‘Amazing chemistry and a hero you’ll fall in love with’ Julie Caplin Sam Huxton doesn’t do one-night stands, especially not with men she’s just met! But the hot guy at the bar was hard to resist and one night is all they share – no names, no numbers, just some much needed fun… Until the same guy walks into Sam’s life the next day as her new employee. Sam never mixes business with pleasure and makes it clear an office fling with Ryan is off-limits. But after-hours…one thing can lead to another. Can Sam trust her heart and her business with the new guy? Readers can’t get enough of The New Guy: ‘Seriously love this twist on an office romance’ Christina Parker, Netgalley ‘Their chemistry was off the charts’Mad Mom Life ‘Better than most rom coms I’ve watched and read!’ Jennifer Arnold, Netgalley ‘Reads like the perfect rom-com movie’ Sinead, Librarian ‘Very sexy and very sweet’ Morgan Shulman, Goodreads ‘Warmed my heart and read like a movie…What a beautiful sweet surprise this was’ Kelsey Peterson, Goodreads ‘You have yourself a page turning, don’t want it to end story, in essence an absolutely cracking read!’ Margaret Harris, Netgalley ‘A gorgeously sweet romance!’ From Rachael Claire ‘It's got laugh out loud moments, heart wrenching moments but most important that feel good factor’ Chantiece Bates, Goodreads Perfect for fans of Jo Watson, Sophie Ranald and Sophie Claire!
‘I love when books make me smile so much that my husband asks what I'm grinning at and this is one of those books’ Reader review Fun, feel-good and a must read for fans of Strictly Come Dancing! Saturday nights are strictly for dancing… As the glitter ball shimmers and sequins flash, forty-year-old Maggie remembers the pull of the dancefloor. But now, as a newly divorced mum of two, Maggie’s certain her dancing days are over. Or are they…? Encouraged by her friends, Maggie dusts off her silver stilettoes and enrols for dancing classes, all she needs now is the perfect partner. Enter Seb. Young, carefree and hot as hell, Seb is definitely a perfect 10! Even though everything about him is outrageously inappropriate! But as Seb sweeps her across the dancefloor every week, Maggie begins to see a new side to him; kind, caring, funny, strong. And Maggie realises that he’s the only one she’d like to foxtrot with…perhaps even forever? Readers ADORE Strictly Come Dating: ‘A fun read that will leave you with a smile on your face’ Kathleen ‘I loved this so much…wonderful escapism and a fabulous read’ Tara ‘Fun, feel good and an absolute treat’ Karen ‘Has the same cosy factor as watching the show… A gorgeous book’ Caroline ‘My favorite Kathryn Freeman book to date!’ Laura ‘Oh gosh, this was cute!’ Karen ‘What did it for me was the connection between the characters. I can't wait to find the author's previous books and get stuck in right away!’ Lara ‘I loved this book so much, it’s funny, and romantic, and lovely, and a little bit steamy’ Roberta ‘This was a book that had me smiling!’ Sinead
Welcome to the Beach Reads Book Club. Where love is just a page away… ‘I would run through fire to be part of this kind of bookclub, with books that make us smile and cry and laugh. Never have I seen my view of rom com and beach reads better expressed than in this wonderful book’ Genevieve, reader review When Lottie Watt is unceremoniously booted out of her uptight book club for not following the rules, she decides to throw the rulebook out the window and start her own club – one where conversation, gin and cake take precedent over actually having read the book! The Beach Reads Book Club soon finds a home for its meetings at Books by the Bay, a charming bookshop and café owned by gorgeous, brooding Matthew Steele, and as the book club picks heat up, so too does the attraction between Matt and Lottie. If there’s anything Lottie has learned from the romances she’s been reading, it’s that the greatest loves are the ones hardest earned. Readers are loving The Beach Reads Book Club: ‘A brilliant book with fabulous characters and a great storyline…I can't believe this is the first Kathryn Freeman book I've read!’ Julie ‘This was just a fabulous book. I devoured and loved every second of it! Looking for a cute, romance read…. Don't miss this amazing book!’ Rubie ‘I so wanted to belong to this book club…These are the people I need in my life right now. A beautiful story and one you should all read this summer whether you are on the beach or curled up in bed’ Sarah ‘I want to join Lottie's book club where gin and cake are the order of the day’ Isabel
Dream job. Dream house. Fake fiancé. A year in a gorgeous Italian castle… When Anna Roberts’ life implodes, an online search leads her to an ad for the ultimate dream job – management of a gorgeous castle on the shores of Lake Como, accommodation included. The only catch? Anna can’t do it alone… …With the last man on earth she’d choose! The castle owners will only accept a couple as caretakers, which means Anna needs a man on her arm at the interview. Enter her neighbour, Jake Tucker. Though Anna and Jake have never seen eye-to-eye, Jake’s had a rough few years and an escape to Italy sounds ideal. Yet, when they get the job and jet off, Anna and Jake face an unexpected challenge. Pretending to be a couple is difficult … but pretending the tension simmering between them doesn’t exist is quickly proving impossible! Readers are loving Anna and Jake’s romance: ‘I see fake dating, I see Italy, I read…It felt like the author had gone into my brain and pretty much wrote the romantic comedy of my dreams’ Catarina ‘Everything I typically love in a romance book…full of sexual tension, snarky (but very witty) comments’ Porshe ‘Read this in one sitting…who wouldn’t want to fall in love with the bad boy neighbour, a beautiful castle and an Italian coast?’ Bee ‘A slow burn enemies to friends to lovers…it has all the best romance tropes’ Ruby ‘Reading this book felt like inhaling a breath of fresh air…It was so good, I really loved it’ Meghan ‘To start off, ugh, I adore this cover!! My favorite types of novels are the ones that feel unique and fresh…this one was especially that’ Oniya ‘A fun fake relationship book with just a touch of enemies to lovers…plenty of spicy tension and good banter’ Meg
