Heather Wardell

The fiercely private Madeleine-Cora Spencer is the last person who should be on a reality TV show, but when she's shunned by a friend's new wife because "you can't trust desperate single women" her pain and humiliation drive her straight to the "Find Your Prince" dating show's web site. Armed with date-appropriate clothes and a detailed game plan she arrives to meet her potential loves, only to be dumped... on a remote island with seven ex-boyfriends. Seven exes! Could this be any worse?

Seven Exes Are Eight Too Many

Waking up with a strange man is scary. Realizing you lost fifteen years of your life overnight? That's terrifying. With her memories from seventeen to thirty-two gone, Kate has no idea who she is and where she belongs. As she begins to fall for the man who found her, she wonders if she forgot those years for a reason. Should she keep trying to retrieve her original self, or start a new life?

Blank Slate Kate

Young immigrants Rosie and Maria are in the Triangle Waist Company on March 25, 1911 when a discarded cigarette sets the factory ablaze. 146 people die that day, and even those who survive will be changed forever.

Fiery Girls

When Candice's in-laws were killed eight months ago buying a huge faux polar bear rug for her Christmas present, she lost more than just two of her favorite people: she lost her husband Ian as well. After only two years of marriage, their guilt and pain have left them living together but apart, unable to really talk for fear of what they'll say to each other. Ian leaves for a month-long contract overseas, and Candice plans to use the time apart to decide whether her marriage can be saved. When her ex walks back into her life as the new client at work, ten years more attractive yet saddened by his own recent loss, she's left wondering what she really wants from life and love.

Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo

Determined to lose weight for her best friend's wedding, goal-obsessed Rhiannon flees her parents' Christmas Day feast to avoid overeating but her car skids off the deserted road into a tree. Trapped and bleeding, with her cell phone out of reach, she struggles to escape, and to accept that she's spent her whole life planning but hasn't ever really lived. Will she get the chance to change that?

Planning to Live

Melissa and Owen met on New Years' Eve and he proposed on Valentine's Day. Now it's March, and they're about to set sail on a two-week Caribbean cruise - and get married on the last day at sea. Though their relationship's moving fast, Melissa's wanted to be married for years and she knows the smart stable Owen is a great catch so she's sure they'll be fine. At least, she's sure until she meets his brothers on the cruise and discovers she's dated both of them: Austin, the fun-loving flirt whose kisses still haunt her dreams, and Nicholas, the sweet horror movie fan whose lack of ambition upset her in ways she still doesn't understand. Melissa expected to spend tons of time onboard with her fiancé, but he instead spends nearly his every waking moment in the casino displaying a previously unseen love of gambling. This surprise, and the time she spends with Nicholas and with Austin, makes her question everything she thought she wanted. Her relationship with Owen was just fine before, but suddenly 'just fine' doesn't seem good enough to keep a marriage alive for a lifetime. Melissa has two weeks to decide: stay with Owen or jump ship. "All At Sea" is book 9 in the "Toronto Collection" set of loosely connected novels. While most of the books are not sequels, your favorite characters will reappear across the books in the collection, letting you follow their lives after their original book ends.

All at Sea

Both personally and professionally, Alexa knows all too well the power of words. Two years after her boyfriend Christophe's vicious attack, she's still trying to see herself as more than simply 'his victim', still trying to figure out her own story. After his trial, she moves from New York City to Toronto in an attempt to start over, but his words cling to her and even in a new country she can't see how to move into relationships with the new people in her life while hiding the secret of Christophe's worst offense. She can't hide that secret from her coworker Jake, though, because the news buff has recognized her from the coverage of the assault and trial and knows every word she can't bring herself to say about her ordeal. With Jake's help, can Alexa reclaim her story and her life?

Everybody's Got a Story

Twenty-eight-year-old Andrea returns home from a business trip to find Alex, her boyfriend of fourteen years, nervously waiting for her. Assuming he's finally going to propose, Andrea's instead horrified to learn he's been cheating on her and is leaving to be with the other woman, who he calls Andrea's opposite. At first Andrea's paralyzed by shock and sadness, but the business analyst soon forms a plan: change every last detail of her life and become her opposite so Alex will come back to her. It's a challenge at first, but soon Andrea's loving the changes she's making, the new activities she's doing, and the new people in her life. But will she change enough to get Alex back? And if she does, will he fit into the wonderful new life she's creating for herself?

