The Witch’s Daughter
Rasputin is dead. Petrograd is burning. Hunger stalks the streets. And Revolution is the word on everyone’s lips.
What would you do to survive?
An epic story of love, tragedy and the loss of innocence The Witch’s Daughter is a sweeping novel about the fall of an Empire and the death of the Russian aristocracy. It tells the true story of the Grand Duchesses Militza of Montenegro and her daughter Nadezhda and their dramatic exodus from Petrograd to their final, extraordinary, rescue off the beaches of the Crimea.
As Petrograd burns and its citizens are shot at whim by marauders with machine guns, Militza and Nadezhda’s family head South for the relative safety of the Crimea. The journey is arduous, but the delight at finding their county houses still intact is remarkable. An oasis of calm in the eye of the surrounding storm. However, the hiatus is brief. Soldiers from the Yalta Soviet arrive and the stragglers from the Romanov Court are rounded up and all put under house arrest in one palace. Old enemies have to share rooms, enmities smoulder around the breakfast table. It is only a mutual fear of the enemy that keeps them from tearing each other apart.
Yet, in amongst the rubble, the mud, the death and destruction, there is a ray of love and hope. It possible for romance to flower in so much misery and fear? Militza knows nothing breaks like a heart, but perhaps nothing heals like either?
Tragic and compelling, The Witch’s Daughter is the story of survival against all the odds. How did one family famed for their wild beauty and mystical powers make it off the beaches of the Crimes when so many others were murdered where they slept?
The Witch’s Daughter tells of the destruction of a generation and the appalling demise of a 300-year-old dynasty. But it also tells how, when faced with a common enemy, even the harshest rivals must come together and, somehow, the smallest scintilla of hope can rise from the ashes.
THE BABYLON SERIES
Imogen is probably best known for her hugely successful Babylon series, which has sold over million copies in the UK alone, and been sold to over 25 counties worldwide. This includes the Sunday Times Top Ten bestsellers Hotel Babylon, Air Babylon and Fashion Babylon as well as Beach Babylon, Pop Babylon, Wedding Babylon and Hospital Babylon.
Hotel Babylon became a primetime hit on BBC 1, playing over four series in the UK as well as in the USA on BBC America. Fashion Babylon was also a primetime BBC 1 series, Material Girl. Beach Babylon is currently in development for CBS in the US. She has written scripts for both Hotel Babylon and Fashion Babylon TV series, as well as pilots for Ecosse and ICW Media.
HOTEL BABYLON
Hotel Babylon is a trawl through the highs and lows, the extremes, the tragedies, the miseries, the decadence and the debauchery of the ultimate service industry – where the money not only talks but gets you the best room, the best service and also entitles you to behave in any way you please….
AIR BABYLON
Do you know the best place to have sex on a plane? Do you know that one drink in the air equals three on the ground? Do you know who is checking you in? Who is checking you out? Do you know what happens to your luggage once it leaves your sight? Is it secure? Are you safe? Do you really know anything about the industry to which you entrust your life several times a year?
FASHION BABYLON
Exquisitely cut and gorgeously detailed, Fashion Babylon explains the mark-ups and the comedowns, the fabulous extremes and the shoddy short cuts behind one of the most lucrative and secretive of businesses. Whether you just like a bit of shopping or you‚re a hardcore fashionista, Fashion Babylon will change the way you sashay into Top Shop, flick through the pages of Vogue and worship at the temple of Harvey Nichols forever.
BEACH BABYLON
Beach Babylon takes you behind the scenes of the world of the five-star tropical island resort. Do all of the stories which take place behind closed doors of the exclusive spa have happy endings? What do the world’s richest people expect from room service during their fortnight in paradise? What does the windsurfing instructor do to keep sane after hours?
