Happily Ever After (02/21/2022): People We Meet On Vacation
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (02/21/2022): People We Meet On Vacation

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read comes a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong? […]

Happily Ever After (01/17/2022): Cotillion
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (01/17/2022): Cotillion

The bestselling Queen of Regency Romance, Georgette Heyer, brings her signature wit and humor to this fake engagement love story, with charming results.

A most unusual hero
Freddy is immensely rich, of course, and not bad-looking, but he’s mild-mannered, a bit hapless—not anything like his virile, handsome, rakish cousin Jack…

A heroine in a difficult situation
Young Kitty Charing stands to inherit a vast fortune from her irascible and eccentric guardian—provided she marries one of his great-nephews…

A sham betrothal
No sooner does Kitty arrive in London then the race for her hand begins, but between confirmed rakes and bumbling affections, Kitty needs a daring scheme… […]

Happily Ever After (12/20/2021): In a Holidaze
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (12/20/2021): In a Holidaze

One Christmas wish, two brothers, and a lifetime of hope are on the line for hapless Maelyn Jones in In a Holidaze, the quintessential holiday romantic novel by Christina Lauren, the New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…but not for Maelyn Jones. She’s living with her parents, hates her going-nowhere job, and has just made a romantic error of epic proportions.

But perhaps worst of all, this is the last Christmas Mae will be at her favorite place in the world—the snowy Utah cabin where she and her family have spent every holiday since she was born, along with two other beloved families. Mentally melting down as she drives away from the cabin for the final time, Mae throws out what she thinks is a simple plea to the universe: Please. Show me what will make me happy.

The next thing she knows, tires screech and metal collides, everything goes black. But when Mae gasps awake…she’s on an airplane bound for Utah, where she begins the same holiday all over again. With one hilarious disaster after another sending her back to the plane, Mae must figure out how to break free of the strange time loop—and finally get her true love under the mistletoe.

Jam-packed with yuletide cheer, an unforgettable cast of characters, and Christina Lauren’s trademark “downright hilarious” (Helen Hoang, author of The Bride Test) hijinks, this swoon-worthy romantic read will make you believe in the power of wishes and the magic of the holidays. […]

Happily Ever After (11/15/2021): Virgin River
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (11/15/2021): Virgin River

Wanted: Midwife/nurse practitioner in Virgin River, population six hundred. Make a difference against a backdrop of towering California redwoods and crystal clear rivers. Rent-free cabin included.

When the recently widowed Melinda Monroe sees this ad, she quickly decides that the remote mountain town of Virgin River might be the perfect place to escape her heartache, and to reenergize the nursing career she loves. But her high hopes are dashed within an hour of arriving—the cabin is a dump, the roads are treacherous and the local doctor wants nothing to do with her. Realizing she’s made a huge mistake, Mel decides to leave town the following morning.

But a tiny baby abandoned on a front porch changes her plans…and former marine Jack Sheridan cements them into place. […]

Happily Ever After (10/18/2021): Silence For The Dead
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (10/18/2021): Silence For The Dead

Portis House emerged from the fog as we approached, showing itself slowly as a long, low shadow…In 1919 Kitty Weekes-pretty, resourceful, and on the run-falsifies her background to obtain a nursing position at Portis House, a remote hospital for soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War. Hiding the shame of their mental instability in what was once a magnificent private estate, the patients suffer from nervous attacks and tormenting dreams.

But something more is going on at Portis House-its plaster is crumbling; its plumbing makes eerie noises; and strange, cold breaths of air waft through the empty rooms. It’s known that the former occupants left abruptly, but where did they go? And why do the patients all seem to share the same nightmare, one so horrific that they dare not speak of it?Kitty finds a dangerous ally in Jack Yates, an inmate who may be a war hero, a madman … or maybe both. But even as Kitty and Jack create a secret, intimate alliance to uncover the truth, disturbing revelations suggest the presence of powerful spectral forces. And when a medical catastrophe leaves them even more isolated, they must battle the menace on their own, caught in the heart of a mystery that could destroy them both. […]

Happily Ever After (09/20/2021): Jane Eyre
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (09/20/2021): Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre, the plain yet spirited governess, introduced a new kind of heroine to literature: one whose virtuous integrity, sharp intellect, and tireless perseverance broke through class barriers to win equal stature with the man she loved.

Orphaned and subject to a cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. How she takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, meets and loves Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage are elements in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman’s passionate search for a wider and richer life than that traditionally accorded to her sex in Victorian society.

Hailed by William Makepeace Thackeray as “the masterwork of a great genius,” this impassioned love story is still regarded, over a century after it first appeared, as one of the finest novels in literature. […]

Happily Ever After (08/16/2021): Morning Glory
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (08/16/2021): Morning Glory

In town, they called her ‘Crazy Widow Dinsmore.’ But Elly was no stranger to their ridicule–she had been an outsider all her life, growing up in a darkened house under the strict eye of her eccentric grandparents. Now she was all alone, with two little boys to raise, and a third child on the way. Will Parker drifted into Whitney, Georgia, one lazy summer afternoon, hoping to put his lonely past behind him. He yearned for the tenderness he had never known, a home he’d never had. All he needed was for someone to give him a chance. Then he saw her classified ad: WANTED–A HUSBAND. When he stepped across Elly Dinsmore’s cluttered yard, Will knew he had come home at last. […]

Happily Ever After (07/19/2021): Red, White & Royal Blue
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (07/19/2021): Red, White & Royal Blue

What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn’t always diplomatic. […]

Happily Ever After (06/21/2021): Naked In Death
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (06/21/2021): Naked In Death

It is 2058, New York City. Technology now completely rules the world, but for New York Detective Eve Dallas, one irresistible impulse still rules the heart: passion…

Eve Dallas is a New York police lieutenant hunting for a ruthless killer. In over ten years on the force, she’s seen it all—and knows her survival depends on her instincts. And she’s going against every warning telling her not to get involved with Roarke, an Irish billionaire—and a suspect in Eve’s murder investigation. But passion and seduction have rules of their own, and it’s up to Eve to take a chance in the arms of a man she knows nothing about—except the addictive hunger of needing his touch. […]

Happily Ever After (05/17/2021): Sprig Muslin
Book Clubs

Happily Ever After (05/17/2021): Sprig Muslin

A charming “accidental” love triangle enchants readers in this delightful romp by the Queen of Regency Romance, bestselling author Georgette Heyer.

A dashing man of honor…
En route to propose to his sensible acquaintance Lady Hester, Sir Gareth Ludlow finds young, pretty Amanda wandering unattended and knows it is his duty to bring her back to her family. This turns out to be a challenge as Amanda seems to possess an imagination as intriguing as it is dangerous.

A shocking refusal…
Lady Hester stuns both him and her family when she refuses him. At her age, no one would expect her to turn down such an eligible suitor. But Lady Hester has met the indomitable Amanda. How can the quiet, intelligent Hester hope to compete with such a lively young lady? […]