検索キーワード： 制作 "W. F. Howes Ltd" 大衆小説

Laura Lake, editor of glossy magazine Society, is always on the hunt for scandalous scoops to fill her pages. Now she's discovered a top-secret village in the English countryside where the rich and famous own weekend retreats. Where film stars, Turner-prize winners and billionaires park their helicopters outside the gastropub and buy £100 sourdough loaves from the deli. Outsiders are strictly forbidden. But luckily Laura's best friend Lulu, a logo-obsessed socialite with a heart as huge as her sunglasses, suddenly fancies a quiet life in the country....

London's most glamorous glossy magazine is in trouble. Advertising revenues are nonexistent, and if editor Laura Lake can't pick them up, she's out of a job. According to those in the know, Scotland is having a fashion moment. Haggis tempura is on Michelin-starred menus, smart spas are offering porridge facials and a chain of eco-hotels is offering celebrity bagpipe lessons.

Georgina Garrett was born to be ruthless and she's about to earn her reputation. As World War One is announced a baby girl is born. Little do people know that she's going to grow up to rule the streets of Battersea. From a family steeped in poverty the only way to survive is with street smarts. With a father who steals for a living, a grandmother who's a woman of the night and a mother long dead, Georgina was never in for an easy life.

On the beautiful island of Santaniki, close to Crete, it's not all white sands and sunshine. When retired bookseller Ariadne Blunt suggests the English residents form a choir, there are groans of resistance. After a little persuasion, the group gather in Ariadne's olive garden to rehearse, but each member of this choir has their own anxieties and secrets. Ariadne's partner, Hebe, is in failing health. Clive struggles to accept the loss of his wife while Della, the Pilates teacher, drinks too much and Chloe, Queen Bee of the village society, faces a family dilemma.

At first the rules were simple: quarantine the city and let the plague die. So men and women closed their doors and lived in lockdown, fighting for survival against a disease as contagious and destructive as the Black Death. A disease for which there was no known cure. But the plague did not die. And so, at lunchtime on a Friday afternoon, the president announces the new rules. Every American should take up arms to protect the disease-free zones. Anyone attempting to leave the plague-zone must be shot.

When the grain crop failed in Kansas it seemed like an isolated incident and no one took much notice. Except Ed Hardesty. Then the blight spread to California's fruit harvest, and from there, like wildfire, throughout the nation. Suddenly America woke up to the fact that her food supplies were almost wiped out. Her grain reserves lethally polluted. And botulism was multiplying at a horrifying rate.

Weaving together a multitude of narratives, Wuhan is a historical-fiction epic that pulls no punches: the heart-in-mouth story of a peasant family forced onto a thousand-mile refugee death-march; the story of Lao She - the influential Chinese novelist - who leaves his family in a war-zone to assist with the propaganda effort in Wuhan; the hellish battlefields of the Sino-Japanese war; the incipient global conflict seen through a host of colourful characters - from Chiang Kai-Shek, China's nationalist leader, to Peter Fleming, British journalist based in Wuhan.

A body has been uncovered in a mudslide just outside the village of Andwiston. In the pub they talk of murder, but Dan - sometime mechanic, constant drunk - is finding it hard to sift through his jumbled memories. Watching him from the dark is Lorna, a lost soul living in the woods, haunted by ghosts and a vision from her childhood: a cold boy standing alone in Gallinger's field.

Winter, 1364. Sir Thomas Blackstone, Edward III's Master of War, has travelled to France to secure Brittany for England. In the throes of battle, he rescues a Castilian boy, Lazaro, who just witnessed the murder of the young queen. It is suspected that the king - along with Velasquita Alcon de Lugo, the beautiful witch who serves him - assassinated his queen. But Lazaro knows that is not the case. With the king in hiding and the French army advancing Castile is on its knees. So Blackstone is ordered to Castile, to defend England's ally from the French.

On Sunday 22nd June 1941, at 03.05, three and a half million Axis troops burst into the Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front to launch Operation Barbarossa. The southern thrust of the attack was aimed at the Caucuses and the oil fields beyond. Kyiv was the biggest city to stand in their way. Within six weeks, the city was under siege. Surrounded by Panzers, bombed and shelled day and night, Soviet Commissar Nikita Krushchev was amongst the senior Soviet officials co-ordinating the defence.