POP BABYLON
Tracking a year in the making of a brand-new boy band, Pop Babylon is pure, unadulterated reading pleasure – stuffed with stories about pop’s most demanding divas, which jocks do shock and just how long you can chop a line of cocaine. Disgraceful, revelatory and great down-and-dirty fun, it’s essential reading for anyone who wants to know what it really takes nowadays to be top of the pops.
WEDDING BABYLON
Following a week in the life of a busy wedding planner, and based entirely on true but anonymous stories, Wedding Babylon takes you to the heart of an industry where emotions run high, money flows like champagne and £3,000 cakes are made of polystyrene. Why are weddings so expensive? What makes us spend a year’s wages on one Big Day? And just how Big does your Day actually have to be?
HOSPITAL BABYLON
We will meet doctors who sleep with nurses. Doctors who sleep with patients. Doctors who fiddle their insurance forms. Doctors who suck fat, pump up breasts, plump lips and lengthen penises. The doctor who specialises in flatulence. The doctor who shoots up before he operates. Doctor Feelgood who will give you anything and everything you need. As well as the doctor who makes a fortune doing buttock enlargements in the Caribbean.
RESTAURANT BABYLON
Welcome to the restaurant business, where the hours are punishing, the conditions are brutal and the Chef’s Special has been languishing at the back of the fridge for the past three days. This is an industry plagued with obsessives. Why else do some chefs drive themselves crazy in pursuit of elusive Michelin stars, when in reality all they’re doing is ‘making someone else’s tea’?
FICTION
Have You Got Anything Stronger?
Have You Got Anything Stronger? is a satirical comedy about a group of women who have spent the last 15 years exhausting themselves, chipping away at the glass ceiling only to realise they shouldn’t have bothered. It ask questions like: why did we get married? What are kids for? How early is Wine O’clock? Is frowning overrated? Why are my husbands tits bigger than mine? When can I stop grooming? Does having a full bush mean you’ve really given up? Can love conquer all? Will sex ever again last longer than three minutes? When will the hamster wheel stop? At what age are you allowed to throw in the towel? And is it really ok to collect your daughter’s teacher after a 3-bottle lunch and drive her at high speed to sports day?
In short: Is this it?
THE WITCHES OF ST PETERSBURG
The Russian Empire is on the verge of collapse. Revolution is in the air. The starving stalk the streets of St Petersburg and yet the Imperial Court still commute between their estates and organise their lavish balls.
Two sisters arrive in the city. Princesses from Montenegro; they are famed for their wild beauty and mystical powers. Initially ridiculed and outcast as the daughters of a provincial ‘Goat King,’ they react in the only way they know how. They befriend the isolated Tsarina Alexandra and, using their gifts, they help her in her increasingly desperate quest to give birth to a son and heir. The circle closes. The girls are the gateway. Gurus, clairvoyants, holy fools and charlatans all try their luck. Then in one, doomed, last throw of the dice, the sisters introduce Rasputin into the Russian Court…
Based on a true story of the lives of Princess Militza and Princess Anastasia of Montenegro during the dying days of the Russian Empire The Witches of St Petersburg is a tale of love, lust, power and betrayal at the heart of the Romanov Court.
MY CANAPE HELL
When journalist Abigail Long gets her own column – Abigail’s Party – she is propelled into the sparkling world of celebrity, champagne and canapés. Seduced by the bright lights and sound-bites, she swaps real friends and true love for late nights and laminated invitations. As launch party follows launch party and premiere follows premiere, the circuit becomes increasingly addictive.
With a full diary but an empty life without old mates and comfort food, the glamour of mingling with the stars soon begins to tarnish. After a close relationship with the hottest new actor in town, Abigail suddenly finds herself the other side of the lens. And so begins her final true decent into true canapé hell.
My Canapé Hell is a sharp, witty debut, which offers a wry insider’s view into the world of PT, parties and professional small talk. It is a biting and wickedly funny satire on the celebrity circuit.
“If I were ever going to read a book it would be this one,” Caroline Aherne.
