Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

Thirty-year-old Tina Fontana is great at her job. As the executive assistant to the CEO of a multinational media conglomerate, she spends her days making reservations, pouring drinks, and putting out small, ridiculous fires. Her boss loves her, trusts her, and couldn't function without her. But things aren't going well for Tina. The glamour of her job is long gone and her student loan debt and inability to pay the rent has stuck around. One day, while preparing expense reports for her boss, Tina realizes that a technical error has put enough money into her bank account to pay off all of her debt. She should let someone know of the error, but she also realizes that her boss has so much money he would never notice what is missing. Against her will, Tina lets a few others in on what happened and they begin to pay off debts for other assistants around the company. Very quickly, what started out as one little indiscretion turns into a movement that Tina can’t quite contain. ...

Sofia Khan has decided to swear off men for good after breaking off her engagement to a man who was a little too close to his family. Okay, “a little too close” is an understatement - the man wanted them to live in a house with an actual hole in the wall that led in to his parents house next door. Much to her parents dismay, Sofia has had enough.  But the people she works with at a publishing house have a different idea. They think a Muslim dating book is a fantastic idea to fill a hole in the market and that Sofia is the best person to write it. She loves having the opportunity to write a book but it means that she’s going to have to jump back into the dating pool to do so. As the deadline approaches quickly, she’ll have to deal with her marriage obsessed relatives, internet dating, disastrous dates, and love where you least expect it. Sofia Khan is Not Obliged , by Ayisha Malik, is a fun, fresh novel about dating and finding Mr. Right. Told from the perspective of a So...

Jessica Beam loves to party.  But she loves to party too much, so much so that she’s lost both her home and her job because of it.  Down on her luck and with no one to turn to, she seeks out her long-lost grandmother. Matilda Beam is the exact opposite of her granddaughter.  Her etiquette guides that made her a household name in the 1950’s aren’t needed by the young women of today and with her only source of income gone, the bills are piling up.  If things don’t pick up fast, she’ll lose her home and a whole lot more. After finding each other, Jessica and Matilda get one shot to turn things around. A London publisher has offered them a deal - if Matilda can turn Jessica into a demure, vintage lady by using all the rules of her old-fashioned Good Woman guides, then they will publish an updated version of Matilda’s books.   But the plan will only be considered successful if Jessica can capture the heart of Leo Frost, London’s most notorious playboy. ...

Amy Lane is about to have the worst Christmas ever. Her husband of twenty years has just left her for a younger woman with a stripper pole in her bedroom.  Her university age children have called to tell her that they won’t be coming home Christmas day.  And as usual, her year ten students are capturing her lowest moments on video and uploading them to the internet. Bella Bradley will once again be having the Christmas of everyone’s dreams.  The queen of television cooking, her Christmas specials are always the highest rated shows.  She’s married to the ‘Silver Fox,” a war correspondent loved by all.  Her life is just one big Hello magazine spread. When Amy’s and Bella’s Christmases collide, it can only result in one thing - the best bake off the country has ever seen.   Bella’s Christmas Bake Off , by Sue Watson, is a fun novel that includes all of the essentials of Christmas - friendship, baking, helping each other out, and of course, a lit...

Annabel Buchanan has lived a life that many dream of.  Like the generations of her family before her, she is beautiful, wealthy, and has impeccable manners.  Or so she likes everyone to think.  A tragedy is about to show the cracks in her perfect image. Annabel’s teenage daughter Izzy is in need of a kidney transplant.  They are desperate to find a donor and Annabel must turn to her family - her real family.  It turns out that Annabel was given up for adoption by her teenage parents. When Annabel first meets the Bensons, she is embarrassed and put off by who she discovers.  The Bensons are, well, let’s just say not as well put together as Annabel is.  And the Bensons aren’t exactly impressed by Annabel’s pedigree.   As Christmas approaches, Izzy’s situation becomes more dire and the Bensons and Buchanans soon find themselves growing close as they race to find a donor.  Maybe this holiday season, Annabel will discover ...