If you’re not a ten on Sophie’s spreadsheet, you’re never getting her between the bedsheets… No aspect of Sophie’s life goes unrecorded in her Excel spreadsheets, so when she accidentally sends it to her entire contact list instead of just her best friend, Sophie has a lot of uncomfortable explaining to do. First on the list? Dr Michael Adams. After a disastrous first date, Michael scored a ‘3’ on Sophie’s ‘love life’ tab, but when she shows up to apologise for sharing his result with the world, he issues an unexpected challenge: ten dates to prove that love can’t be calculated by an equation or contained by boxes on a spreadsheet. Sophie isn’t someone who’s used to thinking outside the digital box, but there’s something about Michael that makes her want to take a chance… Readers can’t get enough of Was It Good For You?: ‘OBSESSED with this book… It was SO heartwarming and adorable, but also spicy – a perfect combination.’ ????? ‘An absolute must-read from me.’ ????? ‘This book got me out of a reading slump, it was a wonderful read.’ ????? ‘I loved everything about this fabulous romcom. Fun, heartwarming and sweet.’ ????? ‘Simmering tension, fabulous characters who skip off the page, and a romance you will want to happen – this book has it all.’ ????? ‘This story is a true gem for anyone who loves a good dose of romantic tension and a plot that keeps you guessing.’ ????? ‘I'm now desperately waiting for the next Kathryn Freeman book to come out because it's just reminded me how much I love her writing!’ ?????
A casual summer fling between a businesswoman on vacation in Nantucket and a young single dad turns into something more in this delightful rom-com from the author of Booked for the Summer. Olivia is a fiercely independent woman climbing the ladder of corporate finance. But when her family demands she take time off to go to her niece's bachelorette and wedding in Nantucket, she reluctantly agrees. On the island, she catches the eye of Connor: a handsome, cocky, playboy type--also ten years her junior. Olivia's sisters egg her on, encouraging a summer fling, but she's more interested in catching up on her finance reading. Except...he's funny and sexy, and doing her ego a world of good. Connor might come across as a playboy because he was one, eight years ago. That all stopped when he became a dad and found himself raising his daughter single-handedly. But this summer, she's with her grandparents for a month while he's in Nantucket, working in a restaurant with the hopes of opening his own one day. His time on the island also provides a rare opportunity: to forget the struggles of being a single dad and become the carefree guy he used to be, who very much enjoyed flirting with the opposite sex. Especially when they're cool, classy, probably older than him, and most definitely out of his league. As their attraction steadily grows, Connor gets Olivia to relax her tightly held control and indulge in the fling she won't admit she needs. But too soon, the holiday is over and they're back home, living two very different lives. When Connor's presented with an opportunity to see Olivia again, he leaps at it, but this time it's different. He's no longer a charming young playboy but a struggling single dad. A relationship, a family, is not what Olivia wants. And yet, neither can ignore the intense chemistry that didn't go away after the summer. Are they just a Nantucket fling... or something much more? Tropes: Opposites attract Age gap Summer fling No strings attached Single dad
It is not surprising that visitors to Blake’s cosmology – the most elaborate in the history of British text and design – often demand a map in the form of a reference book. The entries in this volume benefit from the wide range of historical information made available in recent decades regarding the relationship between Blake’s text and design and his biographical, political, social, and religious contexts. Of particular importance, the entries take account of the re-interpretations of Blake with respect to race, gender, and empire in scholarship influenced by the groundbreaking theories that have arisen since the first half of the twentieth century. The intricate fluidity of Blake’s anti-Newtonian universe eludes the fixity of definitions and schema. Central to this guide to Blake's work and ideas is Kathryn S. Freeman's acknowledgment of the paradox of providing orientation in Blake’s universe without disrupting its inherent disorientation of the traditions whereby readers still come to it. In this innovative work, Freeman aligns herself with Blake’s demand that we play an active role in challenging our own readerly habits of passivity as we experience his created and corporeal worlds.