SHAGPILE
Madeleine Johnson is content to play wife, mother and tennis while discussing the latest diet and push-up bra. But her whole life is turned upside down when handsome Max Wright comes to town and opens an antique shop.
Naïve and unsophisticated, Madeleine falls heavily for the latest flirtation on the dinner party circuit. For the first time she allows herself to think beyond soirees at Angela’s, barbeques at Liz’s and political fundraising at Val’s.
In a society where group fumblings and philanderings are acceptable and sex is traded like Green Shield stamps, there is a strict code – not to fall in love. But Madeleine is intoxicated, she can no longer help herself and everyone’s world is disrupted.
THE WENDY HOUSE
Charlie is back. Back after five years photographing in the hot-spots of the world from the flooded plains of Mozambique to the victims of the Rwandan genocide. Successful and single, she is shocked to find her feisty girl adventures are not topics for conversation at dinner tables where the merits of marriage, maternity and the latest marinade dominate.
By contrast, her sister Kate, one-time sassy vixen, is now a young married with two small children, one large au-pair, a stainless-steel balloon whisk and an interior-designed house with New Labour Pistachio walls. Kate is also in therapy – retail therapy. And she is determined Charlie should follow suit.
When Charlie meets fellow photographer Andrew Edwards, a man with a government health warning tattooed on his forehead, it looks like independence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
But who is really missing out? What is a modern girl to do these days? Who is she supposed to be? And can real domestic happiness only be played out in a wendy house?
TUSCANY FOR BEGINNERS UK VERSION
Tuscany. Glorious Tuscany. With its sunflowers, its olive groves, its rolling countryside and its stunning vistas, it is everyone’s picture perfect place in the sun. And Belinda Smith couldn’t be happier.
Leaving the drizzly dormitory town of Tiling behind, after discovering her husband in bed with another woman, Belinda has found a little valley to call her own. Known locally as the ‘Contessa,’ she runs an up-market B&B, she plans the Christmas Panto, she represents the community in the annual cheese rolling competition. She is the epicentre of all things expatriate. Life, in short, could not be more ‘perfecto.’ Until the arrival of the feisty Wall Street ball-breaker, Lauren, that is.
Sandblasting over her frescos and Belinda’s social supremacy, Lauren’s arrival divides the ex-pat community. And when Belinda’s daughter falls in love with Lauren’s son, war is well and truly declared. Fireworks are ignited, sheep cheese is thrown and Belinda’s entire world collapses around her. Only one question remains: is Val di Santa Caterina big enough for the both of them?
TUSCANY FOR BEGINNERS US VERSION
Oh, the dream of escaping to Italy–and the nightmare of reality. . . .
Belinda Smith has found her very own Tuscan valley in the sun, having abandoned a dreary cheating husband and an even drearier English town. Running Casa Mia, her own too, too divine bed and breakfast, everything is coming up sunflowers and olive groves for La Contessa of the Valley. Life couldn’t be more perfecto!
Until, that is, the arrival of Lauren–a beautiful, feisty Wall Street ball-breaker who has the gall to announce her plans to open a new B&B. A place just like Belinda’s–only much more glamorous. Even worse, Lauren, whose charmingly calculated smile Belinda recognizes as quite like her own, threatens Belinda’s existence as the epicenter of all things ex-patriot in the valley.
Have Belinda’s fabulous days of ruling supreme in this corner of the world come to an end? Will the carnivorous Lauren consume Belinda’s dreams al fresco? Will Lauren’s gorgeous son Kyle steal Belinda’s lovely, overworked daughter away from home and hearth (who will do the cleaning, for God’s sake?). War has come to lovely Tuscany–let the fur and focaccia fly!
