Tag Archives: Atria

# 2 – The Dressmaker – Posie Graeme-Evans

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Ellen Gowan is the only surviving child of a scholarly village minister and a charming girl disowned by her family when she married for love. Growing up in rural Norfolk, Ellen’s childhood was poor but blessed with affection.

Resilience, spirit, and one great talent will carry her far from such humble beginnings. In time, she will become the witty, celebrated, and very beautiful Madame Ellen, dressmaker to the nobility of England, the Great Six Hundred.

Yet Ellen has secrets. At fifteen she falls for Raoul de Valentin, the dangerous descendant of French aristocrats. Raoul marries Ellen for her brilliance as a designer but abandons his wife when she becomes pregnant. Determined that she and her daughter will survive, Ellen begins her long climb to success. Toiling first in a clothing sweat shop, she later opens her own salon in fashionable Berkeley Square though she tells the world – and her daughter – she’s a widow.

One single dress, a ballgown created for the enigmatic Countess of Hawksmoor, the leader of London society, transforms Ellen’s fortunes, and as the years pass, business thrives. But then Raoul de Valentin returns and threatens to destroy all that Ellen has achieved. - Publishers Website

I really enjoyed this book.  Not because it was chick lit, but because it showed the ingenuity and drive of a woman who had nothing become something of her self against all odds, with a child and help from the family she never knew she had.  Then to have her most wanted dream come true – love.

Simon and Schuster / Atria Books

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Reading Group Guide

 

The Distant Hours – Kate Morton

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Edie works for a small publishing house in London.  After breaking up with her boyfriend and needing a new place to move into, for the meantime, her partner at work offers her his sofa until she can find a better option.

As she is at her parents house for those obligatory sunday dinners, she doesn;t tell her parents right away that she has broken up with her boyfriend and needs a new apartment.  Her mother receives a letter that was lost long ago from 1941, when she was sent to the countryside as the war started.

Meredith was staying at Milderhurst Castle, home of the author of “Mud Men” and his three daughters.  Edie loved the book as a child, who has had a long time obsession with the book.  As she is driving back from a meeting, she comes across Milderhurst Castle on her way back to London.  Memories come back to her as she sees the gates.

As present day gives way to the past, Edie makes her way to the castle, although, not in its former glory for a tour.  She has no idea what secrets are inside, the suffering all of them who live at the castle have gone through.  But as she is going through the castle itself, she can hear voices, conversations from long ago, although, the sisters now quite old say it is part of the castle, the history, all of it.

There are secrets that are about to merge the past with the present, and possibly finally laid to rest.

This is where Edie unravels her Mother’s past – her passion for writing, the things she once adored, now a distant memory, her life taken another path.

The truth lies in the distant hours, some by circumstance, haunted by memories will have you enthralled from the beginning right through to the end.

Simon and Schuster – Atria

Read an Excerpt

Kate’s Website

The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton

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It is 1913 where a 5-year-old girl is abandoned on a ship travelling from England to Australia.  Her small suitcase is the only piece of her past that she has left.  That, and a beautiful book of fairy tales.

The dock master takes her home with him thinking that she will be claimed.  As the years go by, she is taken in by the dock master and his family.  As time goes on, she is part of the family, not knowing that she has a past that no one even herself knows about.  Until she turns 21, her father tells her the story of how she was found, she is none the less shocked, having the feeling she doesn’t know who she is, or thought she was rebels against her family, friends, and fiancée to find who she is and most importantly where she came from.

Years later, her quest to find her real identity brings her to the Cornish coast of England.  A manor that holds many secrets, yields more questions than answers.  Determined to find out, she must return to Australia first.  But plans are dashed, her daughter leaves her grand-daughter with her as she goes on her own quest.  The questions still remain, the urge subsides, then it is too late to return to England – she is ill with cancer.

After Nell’s death, her granddaughter comes across a notebook which she reads and realizes that she must continue the search to find out who her grandmother really was.  She feels as thought she needs to do it, not only for herself, but her grandmother as well.

This is not only a journey of self, one of mystery, one of long-lost secrets, intriguing secrets that once would ruin a families reputation, and of stance in the community.  A cabin by the sea, a mysterious garden that will hold more than just secrets…

I found that this was the perfect book for those who used to read fairy tales as a young child.   it is one of those books if you liked fairy tales as a youngster, this one has many twists and turns.   The mysteriousness of the plot, what is hidden, what is revealed.  I loved the intrigue behind the story, the characters ( I really despised one of them, you will see what I mean in the book if you read it) what will come of the secrets when revealed, will it change how people feel, will it change them forever?

Simon and Shuster – Atria

Reading Group Guide

Kate’s Website

Nanny Returns – Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

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Nanny is back !

After marrying “Harvard Hottie” and jet setting around the world, working and enjoying the good life for the last 12 years, they have moved back to civilization – New York and bought a brownstone that needs more than a bit of TLC.

Nan is starting up her consulting business while attempting to get the house in shape for when Ryan come home from working around the world. Until, someone who in her wildest dreams she would have never thought she would have ever seen again – Grayer.

Now 16, he arrives at her door drunk and in the middle of the night.  Once again, the X’s life is in turmoil, but then again when isn’t it? and Nan feeling that she left without explaining the reason why she left to Grayer, and still after all of these years feels guilty.  But the predicament she is forced into partially by her own accord is far crazier and chaotic then it once was.  But then again, it is the X’s.. you remember them and all the outlandish things they used to do and say right? How could you not?

Mr X is always working at his own consulting / money-making firm

Mrs. X is feigning some sort of major illness, and cannot possibly attend to her younger sons private school appointment in their home.

As with the first book, filled with the antics of the X’s and the wild adventures that have them going all over the Hampton’s, all over the City, and the impossibility of Ryan wanting children, Nan is sucked into the X’s vortex again to make her think about how her life is going, does she really want children, and her own future with Ryan; and was that house buying really such a great idea? Right now she is thinking not so much.

For all of the outrageousness of the X’s, the real life questions, answers, as well as the dilemmas that Ryan and Nan are going through outweigh the negatives in my opinion.  This novel gives you thought and laughter when those times of needing “brain candy” with a glass of wine are needed.

Simon and Schuster