Kimmy Jones dreams of two things - seeing her name in the headlines of the gossip pages she loves to read and owning her own cupcake company.  While she may only ever read the gossip magazines, she can definitely get her company up and running.  But when her boyfriend tells her that owning her own company isn’t sensible and that she should get a job sorting potatoes with him, she realizes that her relationship has come to an end. Finding herself homeless just before Christmas, Kimmy pretends to be a professional house sitter along with her best friend Jess and her first job is at the incredible Mistletoe Mansion.  Before she knows it, she’s living the glamorous life she always dreamed of.  She becomes fast friends with Melissa, the golf WAG next door who has the paparazzi staking out her home.  And her cupcake business is off and running thanks to Melissa and her rich friends.   But Mistletoe Mansion isn’t all it seems.  Some very strange th...

Becky Bloomwood is on her biggest mission yet…and it has nothing to do with shopping. The last time we saw Becky, her father Graham had disappeared with her best friend’s husband, Tarquin.  All she knows is that they left Los Angeles because Graham was hoping to set right a relationship from the past.  But Becky’s mom, and her best friend Suze, are convinced there is something more sinister happening and that the men are in danger.  Now it’s up to them to track the men down. And so, an RV carrying Becky, her husband Luke, her daughter Minnie, her mom Jane, her mom’s best friend Janice, Suze, and Becky’s archenemy Alicia is headed to Las Vegas and time is of the essence. Shopaholic to the Rescue is the 8th novel in the always popular Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella.  It is a fun and witty story of adventure and hijinks that only Becky can get herself into. So let’s start with the obvious, what everyone is saying when it comes to this series....

Ava Clements has never been lucky in love.  The only time she ever felt true love in her life was six years ago when a secret admirer began sending her letters.  She was supposed to meet up with the mystery man but he never showed and the letters stopped.  Her best friends Max and Gwen were there to pick her up but she has never been the same. Thankfully, she has been able to throw herself into her work writing for a magazine.  She lost out on the opportunity to write the dating column to the office bitch. But she has an idea of how to win back her position and it involves reuniting two lovers separated fifty years earlier.  With everything going on, she doesn’t have much time for love.   But now, the letters have started again.  And as much as she wants to forget him, she can’t. Ava is determined this time around to make sure she finds out who he is.  Because he is the only man she has ever loved. Just the Way You Are , by Lynsey J...

Rory McGovern has what many people would consider the perfect life.  Forty-something, she has a creative freelance job, two beautiful children, and is married to an actor.  She is in the prime of her life and loving it. Until one day, her husband Blake returns home from auditioning, despairing over losing out on another part, and announces that he needs a break.  In other words, he’s leaving.  Just like that, Rory is a single mother in need of a job.   When a colleague tells her of an opportunity at a digital media start-up, Rory jumps at it because she has no other options.  But this new job is a high-end lifestyle website - for kids.  Rory now has to spend her days sourcing furniture and home decor for toddlers.  On top of that, her bosses are girls barely out of childhood themselves.  Can Rory navigate this new, foreign world of millennials while holding her marriage and family together? How to Be a Grown-up is the newest n...

Imogen has worked hard caring for her widowed father while working and going to school part-time and now it is time for her to take a giant step that will change her life forever.  She is going to chase her dreams, moving to London to make it as a writer.  Or so she thinks. Imogen made it to London but becoming a writer is proving to be much harder than she thought.  And so she is working a dead-end job at a coffee shop, serving drinks to hipsters, yummy mummy’s, and stressed out businessman.  Not the dream she had in mind. But when her gorgeous colleague Declan puts an idea in her head, she may end up closer to her dream after all.  Imogen starts a tell-all blog about London’s rudest customers, all anonymous of course.  What she thinks is just a tiny little blog becomes an overnight viral sensation.  But writing the blog means remaining in her job.  And it turns out, trying to remain anonymous on the internet isn’t so easy after all. ...

