. Alone in San Francisco, Meredith is spending long hours at the office with her boss, charismatic entrepreneur Callan Dow. Steve working late shifts at the hospital, grabbing an occasional dinner with a new colleague, a doctor raising a daughter on her own. Almost unnoticed, Steve and Meredith have begun living separate lives in increasingly separate worlds. And despite the best of intentions, irresistible forces begin to tear their lives and hearts apart. With unerring insight, Danielle Steel explores what happens when lives that fit together like delicately balanced puzzles are shifted, changed, and drift apart. Only time can tell who and what they will become as life sweeps them onward and deposits them on new, sometimes frightening, and often exciting shores. Who survives, is at the core of Irresistible Forces .

Carole Barber has come to Paris to work on her novel and to find herself. A legend of film and stage, Carole has set a standard of grace, devoting herself to her family and causes around the world. But one fiery instant of terror shatters hundreds of lives—and leaves Carole alone, unconscious and unidentified. In the days that follow, as the truth emerges, the paparazzi swarm. A mysterious stranger quietly visits the hospital to see the woman he once loved and never forgot. Carole’s grown children rush to her bedside, waiting and praying—until the miraculous begins to happen. But as a woman whom the whole world knows slowly awakens, she knows nothing of herself. Every detail must be pieced back together—from a childhood in rural Mississippi to the early days of her career, from the unintentional hurt inflicted on her daughter to a fifteen-year-old secret love affair that went tragically wrong. Carole has been given a second chance to count her blessings, heal wounded hearts, recapture lost love...and to live a life that will truly honor others—beginning with herself. A tale of survival and dignity, of small miracles and big surprises, Honor Thyself creates an unforgettable portrait of a public figure whose hopes, fears, and heartbreaks are as real as our own. Her courageous journey inspires us all.

Rachel Hartog is only eight when the Nazis invade Holland. As the Nazis close in, Rachel and her family go into hiding, moving from house to house in the middle of the night. Then the Hartogs become separated.

We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children--but no long-term relationship is as simple as 2happily ever after. 3The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. You experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy--an annotation and a guide to what we are reading. This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience--fictional, philosophical, psychological--that urges us to identify deeply with these characters, and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love.

Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows your secrets, your fears, your desires, your strange imperfect self? Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes,[Bokinfo]

By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society. Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt, enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus's livestreamed assassination spectacle : the Lamb's Gauntlet. Melinoe is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks. When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs, the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she's had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother she might stand a chance of staying alive. For Melinoe, this is a game she can't afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption. As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything : Inesa wonders if there's more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she's capable of more than killing. And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.

What happens when your Prince Charming turns out not to be so charming after all? In To Have and To Hold , bestselling author Jane Green offers a sizzling, highly entertaining look at romantic relationships after we say “I do.” Alice knows she should be happy. A charming twenty-eight-year-old with a successful catering business, she’s always dreamed of a rose-covered cottage in the English countryside, filled with children and animals and home-cooked meals. Her favorite attire is comfy jeans, her best manicure features garden dirt under the nails. But when her teenage crush—the wealthy, dashing man-about-town Joe Chambers—wants to make her his bride, Alice is more than willing to play Cinderella to Joe’s prince. Never mind that he wants her to change—a diet, ice-blond highlights, stilettos, snooty gallery openings—and that he’s allergic to nature and kids. She tells herself she’s happy to sacrifice for love, and besides, with Joe’s stunning good looks and high-profile career at a top financial firm, every woman in London wants to be in her shoes. But that’s just the problem. Despite Alice’s efforts to be the perfect wife, Joe soon reveals a penchant for being hopelessly unfaithful. When a notorious indiscretion with a female colleague forces Joe to transfer to New York, Alice’s life turns upside down. As Joe continues to sneak around, and her best friend’s beau offers a tempting glimpse of what real love could be like, Alice must decide how much Cinderella she can take before her deepest desires win out—and if she can summon up the courage to find real happiness on her own. Delicious, witty, and packed with sparkling sex appeal, To Have and To Hold is an unputdownable read that will have you rooting out loud for its endearing heroine. A #1 bestseller in Britain, this latest tale from the beloved, utterly winning Jane Green proves that the search for true love doesn’t always end when someone dons a veil, and offers a lively, refreshing take on modern marriage.