It is not surprising that visitors to Blake’s cosmology – the most elaborate in the history of British text and design – often demand a map in the form of a reference book. The entries in this volume benefit from the wide range of historical information made available in recent decades regarding the relationship between Blake’s text and design and his biographical, political, social, and religious contexts. Of particular importance, the entries take account of the re-interpretations of Blake with respect to race, gender, and empire in scholarship influenced by the groundbreaking theories that have arisen since the first half of the twentieth century. The intricate fluidity of Blake’s anti-Newtonian universe eludes the fixity of definitions and schema. Central to this guide to Blake's work and ideas is Kathryn S. Freeman's acknowledgment of the paradox of providing orientation in Blake’s universe without disrupting its inherent disorientation of the traditions whereby readers still come to it. In this innovative work, Freeman aligns herself with Blake’s demand that we play an active role in challenging our own readerly habits of passivity as we experience his created and corporeal worlds.
Through the Fiction of Phebe Gibbes places this prolific, newly recovered English writer at the centre of the revolutionary period. Gibbes’s novels mark the struggles of women for agency in an expanding British empire, from the Seven Years’ War to revolutions in American, Haiti and France. With Gibbes as a nexus in a lineage of women writers from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, Kathryn S. Freeman offers a valuable perspective on the 'long eighteenth century', with Gibbes’ own evolution mirroring that of the larger period. The study traces the development of Gibbes’ authorial voice from satire to irony through a range of female characters subverting patriarchal oppression. Freeman guides the reader through patterns of narrative voice, concerns with gender and sexuality, and elements of wordplay through detailed discussion of five novels representing Gibbes’ evolving representation of a subversive female subjectivity.
Anna Freeman Bentley (b. 1982) is an artist based in London. Her painting practice explores the built environment, architecture and interiors, inviting emotive, psychological and semiotic readings of space. This publication, Complete Reality, documents Freeman Bentley’s latest series of paintings, which she created after visiting the film set for My Driver and I (2024), a coming-of-age drama set in the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Over the course of the shoot, Freeman Bentley took over two thousand photographs, which she edited and worked from in her London studio. The paintings show lavish rooms, filled with fringed lamps, dusty chandeliers, vast mirrors and ornate furniture, juxtaposed with the incongruous signs of a film set: screens, leads, computers and plastic chairs. Exploring the relationship between ‘reality’ and ‘fabrication’, the series continues the artist’s interest in spaces that have an inherent tension or transience. Alongside the paintings that comprise Complete Reality, the publication also includes a series of oil studies on paper that explore additional rooms, angles and spaces from the film set. Installation images of the artist’s most recent solo exhibitions – Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pie`ce Unique, Paris (2024), make shift at Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz (2024), and Complete Reality at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2024–25) – showcase the works staged in different configurations and gallery environments. In her introduction, Jennifer Higgie considers the interiority of Freeman Bentley’s elusive scenes, and her interest in temporary and unreal spaces. The curator and writer Elisabetta Fabrizi interviews Freeman Bentley about the interplay of reality and illusion in her paintings. They reflect on themes of authenticity and narrative tension, and discuss Freeman Bentley’s earlier explorations of cinema, particularly Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). Kathryn Lloyd writes about the conceptual and historical relationships between cinema, photography and painting. She analyses how Freeman Bentley forges an interdependence between these three distinct media, creating an unmistakably painterly language that somehow distils the essence of both film and photography. In an interview with Michele Robecchi, the artist discusses her recent solo exhibition in Switzerland, make shift. Freeman Bentley reflects on her personal connections to the work, the significance of the temporary and transitory nature of the film set and her use of triptychs, mirrors and fragmentation to disrupt conventional readings of space. In her contribution, the film producer Georgie Paget offers a speculative film script based on the exhibition Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pie`ce Unique, Paris. Edited by Matt Price and designed by Joanna Deans, the book is published by Anomie Publishing, London. Anna Freeman Bentley (b.1982) is an artist based in London. She completed her BA at Chelsea College of Arts, London, in 2004, and also undertook an Erasmus exchange at Kunsthochschule Weissensee in Berlin in 2003. She received her MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2010.
