{ "item_title" : "The Unsigned Line", "item_author" : [" Samuel Ashford "], "item_description" : "One blank signature line is enough to expose twenty years of family loyalty.At forty-eight, Sophie Hartwell has spent two decades making the Hartwell family's life run smoothly-organising what others forget, absorbing small exclusions, and keeping the peace before anyone notices there was a problem. Then, during Richard Hartwell's eightieth-birthday gathering, a document pack is placed in front of her. Richard wants to buy Sophie's ten shares in the private company that owns Hartwell House. The paperwork comes with missing schedules, a requested deadline, and terms she has not had time to understand.What first appears to be an administrative family matter quickly becomes a marriage-in-crisis story about money, trust, loyalty, and the right to make an informed choice. Sophie discovers that her husband, Nicholas, knew more about the proposed transaction before she was asked to sign. The issue is no longer only what the shares may be worth. It is what Nicholas chose not to tell her, what the wider family expects her to accept, and why everyone seems more comfortable with her consent than with her questions.Sophie does not set out to seize Hartwell House or turn a family disagreement into a battle. She wants complete information, independent advice, and the freedom to decide what her own signature means. As she begins separating records from assumptions and facts from family explanations, the emotional cost rises. Familiar roles change. Access, invitations, household habits, and ordinary acts of helpfulness take on new meaning. The more carefully Sophie asks what belongs to whom, the more she is forced to ask what belonging to the Hartwells has required from her.At the center is a twenty-year marriage under pressure. Nicholas wants peace, but Sophie needs more than reassurance. She needs honesty, disclosure, and evidence that her choices will still be treated as hers when they make family life harder. Their adult daughter, Emily, is close enough to feel the consequences, yet Sophie is determined not to let her become a messenger, negotiator, or proof of anyone's loyalty.The money matters, but this contemporary women's fiction novel is equally about invisible emotional labor, conditional belonging, family power, and personal autonomy. Sophie has spent years smoothing conflict before it reaches the room. Now she must decide whether keeping the peace is still an act of love-or simply the habit that has made everyone else's expectations easier to maintain.Character-driven, restrained, and grounded in the practical details of documents, conversations, work, and family life, The Unsigned Line follows one woman as she learns to distinguish help from pressure, explanation from authority, and love from permission.For readers drawn to domestic family drama, marriage-in-crisis fiction, complicated family loyalties, and stories about women reclaiming the right to choose, this first Hartwell Family novel asks a quiet but consequential question: what happens when the one thing everyone expects from you is the one thing only you can decide to give?", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/819/314/9798193145424_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "14.99", "online_price" : "14.99", "our_price" : "14.99", "club_price" : "14.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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