Showing results by author "Karen Swan" in All Categories

Follet's sensational best seller is set just before the outbreak of World War I, when Britain must enlist the aid of Russia. Czar Nicholas' nephew is to visit London for secret naval talks with Lord Walden, who has lived in Russia and has a Russian wife, Lydia. But there are other people who are interested in the arrival of Prince Alexei.

When Lee first came to Amsterdam, it was with a newborn baby and a secret. Five years later, her life is approaching normal: her career as a celebrity photographer is flourishing, her son, Jasper, is growing up, and they are enjoying the run-up to Christmas with their tight circle of close friends. But all this changes one morning when Lee finds a book in the basket of her bicycle - and scrawled inside it, a desperate message. Who left it for her, and why? Lee feels compelled to help and tracks down the book’s author, Sam.

In the oldest part of Stockholm, Bell Everhurst is working as a nanny for an affluent family. Hanna and Max Von Greyerz are parents to seven year-old Linus and five-year old twins Ellinor and Tilde, and Bell has been with the family for more than two years. One early spring morning, as she’s rushing out to take the children to school, she answers the phone - and everything changes. A woman from a clinic she’s never heard of asks her to pass on the message that Hanna’s husband is awake.

Wild-spirited Effie Gillies has lived all her life on the small island of St Kilda but when Lord Sholto, heir to the Earl of Dumfries, visits, the attraction between them is instant. For one glorious week she guides the handsome young visitor around the isle, falling in love for the first time—until a storm hits and her world falls apart. Three months later, St Kilda falls silent as the islanders are evacuated for a better life on the mainland. With her friends and family scattered, Effie is surprised to be offered a position working on the Earl’s estate.

It had been a make-or-break holiday for their marriage, but Natasha and Rob’s rekindled romance is short-lived when their daughter’s beloved soft toy disappears on the journey home. As Natasha comforts the distraught child, she turns to social media for help. Miraculously, the toy is found, but it has become the lucky mascot of a man named Duffy, who is thousands of miles away. When Duffy promises to keep Natasha updated with pictures, the pair begin a correspondence that soon becomes more meaningful to both of them.

It’s three days before Christmas and just starting to snow… Against her better judgement, Libby Pugh has been persuaded by her best friend to stop in on their university reunion on her way back from a wedding in North Yorkshire with her boyfriend, Max. The host is Archie Templeton, the playboy of their group, who has finally inherited his father’s title and estate – even if the latter is more stately heap than palace. Libby is surprised at how good it feels to catch up with old. The night is a great success but when they come to leave, the road is now impassable.

The third installment in the Wild Isles series from Sunday Times bestselling author Karen Swan. Flora MacQueen has always dreamt of more than life on the small Scottish island of St Kilda. So, when she catches the eye of visiting adventurer and wealthy businessman James Callaghan, her future seems brighter. Winter seas separate the lovers, but the island’s evacuation the following summer promises to reunite them – until tragedy strikes.

Rowena Tipton isn't looking for a new life, just a new adventure, something to while away the months as her long-term boyfriend presses pause on their relationship before they become engaged. But when a chance encounter at a New York wedding leads to an audition for a coveted house share in The Hamptons - Manhattan's elite beach scene - suddenly a new life is exactly what she's got. Stretching before her is a summer with three eclectic housemates, long days on white-sand ocean beaches and parties....

'This was where her dreams drifted to if she didn't blot her nights out with drink; this was where her thoughts settled if she didn't fill her days with chat. She remembered this tiny, remote foreign village on a molecular level and the sight of it soaked into her like water into sand, because this was where her old life had ended and her new one had begun.'

It's 1974, and Elena Damiani lives a gilded life. Born to wealth and a noted beauty, no door is closed to her, no man can resist her. At 26 she is already onto her third husband when she meets her love match. But he is the one man she can never have, and all the beauty and money in the world can't change it. It's 2017, and Francesca Hackett is living la dolce vita in Rome, leading tourist groups around the Eternal City and forgetting the ghosts she left behind in London.