A young woman is rushed to the hospital with stabbing pains. The chief surgeon performs a C-section and delivers a catastrophically malformed foetus that is somehow alive.... Sewage engineer Gemma is plunged into a ghostly darkness in the tunnel where she works. She escapes, but her boss goes missing in the chaos. He is later found alive...but his legs have been severed and his eyes pulled out.

Cassie Holliday is at the top of her game. A glamorous wife and mother with 1.3 million Instagram followers, she posts images of her gorgeous husband and cute (gender-neutral) twins online every day. To her adoring fanbase, Cassie's life is a string of perfect experiences in Valencia filter. But in real life, you can't airbrush the truth. Cassie's marriage is at breaking point, her finances are precarious and she is terrified of every Insta-star's worst nightmare: becoming irrelevant.

Summer is coming to the four streets - but so is trouble, especially for its redoubtable women, who've struggled through a bitter winter to put food on the table. Peggy Nolan, with seven boys and a husband too lazy to work, has hit rock bottom and is hiding a terrible secret. Maura and Tommy Doherty always looked out for any neighbour in trouble, especially Peggy, but they're far away, running a pub in Ireland and corrupt copper, Frank the Skank, is moving into their old house on the four streets. Can anything bring them home in time?

Three years ago, Danny 'Abs' Abbingdon, star of Laid in Essex!, was living the dream. And then, on the night of the party, everything changed. It was supposed to be an intimate gathering. Just a few close friends in a remote cottage in Wales. But one thing led to another and the party spiralled out of control. Then a local girl was reported missing, presumed dead. Abs and his friends had been the last to see her alive.

In this unsparing family history, Alan distils his father's life in the Dutch East Indies into one furious utterance. He reads about his work as an interpreter during the war with Japan, his life as an assassin and his decision to murder Indonesians in the service of the Dutch without any conscience. How he fled to the Netherlands to escape being executed as a traitor and met Alan's mother soon after.

Widowed early in World War Two, heartbroken Helen Harrison decides to leave her domineering mother determined to rebuild her shattered life. Her godmother, Pearl, offers her work in a fashion wholesaler. When the showroom is robbed, she meets DC Kershaw and he inspires her to join the Women's Auxiliary Police Corps. Helen throws herself into the work, dealing with evacuees, the destitute and vulnerable. A series of tragic events makes Helen realise there's still something missing in her life, and soon she will have to choose between two very different men vying for her heart.

One sultry evening in Kowloon, Dr Rowena Rossiter and Sister Alice Huntley are off-duty and in search of fun - little knowing that their world is on the brink of collapse. That night, Rowena will meet two men who will fight for her heart for the next four years. Connor O'Connor, the rebellious Irish soldier, who will woo and then lose her, and Kim Pheloung. Immensely rich and the most beautiful man Rowena has ever seen, he is also the most ruthless, with a sinister need to possess and control.

Beth Martin is 31, newly divorced and wondering just what life holds for her.... Best friend Heidi is adamant that all the answers lie in Corfu - the island where the girls partied away their youth. So cue a trip to a sun-drenched Greek island, ouzo cocktails, a trip down memory lane...and Alex Hallas, the man Beth has never quite forgotten. As they dance under the stars, the sand beneath their toes, old feelings begin to resurface, and Beth might just have a chance to take back her life. If they can learn to love the people they've become....

Iris Bagshott strolls down the paths of her ancient garden, close to Lichfield in the heart of England, wondering if it is time to sell her house and land for development. She is unaware that around every corner myriad family secrets from the past unfold. From a Saxon clearing to a monastery, Tudor dwelling to the present day, this sacred plot has nurtured her ancestors. Generations of Bagshott women have found refuge and solace tending it through years of plague, civil war and beyond. This is their story.

On the goldfields of 19th-century Australia, two very different girls are trying to escape their past. Violet Hartley has fled from England after a scandalous liaison; now she is angling for a rich husband and a new life. Little Cat is fleeing from her home in Southern China after killing the powerful old man who tried to rape her. Disguised as a boy, she joins the huge Chinese workforce on the goldfields of Victoria. But the son of the murdered man is on her trail, intent on vengeance. Love, sexual desire, violence and financial ambition entwine in this mesmerising saga.