Maggie and Sylvie are perfect strangers: two very different women, living very different lives on opposite coasts. But they share more in common than they could ever imagine. Both women have beautiful children on the verge of flying the nest, the home they worked hard to build and always longed for, and a handsome and devoted husband they can't believe belongs to them. Both women think their lives are seamlessly secure, but they couldn't be more wrong . . . For each is about to discover a secret that will shake their world to the very core, throwing into doubt everything they ever thought they knew, and bringing Maggie and Sylvie together in the most unexpected way.

The glorious novel from the bestselling Lesley Lokko; an epic tale of three women whose lives interweave over decades. In a beachfront mansion in Martha's Vineyard, Annick and Rebecca relax, safe in the knowledge that their young children are in the care of life-long friend Tash. But by the end of the afternoon, one of the children will have vanished... Annick, daughter of an actress and an assassinated president, has spent her life running from the truth of her family's wealth. Rebecca has always done the right thing. Perfect daughter. Perfect wife. Perfect mother. She's beginning to wonder if she'll ever get chance to live for herself. And Tash, free from the poverty of her heritage, has the world at her feet. So why is she struggling to keep a grip on her life? This is the sweeping story of three very different women; their pasts, their secrets, and their friendship.

When his father is injured while rescuing three children from a fire, Max is very worried about him until he is finally allowed to visit him in the hospital.

Hilary learns an important lesson in safety: never accept a ride from a stranger.

With her three children, beautiful home, and loving husband, Margaret Crane is a woman others would envy. Adam's job has cushioned them nicely over the years, and it should be a time of contentment, rewards, of new challenges together. But lately Adam has been working too late, too hard, at the office. Margaret is sure it's just the rumored takeover of his company--until she meets Randi, The Other Woman... Meanwhile, Nina, the orphaned cousin the Cranes raised as their own daughter, is reveling in New York. She thinks she's found Mr. Right in Keith, a brilliant investment banker. But Keith has a secret he has not shared with Nina. All he asks for is time...and patience. And as Nina clings to stolen weekends with Keith, Margaret plays dutiful wife, trying to ignore warning signs of her own failing marriage. A rift has developed between the two women who have loved each other as mother, daughter, friends. Keith is not welcome in Margaret's home. And Nina herself is the other woman...

It began almost like a fairy tale. Plain Jane and Prince Charming met in college, fell in love, and were married soon after graduation. She shelved her dreams of a career as a painter to help him through medical school, and to be the perfect doctor's wife. He became a successful plastic surgeon and they had two beautiful children together. But real life is no fairy tale. Suspecting there was another woman behind his erratic schedule, she went to his office to confront him. What happens that night leads to the end of a marriage and the breakup of a family. Like "Whispers," Belva Plain's novel about spousal abuse, "After The Fire" deals with one of the more provocative issues of our time: the battle of child custody as a woman finds herself overpowered by her husband's ruthless actions. Here is the story of one such woman who, in the aftermath of an ugly divorce, alone must rebuild her world, find the strength and wherewithal to live in it, and regain a life with her children. Only Belva Plain, with her insight into the American family and the hearts of those who comprise it, could create a novel like this, showing that sometimes even real life can have a happy ending.

Run away with me is a profoundly romantic YA novel about two teenage boys finding each other and falling in love over one summer in Rome.

'A . . . tender love story . . . This book is alive. It pulses with warmth and intelligence' The Times A wickedly observed novel about falling in love at the end of your life, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question. At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two carers with tangled tales of her husbands and affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he's whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. He forgets nothing -especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has long hung over him. There's very little left remaining for either of them. . . But perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way, and find new meaning in what's left. * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020*

