When the sensations finally ceased Tess heard La Patronne saying, 'You see, my dear? Jem is never wrong. Tess will flourish in my little house.' 'I have to agree,' the Chatelaine said, 'She is yours. For the time being, I assume I may punish her again before you take her away from Paris? You know how I like to put these statuesque blondes through their paces.' 'Of course my dear. You may deal with her as severely as you wish. But do remember that for Tess the real punishment is being made aware of how much she deserves to be punished. In my House she'll learn the true meaning of shame.' Drawn from her sheltered life when her housekeeper Tess goes missing, Amanda goes to France in an attempt to find her. During her search Amanda meets Michael, an artist with bizarre sexual tastes who awakens in her a taste for the shameful delights of discipline and introduces her to a secret society of hedonistic perverts who share her unusual desires. Amanda revels in her new-found sexual freedom, voluntarily submitting to extreme indignities of punishment and humiliation, but does not realise until too late the full extent of the society’s depraved and perverted plans. Can Tess and Michael save her from the ultimate degradation the society has in store?

From the award-winning author of The Gentleman’s Daughter,a witty and academic illumination of daily domestic life in Georgian England. In this brilliant work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion, bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings, genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper, servants with only a locking box to call their own. Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer’s ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition. The basis of a 3-part TV series for BBC2. “Vickery is that rare thing, an…historian who writes like a novelist.”—Jane Schilling, Daily Mail “Comparison between Vickery and Jane Austen is irresistible…This book is almost too pleasurable, in that Vickery's style and delicious nosiness conceal some seriously weighty scholarship.”—Lisa Hilton, The Independent “If until now the Georgian home has been like a monochrome engraving, Vickery has made it three dimensional and vibrantly colored. Behind Closed Doors demonstrates that rigorous academic work can also be nosy, gossipy, and utterly engaging.”—Andrea Wulf, New York Times Book Review

An instant national bestseller and "a beautiful story of what love can do to conquer the impossible" (Jann Arden). On the day my daughter was kidnapped by outlaws in Somalia, my life split into two parts: Before and After. This is the story of both parts, and of how I fought to bring my daughter home. On August 23, 2008, Amanda Lindhout, Lorinda Stewart’s daughter, is kidnapped outside of Mogadishu in Somalia. The kidnappers’ demand is simple: pay $2.5 million or Amanda will be killed. For the next 460 days, Lorinda does everything in her power—and beyond—to get her daughter back alive. This brave, small-town mother with no experience in hostage negotiations is called upon by the RCMP to be the lead communicator with Adam, the Somali who identifies himself as the English-speaking negotiator for Amanda's kidnappers. In a secret “war room” in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, Lorinda joins forces with federal officers and begins to answer calls from Adam, establishing a fragile rapport of trust with the man who holds her daughter’s fate in his hands. She learns how to demand POLs—proofs of life—from Amanda’s hostage takers and even how to react to “bad calls”—when she is forced to listen to her daughter’s desperate cries for help, fearing she is being abused and tortured. What’s supposed to be a short negotiation stretches on, and weeks become months. Lorinda finds herself increasingly on her own as negotiations break down. But she never gives up hope, even as the conversations become more traumatic. Faced with the terrible possibility of her daughter’s death, she decides to take control, bringing in private hostage negotiators and fundraising ransom money from donors. But will it be enough? This is the true story of one woman’s heroic perseverance in the face of despair, and of the hope and healing to be found beyond trauma. It is also, in the end, a tribute to the extraordinary power of a mother’s love.

Een gescheiden echtpaar ontmoet elkaar weer na vijf jaar, terwijl zij beiden op huwelijksreis zijn met hun nieuwe partner.

When Olivia’s twin brother, Liam, starts dating, she tries to drive away his girlfriends in an effort to get her best friend back. But she meets her match in Zoey, Liam’s latest fling. A call-it-like-she-sees-it kind of girl, Zoey sees right through Olivia’s tricks and they fall for each other.

Jem Darke, A Mistress of the Private House, is bored. So bored that she rashly accepts a challenge to submit to the harsh discipliary regime at the Chateau, where the Chatelaine and her depraved minions will delight in administering torments and humiliaton designed to make Jem abandon the wager and relinquish her supreme authority. Only the Sapphic bond formed between Jem and the other captives will give them the strength to surprise their tormentors - only their acceptance of the strict rules of pleasure and pain will win them freedom.

