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This Is How It Always Is

(2018) The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

‘Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected’ Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)

‘It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think’ Liane Moriarty, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

What readers are saying about This Is How It Always Is:

‘This writing is glorious. A fabulous book. Topical, moving, full of magic’

‘One of the most amazing and thought-provoking books I have ever read. It’s warm, well observed and funny’

‘A beautiful love story of two people who meet, fall hopelessly in love and then create a wonderful unique family of five’

I Am, I Am, I Am

(2018) I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O’Farrell’s astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter – for whom this book was written – from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life’s myriad dangers.

Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O’Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.

The Book of Longings

TED Talks

(2016) Since taking over TED in 2001, Chris Anderson has shown how carefully crafted talks can be the key to unlocking empathy, spreading knowledge, and promoting a shared dream. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview; it can be more powerful than anything in written form.

This “invaluable guide” (Publishers Weekly) explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula, but there are tools that can empower any speaker.

Chris Anderson has worked with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Salman Khan, Monica Lewinsky, and more—everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage. This is a must-listen for anyone who is ready to create impact with their ideas.

American Dirt

Lydia Perez owns a bookshop in Acapulco, Mexico, and is married to a fearless journalist. Luca, their eight-year-old son, completes the picture. But it only takes a bullet to rip them apart.

All My Lies Are True

(2021) ‘This is devastatingly good’ Heat

From the bestselling author of The Ice Cream Girls comes a gripping emotional thriller of love and obsession and the nature of coercive control. ‘The author plays a blinder’ says the Sun.

Verity is telling lies…

And that’s why she’s about to be arrested for attempted murder.

Serena has been lying for years. . .

And that may have driven her daughter, Verity, to do something unthinkable…

Poppy’s lies have come back to haunt her . . .

So will her quest for the truth hurt everyone she loves?

Everyone lies.

But whose lies are going to end in tragedy?

Praise for Dorothy Koomson:

‘If you only do one thing this weekend, read this book. . . utterly brilliant’ Sun

‘Immediately gripping and relentlessly intense’ Heat

‘An instantly involving pschological thriller’ Telegraph

‘Koomson just gets better and better’ Woman & Hom

Scrublands

Girl in the Letter

(2020) ‘Read her letter. Remember her story…Gripping. Mesmerising. Haunting. Heart-breaking. Once you’ve heard her story, you will never forget The Girl in the Letter.

Perfect for fans of Kate Morton, Rachel Hore and Kathryn Hughes, this page-turning, moving novel of separation and long-buried secrets will stay with you for ever.

In the winter of 1956 pregnant young Ivy is sent in disgrace to St Margaret’s, a home for unmarried mothers in the south of England, run by nuns, to have her child. Her baby daughter is adopted. Ivy will never leave.

Sixty years later, journalist Samantha stumbles upon a series of letters from Ivy to her lover, pleading with him to rescue her from St Margaret’s before it is too late. As Sam pieces together Ivy’s tragic story, terrible secrets about St Margaret’s dark past begin to emerge. What happened to Ivy, to her baby, and to the hundreds of children born in the home? What links a number of mysterious, sudden deaths in the area? And why are those who once worked at St Margaret’s so keen that the truth should never be told? As Sam unpicks the sinister web of lies surrounding St Margaret’s, she also looks deep within – to confront some unwelcome truths of her own…

Blood Orange

(2019) Alison drinks too much. She’s neglecting her family. And she’s having an affair with a colleague whose taste for pushing boundaries may be more than she can handle.

I did it. I killed him. I should be locked up.

Alison’s client doesn’t deny that she stabbed her husband – she wants to plead guilty. And yet something about her story is deeply amiss. Saving this woman may be the first step to Alison saving herself.

I’m watching you. I know what you’re doing.

But someone knows Alison’s secrets. Someone who wants to make her pay for what she’s done, and who won’t stop until she’s lost everything….

Of Blood and Bone