Focusing on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson and Mary Shelley, this book uses key concepts of androgyny, subjectivity and the re-creative as a productive framework to trace the fascinating textual interactions and dialogues among these authors. It crosses the boundary between male and female writers of the Romantic period by linking representations of gender with late Enlightenment upheavals regarding creativity and subjectivity, demonstrating how these interrelated concerns dismantle traditional binaries separating the canonical and the noncanonical; male and female; poetry and prose; good and evil; subject and object. Through the convergences among the writings of Coleridge, Mary Robinson, and Mary Shelley, the book argues that each dismantles and reconfigures subjectivity as androgynous and amoral, subverting the centrality of the male gaze associated with canonical Romanticism. In doing so, it examines key works from each author's oeuvre, from Coleridge’s “canonical” poems such as Rime of the Ancient Mariner, through Robinson’s lyrical poetry and novels such as Walsingham, to Mary Shelley’s fiction, including Frankenstein, Mathilda, and The Last Man.
Focusing on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson and Mary Shelley, this book uses key concepts of androgyny, subjectivity and the re-creative as a productive framework to trace the fascinating textual interactions and dialogues among these authors. It crosses the boundary between male and female writers of the Romantic period by linking representations of gender with late Enlightenment upheavals regarding creativity and subjectivity, demonstrating how these interrelated concerns dismantle traditional binaries separating the canonical and the noncanonical; male and female; poetry and prose; good and evil; subject and object. Through the convergences among the writings of Coleridge, Mary Robinson, and Mary Shelley, the book argues that each dismantles and reconfigures subjectivity as androgynous and amoral, subverting the centrality of the male gaze associated with canonical Romanticism. In doing so, it examines key works from each author's oeuvre, from Coleridge’s “canonical” poems such as Rime of the Ancient Mariner, through Robinson’s lyrical poetry and novels such as Walsingham, to Mary Shelley’s fiction, including Frankenstein, Mathilda, and The Last Man.
In her study of newly recovered works by British women, Kathryn Freeman traces the literary relationship between women writers and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, otherwise known as the Orientalists. Distinct from their male counterparts of the Romantic period, who tended to mirror the Orientalist distortions of India, women writers like Phebe Gibbes, Elizabeth Hamilton, Sydney Owenson, Mariana Starke, Eliza Fay, Anna Jones, and Maria Jane Jewsbury interrogated these distortions from the foundation of gender. Freeman takes a three-pronged approach, arguing first that in spite of their marked differences, female authors shared a common resistance to the Orientalists’ intellectual genealogy that allowed them to represent Vedic non-dualism as an alternative subjectivity to the masculine model of European materialist philosophy. She also examines the relationship between gender and epistemology, showing that women’s texts not only shift authority to a feminized subjectivity, but also challenge the recurring Orientalist denigration of Hindu masculinity as effeminate. Finally, Freeman contrasts the shared concern about miscegenation between Orientalists and women writers, contending that the first group betrays anxiety about intermarriage between East Indian Company men and indigenous women while the varying portrayals of intermarriage by women show them poised to dissolve the racial and social boundaries. Her study invites us to rethink the Romantic paradigm of canonical writers as replicators of Orientalists’ cultural imperialism in favor of a more complicated stance that accommodates the differences between male and female authors with respect to India.