The last time we saw Tess Brookes she was in Hawaii, pretending to be her flatmate, working as a photographer, and finding herself in way over her head in all aspects of her life.  And now, she has a major decision to make.  Charlie, her best friend and the guy she has been lusting after for years is finally starting to feel the same way.  He wants her to stay in London, start a new advertising agency with him, and more importantly, start a relationship.  But she also has the opportunity to head to Milan and start a new career in photography.  And waiting for her there is Nick, the frustrating but extremely sexy man she met in Hawaii.  For once, Tess has to choose between two lives she could only have dreamed of before.  It’s time for Tess to decide exactly what she wants out of life. What a Girl Wants , by Lindsey Kelk, picks up right where About A Girl left off and is a fun, breezy follow-up.  While the first book was about escaping from...

Delia Moss thought everything was going pretty well in her life.  So when she planned a lovely, romantic marriage proposal for her boyfriend of ten years and he said yes, she was on top of the world. Until only a few minutes later, her new fiancé Paul sends her a text that was meant for someone else.  A text that says “She’s proposed. Don’t know what to do” and is meant for the twenty four year old Paul has been seeing on the side.   Delia is devastated.  She realizes that the only way she’ll truly be happy is to find out where the old Delia went and get her back.  She quits the job that has been causing her so much stress and hightails it out of Newcastle to stay with her best friend in London.  It’s not easy starting over in your thirties but Delia is determined to do it.  She takes a job at a small, brand-new PR company and goes back to one of her first loves - the comic strip she created in her teens. But London proves to be more tha...

Cat runs a very successful PR company with her best friend, and secret crush, Jesse.  She is renowned in the celebrity world for the work she does and how good she is at it.  She loves nothing better than seeing her clients in the spotlight, even if it comes through sacrificing her personal life. But as everyone knows, when a celebrity falls from grace, they fall quickly.  And when one of Cat’s footballer clients ends up looking bad in the press, her career is put on hold.  Without her job, Cat doesn’t know what to do.  So when her brother calls her in urgent need of someone to watch his kids for two weeks, she agrees to help him out. “Auntie” isn’t exactly a role Cat has been keen on taking on in the past.  She’s never wanted kids and doesn’t know a thing about looking after them.  And her niece and nephew, Ellie and Charlie, know it.  But Cat isn’t completely alone at this.  She has hunky Finn, Uncle to Ellie’s friend, to help he...

This book will be published on 10 July 2015 and is available for pre-order. Milly Rose is a hopeless romantic and obsessed with all things Disney.  So it only makes sense that she makes her living determining the history and authenticity of castles.  And though she has experienced her fair share of heartbreak, she hasn’t ruled out meeting her Prince Charming. When Milly is sent to the little village of Clovers Rest to investigate a building, she discovers every little girls dream.  Complete with turrets, a drawbridge, and secret tunnels, Clover Castle is straight out of a fairytale.  And so is its handsome owner, Cameron Heartstone. Both Milly and Cameron have been burned in relationships before and neither are looking for love.  As they begin discover the secrets that lie within the castle, they cannot fight their feelings for each other.  And with the help of a few eccentric villagers and a century-old love story, they may end up finding th...

Forty-two-year-old Imogen Tate has returned to her job as editor in chief of Glossy magazine to find that her twenty-something former assistant Eve Morton has taken over.  Eve is fresh out of Harvard Business School and had decided that the high-fashion magazine, best known for its 768-page September issue, would be better off as an app. But she isn’t stopping there.  Eve has fired all of the “grey hairs,” the older and experienced staff members, and replaced them with a heavy rotation of lookalike twenty year olds who text, tweet, and instagram throughout meetings.  Organic foods and nap rooms are always available not because it is a supportive place to work but because employees are rarely allowed to go home.  And then there are the co-ordinated dances to Beyoncé's music. Imogen, a part of the old guard of fashion journalism, refuses to let Eve take over the magazine but it quickly becomes apparent that if she is going to hold on to her power, she needs ...