Pia Soto is the sexy and glamorous prima ballerina, the Brazilian bombshell who's shaking up the ballet world with her outrageous behaviour. She's wild and precocious, and she's a survivor. But ruthless financier Will Silk has Pia in his sights, and has other ideas...Sophie O'Farrell is Pia's hapless, gawky assistant, the girl-next-door to Pia's Prima Donna. When a devastating accident threatens to cut short Pia's illustrious career, Sophie has to step out of the shadows and face up to the demons in her own life.

In London, the snow is falling and Christmas is just around the corner - but Allegra Fisher barely has time to notice. She's pitching for the biggest deal of her career and can't afford to fail. And when she meets attractive stranger Sam Kemp on the plane to the meeting, she can't afford to lose her focus either. She learned to shut off her emotions long ago and only her sister and best friend Isobel knows why. But when Allegra finds herself up against Sam for the bid, their passion quickly turns sour.

At just 20 years old, Tara Tremain has everything: she's a trainee doctor, engaged to the man of her dreams—a passionate American biology student called Alex Carter. But just when life seems perfect, Alex betrays her in the worst way possible. Ten years later, she’s moved on. But when she’s pulled back into her wealthy family’s orbit for an unmissable party in the heart of Costa Rica, she finds herself flung into crisis: a child is desperately ill and the only remedy is several days’ trek into the heart of the jungle.

Award-winning director Clover Phillips is riding high when she encounters Kit Foley; a surfer and snowboarder as well-known for controversy as he is for winning championships. Involved in an accident that had devastating consequences for a bitter rival, Kit has never spoken about what really happened that day. Determined to find out the truth, Clover heads to the snowy wilderness of the Austrian Alps, sharing a romantic winter wonderland with a man who can’t stand her.

Alex Hyde is executive coach par excellence. She's the person the great and the good turn to when the pressure gets too much; she can change the way they think and how they operate. Her waiting list is months long, but even she can't turn down the unorthodox but highly lucrative crisis call that comes her way a few weeks before Christmas, regarding the troublesome - and troubled - head of an esteemed whisky company in Scotland: Lochlan Farquhar, a maverick, an enigma and a renegade.

Haunted by a past she can't escape, Laura Cunningham desires nothing more than to keep her world small and precise - her quiet relationship and growing jewellery business are all she needs to get by. Until the day when Rob Blake walks into her studio and commissions a necklace that will tell his enigmatic wife Cat's life in charms.

Cassie loves Henry. Henry loves Cassie. With a Tiffany ring on her finger, all that Cassie has left to do is plan the wedding. It should be so simple, but when Henry pushes for a date, Cassie pulls back. Henry's wild, young cousin, Gem, has no such hesitations and is racing to the aisle at a sprint, determined to marry in the Cornish church where her parents were wed. But the family is set against it, and Cassie resolves to stop the wedding from going ahead.

Cassie settled down too young, marrying her first serious boyfriend. Now, 10 years later, she is betrayed and broken. With her marriage in tatters and no career or home of her own, she needs to work out where she belongs in the world and who she really is. So begins a yearlong trial as Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with each of her best friends in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris and London.

December 2018, and free-spirited Influencers Bo Loxley and her partner, Zac, are living a life of wanderlust, travelling the globe and sharing their adventures with their millions of fans. Booked to spend Christmas in the Norwegian fjords, they set up home in a remote farm owned by enigmatic mountain guide Anders and his fierce grandmother, Signy. Surrounded by snowy peaks and frozen falls, everything should be perfect. But the camera can lie, and with every new post, the ‘perfect’ life Zac and Bo are portraying is diverging from the truth.

Christmas in Copenhagen is an utterly magical time of year - there are charming Christmas markets, carol singing on the canals, ice skating in the parks and cosy cafes to shelter from the early snow but Darcy Cotterell is not feeling remotely festive. Newly single, she's not even going home for Christmas but will instead spend the holiday finishing her PhD. Her best friend, Freja, has other ideas though and convinces Darcy to sign up to an upmarket dating site where she can meet the city's most eligible bachelors...