“A book that is at once riveting and relevant as it unpeels the various meanings of motherhood, family, and loyalty. I tore through it.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace The bonds between three picture-perfect—but viciously protective—mothers and their close-knit sons are tested during one unforgettable summer in a gripping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters. Austin’s Zilker Park neighborhood is a wonderland of greenbelt trails, live music, and moms who drink a few too many margaritas. Whitney, Annette, and Liza have grown thick as thieves as they have raised their children together for fifteen years, believing that they can shelter them their children from an increasingly dangerous world. Their friendship is unbreakable—as safe as the neighborhood where they've raised their sweet little boys. Or so they think. One night, the three women have been enjoying happy hour when their boys, lifeguards for the summer, come back on bicycles from a late-night dip in their favorite swimming hole. The boys share a secret—news that will shatter the perfect world their mothers have so painstakingly created. Combining three mothers’ points of view in a powerful narrative tale with commentary from entertaining neighborhood listservs, secret text messages, and police reports, The Lifeguards is both a story about the secrets we tell to protect the ones we love and a riveting novel of suspense filled with half-truths and betrayals, fierce love and complicated friendships, and the loss of innocence on one hot summer night.

“One of the most addictive new series heroines since Stephanie Plum.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta private investigator and ex–FBI profiler Keye Street wants nothing more than time alone with her boyfriend, Aaron—but, as usual, murder gets in the way. A.P.D. Lieutenant Aaron Rauser is called to the disturbing scene of the strangling death of a thirteen-year-old boy. Meanwhile, Keye, a recovering alcoholic, must deal with her emotionally fragile cousin, who has her own history of drug abuse and is now convinced that she is being stalked. But all hell breaks loose when another murder—the apparent hanging of an elderly man—hits disturbingly close to home for Keye. Though the two victims have almost nothing in common, there are bizarre similarities between this case and that of Aaron’s strangled teen. With the threat of more deaths to come, Keye works on pure instinct alone—and soon realizes that a killer is circling ever closer to the people she loves the most. Praise for Amanda Kyle Williams and Stranger in the Room “Keye Street remains the most interesting, cynically funny and smart series detective today. . . . The tension buzzes like cicadas on a hot Georgia night and the pace is relentless.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer “The best fictional female P.I. since Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone.”—The Plain Dealer “Keye Street immediately puts herself in the top echelon of suspense heroes. She’s a mess of fascinating contradictions—effortlessly brilliant on a case, totally inept in managing her own life. She is brutally funny and powerfully human—one of the most realistic protagonists in crime fiction that I’ve had the thrill to read.”—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of Last to Die “There’s a new voice in Atlanta, and her name is Amanda Kyle Williams—captivating, powerful and compelling.”—Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times bestselling author of One Was a Soldier “Readers of this fast-paced thriller will be eager for the next Street tale.”—Publishers Weekly

Amanda Hocking is an indie publishing sensation whose self-published novels have sold millions of copies all over the world, and Switched is the book that started the phenomenon. Prepare to be enchanted... When Wendy Everly was six years old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. Eleven years later, Wendy discovers her mother might have been right. She's not the person she's always believed herself to be, and her whole life begins to unravel—all because of Finn Holmes. Finn is a mysterious guy who always seems to be watching her. Every encounter leaves her deeply shaken...though it has more to do with her fierce attraction to him than she'd ever admit. But it isn't long before he reveals the truth: Wendy is a changeling who was switched at birth—and he's come to take her home. Now Wendy's about to journey to a magical world she never knew existed, one that's both beautiful and frightening. And where she must leave her old life behind to discover who she's meant to become... As a special gift to readers, this book contains a new, never-before-published bonus story, "The Vittra Attacks," set in the magical world of the Trylle.

Amanda Quick's bestselling trademark is a combination of suspense and passion in historical tales alight with sparkling wit and brimming with dangerous intrigue. Now she serves up the most tantalizing novel of her career as an enterprising woman allies herself with a mysterious spy, only to be caught in a seething brew of treachery — and temptation.... From the moment he burst into her antiquities shop in Rome, Lavinia Lake knew the stranger was nothing but trouble. He said he was in pursuit of a killer. He swore he was only trying to save her. Yet no matter what he claimed, Lavinia was convinced that Mr. Tobias March was bent instead on destroying her. And when the self-described spy hustled her and her niece out of the shop and back to England, Lavinia could only hope that one day she would would find a way to repay Mr. March in full. But Lavinia never imagined the shocking circumstances under which they would meet again ... or that soon he would become more deadly — and more compelling — with each passing day. In the business of making private inquiries, Tobias March had been hired to trade down a powerful villain who even now was intent on assuming control of a vast criminal organization. Yet in his search he had found nothing but one dead end — and one dead body — after another. And then, just as his investigation was heating up once more, he found his mission and his life complicated by the most ungovernable, unpredictable, exasperating woman he had ever met. Faced with a tangled web of deceit and danger, Tobias had no choice but to form a partnership with Lavinia, a lady whose past could only be described as slightly shady. Yet when he persuaded her to become his associate, neither Tobias nor Lavinia realized that their heated disputes would spark a sizzling desire — or that the deeper they kept digging for the truth, the deeper they were digging their own graves....