In a small English village on New Year's Eve, three strangers form a bond that will change their lives forever. Gemma’s life is centred around her two children, something that lately has been getting her down.  She wishes that her husband and children would view her as more than “just a mom.” Caitlin is in town to pack up her recently deceased mother’s house and figure out what she should do with her life.  Fresh off of the bad break-up of a bad relationship, she feels heartbroken and lost.  Saffron is a PR executive who is keeping a secret from everyone she knows.  She knows that when she reveals it, people around her will be devastated.   At the New Year’s Eve party, the three women bond over cocktails and fortune cookies and vow that the coming year will be their best one yet.  But very quickly, their lives take shocking turns and each has to deal with drastic changes in love, work, and home.  Will they succumb to the pressure or ...

It was a rocky journey to the altar but Gemma and Dominic Heath are finally settling into married life.  Or at least one of them is.  When Gemma sees a photo of her husband in the tabloids, getting on a private plane with the latest pop princess, she starts to think that maybe everyone was right - you just can’t tame a rock star.   When her old flame Jack Hawkins pops back into her life, Gemma soon finds revenge on her mind.  But the whole reason Jack is back in town is something way above what Gemma can handle.  As an international arms dealer, Jack has dealt with his fair share of shady characters.  But when his niece is kidnapped, he has to deal with a blast from his past who can give dictators a run for their money.  And before she knows it, Gemma is all caught up in it as well. Love, Lies, and Louboutins , by Katie Oliver, is the second book in the Marrying Mr. Darcy series, picking up right where the first book left off and taking rea...

Who Should Read This:   Anyone looking for a book with a modern day Jane Austen feel, Chick Lit fans. It’s been a rocky road for rock star and aristocratic heir Dominic Heath and his girlfriend Gemma but their time has finally arrived - it is their wedding.  Wanting to have their day to themselves, they escape to the Scottish Highlands where they will (hopefully) be out of the eyes of the paparazzi. But the weather may put a wrench in their plans.  When a major storm prevents them from getting to their home, they end up at Draemer Castle, with Dom's ex-girlfriend Natalie and her new husband Rhys.  At first, they think they are just staying for a few days with the owners of the castle, Natalie’s friend Tarquin and his wife Wren.  When more snow brings more family members, including Tarquin’s troubled young sister Caitlin, it quickly becomes a case of “the more, the merrier.”  But the arrival of a stranger named Helen may really ruin Dom and Gemma’s...

Every charm bracelet tells a story and this is especially true for Holly O’Neill.  Years ago she was mysteriously sent one with just one charm attached and over the years she has received more charms, coming at her most challenging times.  It’s almost as though the person who is sending them knows exactly what she needs. When Holly finds a lost charm bracelet, knowing how much hers means to her, she knows that she must reunite it with its owner.  But the only way she can find the owner is by using each charm as a clue.  Soon, her search has her heading all over New York City at Christmas time.  And as Holly gets closer and closer to the owner, it also leads her toward something she will never expect.  The Charm Bracelet , by Melissa Hill, is a lovely festive read about the magic of Christmas.  You can just picture the lights and the snow falling all around Holly as she puts her faith in the romance of the season. I’ve probably mentioned ...

Laurie and Rachel were inseparable growing up but as they became adults their lives took two very different paths.  Laurie is a dedicated career-girl, living and working in London, with very little time for much else.  Rachel is living in a beautiful cottage in Yorkshire, spending her days caring for her family, though she worries that her marriage may be in trouble. When Rachel’s mother-in-law falls ill, the family has to head to London for her treatment.  And when Laurie makes a major mistake at work, she decides that it is probably best she get away from it all for a bit.  They come up with a plan to swap houses in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  But as we all know, life doesn’t always go as planned.  Will their relationships be able to survive the holidays and most importantly, will they make it home in time for Christmas? Meet Me Under the Mistletoe is the first novel by chick-lit writer Abby Clements, who has since written three more n...