NON-FICTION
THE STORK CLUB
‘The fertility game is like a marathon, where you just have to keep on running. No matter how many times the finishing line is moved, no matter how increasingly heavy the going or unpleasant the terrain, you pick yourself up and, ever more determinedly, keep on going. Until one day, you pray, you might just make it…’
The Stork Club is Imogen Edwards-Jones’ very personal, very moving and very honest memoir of her (and her husband’s) trials and tribulations with IVF. Poked and prodded by endless medical professionals, stuffed full of an exotic cocktail of drugs and forced to try to have sex at the most inopportune moments, Imogen pulls no punches in her account of this gruelling process. But there are laughs as well as tears along the way.
Based on Imogen’s hugely successful Daily Telegraph columns about IVF, The Stork Club is a truly life-enhancing read – proof positive that there’s light at the end of the darkest tunnels…
TOUCH WOOD: CONFESSIONS OF AN ACCIDENTAL PORN DIRECTOR
Making a porn movie is not as easy as it seems. How do you smuggle a porn star in to a five star hotel when their idea of disguise is to wear a cropped T-shirt with the words ‘Porn Star’ across the front in bright pink letters? Then there’s your temperamental cameraman, your friends who think you’re crazy, not to mention the libidinous lapdog that keeps trying to get into shot….
Hilarious and at times downright eye-popping, Touch Wood, is the ultimate insider account of a very kinky world.
AS EDITOR
GIRLS NIGHT IN
Over thirty-five women from the global A-list of contemporary writers request the pleasure of your company for a Girls’ Night In …
Indulge in sexy stories of face-sucking, lip-smacking lust; discover the perils of email romance and Brad Pitt lookalikes; wallow in poignant stories of heartache and lost love; enjoy the dirty details of disastrous dates; and curl up with tender tales that promise that love is out there, somewhere.
And by buying this book you can help make a positive change in the lives of children caught up in the horrors of war. Proceeds from Girls’ Night In will go to the charity War Child, and will fund education and communications projects for children in war-torn countries across Africa.
So take the phone off the hook and enjoy Girls’ Night In – the ultimate all-night chick-flick.
BIG NIGHT OUT
Over thirty-five women from the global A-list of contemporary writers request the pleasure of your company for a Girls’ Night In …
Indulge in sexy stories of face-sucking, lip-smacking lust; discover the perils of email romance and Brad Pitt lookalikes; wallow in poignant stories of heartache and lost love; enjoy the dirty details of disastrous dates; and curl up with tender tales that promise that love is out there, somewhere.
And by buying this book you can help make a positive change in the lives of children caught up in the horrors of war. Proceeds from Girls’ Night In will go to the charity War Child, and will fund education and communications projects for children in war-torn countries across Africa.
So take the phone off the hook and enjoy Girls’ Night In – the ultimate all-night chick-flick.
LADIES NIGHT
The list of contributors comprises: Jessica Adams, Cecelia Ahern, Maggie Alderson, Lisa Armstrong, Tilly Bagshawe, Faith Bleasdale, Elizabeth Buchan, Meg Cabot, Jill Davis, Stella Duffy, Imogen Edwards-Jones, Harriet Evans, Mike Gayle, Kristin Gore, Wendy Holden, Belinda Jones, Louise Kean, Cathy Kelly, Helen Lederer, Kathy Lette, Gay Longworth, Chris Manby, Carole Matthews, Anna Maxted, Karen Moline, Santa Montefiore, Elizabeth Noble, Freya North, Adele Parks, Victoria Routledge, Louise Voss, Fiona Walker, Daisy Waugh, Isabel Wolff and Deborah Wright.
All the writers involved have donated their stories for free. HarperCollins will donate at least 1 to War Child and No Strings for every copy sold, continuing the amazing work for children in war zones whose lives have been torn apart by conflict.
IN BED WITH...