Critics in Britain are already raving about Charlotte Mendelson’s excoriatingly funny yet deeply humane novel about a glamorous London family that happens to be falling apart. The Rubins are the perfect family. They’re wonderfully happy and very glamorous. The mother, Claudia, is the ultimate Jewish a powerful rabbi known for her charm, brains, and determination. Now this dynastic Jewish family is getting ready to marry off the perfect eldest son. History, community, and even gastronomy unite the guests lucky enough to attend this joyous occasion. But when the groom -- one minute before exchanging vows -- bolts with the wrong woman, the myths that have defined this family take on darker overtones. Mendelson’s astonishing eye for detail, as well as her just-right balance of plot and character, makes the unfolding of this story an uncommon treat. In a marvelously compressed style that also bursts with life, she reveals how all four adult Rubin children, and their parents, struggle with huge secrets, sexual frustration and sexual experimentation, and many betrayals. Charlotte Mendelson opens a window on a realm rarely explored in British the complicated world of English Jewry. But to watch this seemingly blessed family drastically, disastrously fall apart before regaining balance is to understand that their struggles -- like all of ours -- are universal ones.

Kayla and Mishalla, two genetically engineered enslaved non-human (GENs), fall in love with higher-status boys, discover deep secrets about the creation of GENs, and in the process find out what it means to be human. Enslaved by their genetics. Oppressed by their creators. Fighting for their humanity. On rugged planet Loka, life for best friends Kayla and Mishalla is arduous at best. They are GENs, Genetically Engineered Non-humans, and in their strict caste system, GENs are at the bottom rung of society. GENs are gestated in a tank and sent to work as slaves as soon as they reach age fifteen. When Kayla is Assigned to care for Zul Manel, the patriarch of a trueborn family, she finds secrets and surprises--not least of which is her budding friendship with Zul's handsome great-grandson. Meanwhile, the children that Mishalla is Assigned to care for are being stolen in the middle of the night, and a strange lowborn boy is hanging around nearby. After weeks of toiling in their Assignments, mystifying circumstances enable Kayla and Mishalla to reunite. Together with the boys, they hatch a plan to save the disappearing children. Yet can GENs really trust humans? Both girls must put their lives and hearts at risk to crack open a sinister conspiracy, revealing secrets no one is ready to face. The first in a trilogy, Tankborn is a page-turning sci-fi thriller that will leave readers scrambling for the sequel! Check out the other titles in this series: TANKBORN * AWAKENING * REBELLION

Bestselling author Santa Montefiore’s spellbinding, historical trilogy reaches its sweeping and heartwarming conclusion in The Last Secret of the Deverills. A new generation of love and war at Castle Deverill... Ireland, 1939. Peace flourishes throughout the country, but much has changed for the Deverill family. In Dublin, Martha Wallace searches for her birth mother. Given up for adoption as a baby and raised in America, Martha returns to Ireland to connect with her Irish roots. Instead, she falls in love with the impossibly charming JP Deverill, and together they uncover the truth about her family. At Castle Deverill, the humble daughter of the castle’s former cook is now Countess di Marcantonio and mistress of the Castle. Bridie is determined to make the splendid surroundings her home, but to do so she must turn a blind eye to the failings of her husband and son. Kitty has settled into her life with Robert and their two children, but when Jack O’Leary returns to Ballinakelly with a family of his own, she realizes she never forgot her first love, even though his heart belongs elsewhere. As the Second World War hovers on the horizon, the Deverills uncover a secret that will forever change their lives. The Last Secret of the Deverills is the dramatic conclusion to a stunning saga about a family caught in the sweep of history, and the ties that keep them together.

From the award-winning author of Minor Characters comes a haunting novel about the persistence of love and the sustaining and destabilizing power of memories In the vibrant downtown Manhattan art world of the 1960s, where men and women collide in "lucky and unlucky convergences," a series of love affairs has left Joanna Gold, a young photographer, feeling numbed. Then, at yet another party, a painter named Tom Murphy walks up to her. "Why do you hang back?" he asks. Rather than another brief collision, their relationship is the profound and ecstatic love each had longed to find. But it's undermined by Tom's harrowing past--his fatherless childhood, his wartime experiences, and most of all, the loss of the two children he left behind in Florida, along with the powerful red, white, and black paintings he will never set eyes on again. Tom, both tender and volatile, draws Joanna into the unwinnable struggle against the forces that drive him toward death. Once again, Joyce Johnson brings to life a mythic bohemian world where art is everything and life is as full of intensity and risk as the bold sweep of a painter's brush across a canvas. A New York Times Notable Book Excerpted in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine