Sorry To Upset You

Can a forward-thinking woman help the police solve a murder in a backward-thinking town?

California, 1903: Smart, inquisitive, and a firm believer in the new progressive reforms, Adele Gossling seeks a new life after the devastating death of her father. She flees San Francisco for the small town of Arrojo, planning a life of peace and small pleasures with nothing more exciting than selling fountain pens to the locals in her stationery shop and partaking in the town’s favorite pastime: gossip.

Peace is exactly what she doesn’t get when she discovers her neighbor’s dead body in her gazebo. The police think they have a firm suspect: the young man who was secretly engaged to the victim. But Adele and her clairvoyant new friend Nin Branch are sure he’s innocent. In spite of the raised eyebrows from Arrojo’s Victorian-minded citizens, they set out to prove the young man didn’t do it. But if he didn’t, who did?

Can Adele and Nin solve this puzzling case involving a striped carnation, a diamond ring, a note, a muddy pair of boots, and a broken promise?

Tombstone, Arizona, 1880s

I thought I’d have my bakery in Chicago forever but it all disappeared in a single afternoon. Everything gone-my family business, my home, my future. What was I supposed to do? As a young, single woman in the 1880s, there were very few options.

Fortunately, my twin sister Suzanne had moved to Tombstone and built a business of her own with her husband. She wrote that her husband’s best friend needed to get married fast to get a loan to open his fancy restaurant and would I consider it. I missed her enough and was desperate enough to say yes. The only problem was, she didn’t tell him I was an accomplished baker in my own right-and that’s not what he had in mind at all.

When I stepped off the stagecoach, it was shocking. Tombstone was nothing like what I expected. I’d pictured cactus and dust and lots of gunfights. So as I passed by the Grand Hotel, the library, the schoolhouse and even an ice cream parlor, I thought maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

I got to meet the six Archer sisters and their grumpy, widowed father, and they embraced me like one of their own. I thought things were going well, but the shock on Tripp’s face when Suzanne introduced me-her identical twin-had me praying that he wouldn’t send me straight back to Chicago. Nothing was waiting for me there but heartache and starvation, and I resolved to do my best to help him make his fancy restaurant a success. That is, if he’d let me.

Ollie Brewer doesn’t like his new school.

He doesn’t like being called “Frenchy” by bullies who can’t point to France on a map. He especially doesn’t like that books keep falling off his shelf for no reason.

Then one day, a snow globe winks at him.

Literally.

Soon, Ollie’s being flung into a world of impossible towers, singing Nards, and clingy blue monsters who sob when you try to leave. There’s a broken world to fix, a cog-wearing king to challenge, and a bear in his coat who burps strawberry thunder.

He didn’t sign up for magic lessons.

He just wanted to survive Year 5.

But sometimes, all it takes to change the world is one scared kid, one flickering torch, and a really good eyebrow wiggle.

A wildly funny, big-hearted adventure about facing the dark – inside and out – and discovering that monsters aren’t always what they seem.

Paris, 1940. Golden light bathes the crumbling rooftop of the orphanage. I stroke my little sister’s hair and comfort the other war orphans climbing into the rickety truck. We must leave the only home we have left, or the Nazis will find us…

Margot has spent most of her life at St Agnes’ Orphanage with her little sister Lucie. She does her best to care for all the children, cradling them under the stars when Sister Helen can’t get them to sleep. But she knows that when the Nazis reach the gates of Paris, the Jewish orphans will be in terrible danger. She must help them escape…

Holding on tightly to Lucie as they all scramble into a truck bound for the countryside, Margot cannot prevent her hands from shaking. Then one night, by the flickering light of the makeshift fire, Sister Helen tells Margot she has found a rich family to take Lucie in. But there will be no safety for the other children – unless Margot can lead them to the French coast for a ship destined for America.

Looking from her sister’s bright blue eyes to the little patchwork teddy the children share, Margot realises she must trust someone else with the only family she has left. But as soon as the wrought-iron gates of Lucie’s new home slam shut, Margot knows she’s made a mistake. Devastated at being left behind with strangers, Lucie runs away.

Margot knows the only place Lucie will run to is the high stone walls of the orphanage, where she last knew warmth and food and comfort. With fear in her heart, Margot is faced with an impossible choice. Should she race to save her sister from a terrible fate, or make sure the other orphans escape?

Big Pharma has bottled the fountain of youth. But synthetic innocence comes at a steep cost…

London. Nick Winters values truth above all. Fired five years ago for publishing an embarrassing piece against orders, the grizzled reporter finds himself on the edge of fifty and struggling to shine a spotlight on corruption. So when the editor who sacked him calls out of the blue with an exposé assignment, he seizes the opportunity to probe a lethal secret…

Exploring claims that a man committed murder under the influence of a drug the investigative journalist has experimented with himself, he digs into the company that holds the patent. But with the pill’s popular ability to temporarily regress older adults to their psychological youth, Nick quickly runs afoul of corporate assassins and deadly gangsters.

Will this determined writer’s quest for the real story make him a fatal headline?