In Bed With is an often wicked and totally sizzling collection of unashamedly sexy stories by bestselling, award-winning and well-known novelists – writing under their x-rated pseudonyms. Entertaining and erotic, In Bed With is a delicious collection of fiction provocateur. So what are you waiting for? Slip under the covers with a good book. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Featuring Jessica Adams, Maggie Alderson, Emma Darwin, Louise Doughty, Stella Duffy, Imogen Edwards-Jones, Esther Freud, Joanne Harris, Rachel Johnson, Kathy Lette, Chris Manby, Jane Moore, Adele Parks, Justine Picardie, Bella Pollen, Santa Sebag-Montefiore, Ali Smith, Joan Smith, Daisy Waugh and Fay Weldon.
BELGRAVIA
Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London’s grandest postcode. Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is peopled by a rich cast of characters. But the story begins on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At the Duchess of Richmond’s now legendary ball, one family’s life will change for ever…
FOUR MUMS IN A BOAT
The incredible true story of four ordinary working mums from Yorkshire who took on an extraordinary challenge and broke a world record along the way.
Janette, Frances, Helen and Niki, though all from Yorkshire, were four very different women, all juggling full time jobs alongside being mothers to each of their 2 children. They could never be described as athletes, but they were determined to be busy and the local Saturday morning rowing club was the perfect place to go to have a laugh and a gossip, get the blood pumping in the open air, and feel invigorated.
This is the story of how four friends together had the audacity to go on a wild, terrifying and beautiful adventure, not to escape life, but for life not to escape them.
SCREENWRITING
THE BABYLON TV SERIES
Based on the bestselling book Hotel Babylon the TV series was produced by Carnival Films and ran over 4 years on BBC1 primetime. Staring Max Beesley, Dexter Fletcher, Tamsin Outhwaite, Nigel Harman and myriad of celebrity roles – including Joan Collins, Kelly Brook, Jerry Hall, David Walliams and Antony Head, it was sold and aired all over the world, including BBC America.
As well as acting as a consultant and executive producer, Imogen wrote two episodes:
HOTEL BABYLON SERIES 2, EP 6
Tony loses out on the Concierge of the Year award because his services are deemed old-fashioned. Riled, he decides it’s time to modernise his game. But when he gets involved with a gang of Russian drug dealers he soon find himself out of his depth.
Meanwhile, Rebecca realises she has a serious mutiny on her hands after cancelling the Christmas party. She reinstates it, with Charlie’s help, and he ends up proving his worth in more ways than one.
Elsewhere, famous British actor and renowned sex addict, Aiden Spencer (Alexander Armstrong), is using the hotel for a press junket to promote his latest film.
Head Receptionist Anna with his terrified PA, Elizabeth (Sally Bretton), and, pretending to be a journalist, gets the truth out of the actor about his “problem”.
Could this be Anna’s dream ticket if she sells the tape to a real journalist?
HOTEL BABYLON SERIES 3, EP 2
Love is in the air as Valentine’s night approaches, but the restaurant has received a damning review from restaurant critic Alexander Crawfield (Nathaniel Parker). New PR Emily rises to the challenge and convinces Charlie to hire hot celebrity chef, Otto Clark (Alan Davies), leaving the Head Chef, Adam Price (Jeremy Sheffield), out on a limb.
Gino suspects that a pair of bronzed and beautiful guests are using one of the rooms to shoot porn and stream it over the internet. Jackie’s doubt doesn’t wash with the boys, but she manages to stay one crucial step ahead of them, and ultimately laughs all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, the romance bug has caught up with Charlie and Anna and it looks like its game on until Anna becomes too close to Lady Hamilton (Anita Dobson) and her very eligible son Giles. Charlie can’t contain his jealousy, realising that money and class are the only things that seem to interest Anna after all. Unless both he and Anna have read the situation wrong?
MATERIAL GIRL
A young fashion designer battles an evil ex-boss, a sexy-but-devilish business partner and snobby fashionistas to get her break in work and love.
PODCAST
Sarah Vine's Femail Half-Hour
Imogen has also done some podcasts with her old friend Daily Mail Columnist Sarah Vine where they talk about life, politics, sex, sexism and much more
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