A Life That Fits

Massage therapist Tess Grayson has long dreamed of turning her hobby of building intricate miniature dioramas into an art career. She’s finally ready to grab for that tiny brass ring, but her potential new massage client shakes her resolve. Forrest Williams had finally healed from the car accident that killed his fiancée, but a new injury now threatens his professional hockey career. Even allowing for everything he’s suffered, the depth of the emotional and physical pain Tess senses in Forrest at their first meeting shocks her, and she puts aside her artistic aspirations for two months to help him recover. When Forrest shows Tess’s dioramas to his mother, who owns a top Toronto art gallery, she agrees to sell Tess’s work but her rules and restrictions stifle Tess’s creativity. Giving up the career of her dreams is unthinkable, but losing the freedom and joy she’d always found in her art is unbearable, and Tess can’t seem to find a way to have both at once.

Go Small or Go Home

Finding My Happy Pace

Nothing ever comes easily for Larissa, a makeup artist who both loves and fears pink and all things feminine. She longs to start her own business as her late dad had wanted but never quite gets there, her attempt to host her best friend’s son’s christening is a disaster, and the only dates she can get are dreadful. When she’s offered a job teaching English in Kuwait, at first she says no because her life is bad enough at home without throwing sand and camels into the mix. But when everything goes wrong at once, she can’t stay in Toronto another second so accepts the job in the hopes that she will be a new and better person there. But can she really leave her psychological baggage behind, or is it true that ‘wherever you go, there you are’?

Pink is a Four-Letter Word

All Corinne has ever wanted was the role of clarinetist for the Toronto Philharmonic Orchestra. The clarinet, and working to master it, is all she has left of her father, who abandoned the family when she was a little girl. But after failing to clinch an open spot in a heated audition, her life-plan soon goes overboard. Not only does she break up with her longtime boyfriend, Clay, she also makes a decision that will alter her destiny in ways she never imagined… After a medical procedure and a couple of months of changing everything in her life, a pregnant Corinne meets Melissa and her gorgeous flirt of a brother-in-law, Austin, on a cruise. The heat of the Caribbean sun soon combines with a mutual attraction to create a sizzling connection neither Corinne nor Austin can deny. But when the truth comes out about Corinne’s condition, will lifelong playboy Austin man up? Or will Corinne’s hope for a future beyond a shipboard romance prove yet another PLAN OVERBOARD? The sequel to “All at Sea”!

Plan Overboard

Amy’s a hobbyist songwriter with big dreams, but not the usual ‘making it as a musician’ kind. No, Amy wants to honor her late best friend by finally starting the support center for teenage girls they’d dreamed of when they were just girls themselves. She doesn’t know where to start, but when one of her songs becomes an overnight internet sensation she sees a quick path to the money she’ll need to make the center a reality. As white-hot pop sensation Misty Will, Amy finds a whole new world opening to her and realizes she loves being on stage holding an audience spellbound. She also loves how her young fans look up to her and draw strength from her songs, but of course they don’t know the awful thing she did after her friend died and how badly she could have used a support center herself. She knows, though, and also knows that she simply has to leave her new pop princess identity behind and become Amy the center director as she’s dreamed of for eight years. Doesn’t she?

Live Out Loud

Angela has typical lottery-player plans: help friends and family, give more to charity, and escape her rut. But when she wins big, she faces angry relatives, her own unexpected greed, and a lawsuit from the person who put her in that rut. Almost nobody treats her normally, and they've got fifty million reasons not to. She can buy anything she wants now, but can she buy the life she needs?

Fifty Million Reasons

Internet columnist Lydia Grange is on the brink of the promotion she’s wanted for two years. As lead columnist of the Toronto Times’ women’s issue site, she’ll have the fame she longs for, the money to fuel her shopping obsession, and all the free shoes she can wear. Only one obstacle remains: beating her coworkers (Sasha the perfect mother and Patricia the bargain-obsessed senior) in a competition. All three must be ‘good to themselves’ for four weeks and teach their readers to do the same, and at the end of the time their sexy boss Felix will pick the winner. Lydia’s certain she will be that winner, and not just because she knows Felix wants her on an unprofessional level. She’s never anything but good to herself, so how could she not win? Fancy drinks with extra whipped cream, the cheesecake she adores, the exquisite but pricey purse she’s been craving? With the help of her nice-guy buddy and coworker Percy, she’ll just indulge herself even more and make sure her fans do the same. In a month both the job and her long-desired fling with Felix will be hers. It’ll be the easiest four weeks of her life. Unless it turns out there’s more to self-care than sex and shopping and sugar.

