For those who love a book with a beating heart, we have a list of our favourites from 2017!
This list is full of dramatic family sagas, enchanting (and sometimes steamy!) love stories and heart-wrenching human interest tales that will tug on your heartstrings in just the right way.
Grab yourself a cup of tea and settle down for a cozy afternoon with one of these...
Her father and his allies crowned her instead of the dead king’s half-sister Mary Tudor, who quickly mustered an army, claimed her throne, and locked Jane in the Tower of London.
When Jane refused to betray her Protestant faith, Mary sent her to the executioner’s block, where Jane transformed her father’s greedy power-grab into tragic martyrdom.
“Learn you to die,” was the advice Jane wrote to her younger sister Katherine, who has no intention of dying. She intends to enjoy her beauty and her youth and fall in love. But she is heir to the insecure and infertile Queen Mary and then to her sister Queen Elizabeth, who will never allow Katherine to marry and produce a Tudor son.
When Katherine’s pregnancy betrays her secret marriage she faces imprisonment in the Tower, only yards from her sister’s scaffold.
“Farewell, my sister,” writes Katherine to the youngest Grey sister, Mary. A beautiful dwarf, disregarded by the court, Mary keeps family secrets, especially her own, while avoiding Elizabeth’s suspicious glare.
After seeing her sisters defy the queen, Mary is acutely aware of her own danger, but determined to command her own life. What will happen when the last Tudor defies her ruthless and unforgiving cousin Queen Elizabeth?
Zoe, a sometime artist, is from California. Martin, an engineer, is from Yorkshire. Both have ended up in picturesque Cluny, in central France. Both are struggling to come to terms with their recent past - for Zoe, the death of her husband; for Martin, a messy divorce.
Looking to make a new start, each sets out alone to walk two thousand kilometres from Cluny to Santiago, in northwestern Spain, in the footsteps of pilgrims who have walked the Camino the Way for centuries. The Camino changes you, it's said. It's a chance to find a new version of yourself. But can these two very different people find each other?
In this smart, funny and romantic journey, Martin's and Zoe's stories are told in alternating chapters by husband-and-wife team Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist. Two Steps Forward is a novel about renewal physical, psychological and spiritual. It's about the challenge of walking an extraordinary distance and of working out where you are going. And it's about what you decide to keep, what you choose to leave behind and what you rediscover.
Camille Lammenais has grown up in the beauty of the Napa Valley surrounded by acres of her family's vineyards. Her parents, Christophe and Joy, still deeply in love after two decades of marriage, have built a renowned winery and chateau modelled after Christophe's ancient family estate in his native Bordeaux.
Camille has had a perfect childhood, safe in her parents' love. After graduating from Stanford, she returns to help manage Chateau Joy, her lifetime goal. But their fairytale ends suddenly with her mother's death.
Six months after losing his wife, the devastated Christophe is easy prey for a mysterious, charming Frenchwoman visiting the valley. Camille, still grieving for her mother, is shocked by the news that her father intends to remarry.
Then she begins to see past the alluring looks, designer clothes, and elegant manners of the Countess, while her innocent father is trapped in her web...
Mother: female parent of a child
Mum: the woman who nurtures, raises and loves a child
Radio host Harper Drummond lives for her career. Every day she meets fascinating people doing extraordinary things, but has begun to wonder whether there could be something more for her out there. She’s financially secure, happily married to Samuel and has a great group of friends – what more could she want? It’s only when she interviews one special couple that she starts to think about whether she could make a different kind of contribution.
Claire and Jasper Lombard are passionate about their thriving hot air balloon business and know they’re lucky to find such joy in their work and in each other. But while Jasper has accepted that he will never be a father, Claire has found it hard to come to terms with her infertility. She doesn’t want Jasper to regret choosing her over a child in the years to come. Is there a way to give themselves a real chance at being a happy family? Can they find someone who will give them the greatest gift? Or will it come at a greater cost?
The poignant, heartwarming story of two women: one who wants nothing else than to be a mum, and one who never wanted to be a mother, from the bestselling, ABIA award–winning author of The Patterson Girls.
Includes two never-published-before short stories from the bestselling author of the Outlander series.
Featuring all the characters you’ve come to love from the Outlander series, this brilliant collection of short stories throws you into the magical world of Outlander.
Includes previously published Virgins, The Space Between, Plague of Zombies, A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows and The Custom of the Army, plus two never seen before works Besieged and A Fugitive Green.
A must-read for all Outlander fans!
I always thought memories were unchangeable. Set in stone, shaped by the years. But there are always others too, ones you haven’t let yourself remember . . .
The wilful and eccentric Lola Quinlan is off on the trip of a lifetime, taking her beloved granddaughter and great-granddaughter with her. More than sixty years after emigrating to Australia, she's keeping a secret promise to return to her Irish homeland.
But as she embarks on her journey, the flamboyant Lola is still hiding the hurtful reasons she left Ireland in the first place. What and who will be waiting for her on the other side of the world?
The Trip of a Lifetime is a big, bold, beautiful book about the light and dark times of life, and all the wonders in between. Moving from the Clare Valley of South Australia to the lush Irish countryside, this is a delightful, emotional story about a colourful and huge-hearted family that you'll want to call your own.
Now that his busy grape harvest and winemaking season is over, he's happy to spend time with his family and help his brothers, Talon and Jonah, celebrate their impending nuptials. The Steels are taking a well-deserved break from the conspiracy surrounding them...until an unlikely woman and a long-buried secret shatter Ryan's world.
Detective Ruby Lee has been on her own since she was fifteen. When her past collides with the Steel family's mysteries, she's determined to find the truth. She has her own issues, and she's not looking for a relationship, despite her all-consuming attraction to Ryan Steel. The gorgeous dark-haired man gets under her skin anyway...and he needs her.
Together they explore both of their histories, but those pasts could cost them a future.
When Brianna Donahue was three years old, her mother mysteriously disappeared while farming in Merriwell Bay, Western Australia. Her body has never been found. Brianna works the same land with her father Russell, while almost single-handedly raising her two children as her husband Caleb works as a fly-in fly-out criminal lawyer in Perth.
One scorching summer's morning, her son Trent goes missing and, while frantically searching for him, Brianna must come to terms with the fact that her marriage has large cracks in it.
Over two thousand kilometres away in South Australia, Detective Dave Burrows receives a phone call reporting stolen sheep from an elderly farmer. When he and his partner Jack arrive at the farm, it's clear that Guy has early signs of dementia. Following a conversation with his wife Kim, Dave becomes intrigued with Guy's family history. Was there a sister, or was there not? No one seems to know.
So how will Dave's investigation impact Brianna's world? While battling the threat of bushfires back in Merriwell Bay, Brianna is faced with challenges that test her relationships with those she loves most. Suspenseful and incendiary, Suddenly One Summer is an intriguing and heartfelt story of the unlikely connections of life on the land.
Spirited doctor Isla Fenwick is determined to work at the coalface of medicine in India before committing to life as a dutiful wife. With hopes of making a difference in the world, she sails to Calcutta to set up a midwifery clinic. There she will be forced to question her beliefs, her professionalism and her romantic loyalties.
On a desperate rescue mission to save the one person who needs her the most, she travels into the foothills of the Himalayas to a tea plantation outside Darjeeling. At the roof of the world, where heaven and earth collide, Isla will be asked to pay the ultimate price for her passions.
From England’s seaside town of Brighton to India’s slums of Calcutta and the breathtaking Himalayan mountains, this is a wildly exciting novel of heroism, heartache and healing, by the bestselling author of The Chocolate Tin.