Good To Myself

If thirty-year-old Megan were any more of a doormat, she'd have footprints on her back. She helps anyone and everyone, no matter the cost to herself, and she's always been that way. Even the thought of withholding her assistance makes her feel sick. Worse, it makes her feel like she's a bad person, selfish and unkind. She takes up running purely to avoid gaining weight, but as she trains with her cute but heartbroken coach Andrew she becomes more able to do things she'd never thought she could, both physically and emotionally. The day before she runs her first marathon, though, her best friend's demands result in the biggest challenge yet to her developing assertiveness and Megan must decide: cave in as she always has before or stick to her new-found 'happy pace' in running and life.

Mary’s given up everything, including an unsatisfying marriage, to become a chef. But the career comes with a side dish: Kegan, her sexy but controlling new boss. They’re soon in a relationship, and in all-too-frequent arguments, and when it becomes clear they can’t work together and be together Mary faces a dilemma: keep her dream job or her dream man?

Stir Until Thoroughly Confused

Melissa and Owen met on New Years’ Eve and he proposed on Valentine’s Day. Now it’s March, and they’re about to set sail on a two-week Caribbean cruise – and get married on the last day at sea. Though their relationship’s moving fast, Melissa’s wanted to be married for years and she knows the smart stable Owen is a great catch so she’s sure they’ll be fine. At least, she’s sure until she meets his brothers on the cruise and discovers she’s dated both of them: Austin, the fun-loving flirt whose kisses still haunt her dreams, and Nicholas, the sweet horror movie fan whose lack of ambition upset her in ways she still doesn’t understand. Melissa expected to spend tons of time onboard with her fiancé, but he instead spends nearly his every waking moment in the casino displaying a previously unseen love of gambling. This surprise, and the time she spends with Nicholas and with Austin, makes her question everything she thought she wanted. Her relationship with Owen was just fine before, but suddenly ‘just fine’ doesn’t seem good enough to keep a marriage alive for a lifetime. Melissa has two weeks to decide: stay with Owen or jump ship.

All At Sea

Both personally and professionally, Alexa knows all too well the power of words. Two years after her boyfriend Christophe’s vicious attack, she’s still trying to see herself as more than simply ‘his victim’, still trying to figure out her own story. After his trial, she moves from New York City to Toronto in an attempt to start over, but his words cling to her and even in a new country she can’t see how to move into relationships with the new people in her life while hiding the secret of Christophe’s worst offense. She can’t hide that secret from her coworker Jake, though, because the news buff has recognized her from the coverage of the assault and trial and knows every word she can’t bring herself to say about her ordeal. With Jake’s help, can Alexa reclaim her story and her life?

The tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books of Heather Wardell's "Toronto Collection" in one! The "Toronto Collection" is a set of loosely connected novels. While most of the books are not sequels, your favorite characters will reappear across the books in the collection, letting you follow their lives after their original book ends. Want stories of real women taking control of their lives? These are the books for you, and here's a collection of books 10 through 13 at a terrific price! ﻿Good to Myself: One obstacle keeps columnist Lydia Grange from the promotion she craves: beating her two coworkers in a “be ‘good to yourself’ for four weeks” competition. Piece of (cheese)cake. Lydia, queen of instant gratification, will indulge herself even more, ensure her readers do too, and it’ll be the easiest month of her life. Unless… could there be more to self-care than sex and shopping and sugar? Pink is a Four-Letter Word: Nothing ever comes easily for Larissa, a makeup artist who both loves and fears pink and all things feminine. After a particularly painful string of disasters, she takes a job teaching English in Kuwait in the hopes that she will be a new and better person there. But can she really leave her psychological baggage behind in Toronto, or is it true that ‘wherever you go, there you are’? Everybody’s Got a Story: Both personally and professionally, Alexa knows all too well the power of words. Two years after her boyfriend viciously assaulted her, she’s still trying to label herself as more than simply ‘his victim’. She moves to Toronto after his trial for a fresh start, but his actions and especially his words stick with her and make that impossible. Can Alexa reclaim her story and her life? Fifty Million Reasons: Angela has typical lottery-player plans: help friends and family, give more to charity, and escape her rut. But when she wins big, she faces angry relatives, her own unexpected greed, and a lawsuit from the person who put her in that rut. Almost nobody treats her normally, and they’ve got fifty million reasons not to. She can buy anything she wants now, but can she buy the life she needs?

Heather Wardell

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