A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Claudette was once the most glamorous and infamous woman in cinema before she staged her own disappearance and retreated to blissful seclusion in an Irish farmhouse. But the life Daniel and Claudette have so carefully constructed is about to be disrupted by an unexpected discovery about a woman Daniel lost touch with twenty years ago. This revelation will send him off-course, far away from wife, children and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?This Must be the Place is a novel about family, identity, and true love: an intimately drawn portrait of a marriage, both the forces that hold it together and the pressures that drive it apart. O'Farrell writes with complexity, insight, and laugh-out-loud humor in a narrative that hurtles forward with powerful velocity and emotion. This Must be the Place is a sophisticated, spellbinding summer read from one of the UK's most highly acclaimed and best-loved novelists.

    His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

    Winner of the Somerset Maugham, Betty Trask and Yorkshire Post Author of the Year prizes, Glaister’s work has also been on numerous literary award short and longlists over the years, and several of her dramas have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.Little Egypt is a once well-to-do country house. Now derelict and trapped on a small island of land between a railway, a dual carriageway and a superstore, it looks deserted ... but it isn’t. Nonagenarian twins, Isis and Osiris, now in their nineties, still live in Little Egypt, the home they were born in. For their long lives they have always remained here, guarding a terrible secret.Back in the 1920s, Isis and Osiris lived in Little Egypt with their obsessive Egyptologist parents, Evelyn and Arthur, this apparently idyllic sprawl of a dwelling hiding the secrets of a dysfunctional family life. When Evelyn and Arthur leave home to search for the fabled tomb of Herihor, the twins are left with housekeeper Mary to wonder when their reckless, self-centred parents will return. Isis is lonely and anxious about her twin, Osiris who, desperate to impress his parents, has developed a similar passion for all things Egyptian, and is convinced they will return successful from their quest — rich and famous. And then there’s Uncle Victor, returned from the war in a state of hyper-sensitivity, invading their lives with his perplexing moods and erratic affections. Without really considering the consequences, Victor, Isis and Osiris set off for Egypt to search for Evelyn and Arthur, setting in motion a chain of events which will dramatically change all of their lives forever.Now, in 2002, living in a state of destitution, the elderly twins’ lives seem to be drawing to a lost and miserable close — until a chance meeting between Isis and young American anarchist Spike, sparks an unlikely friendship and proves a catalyst for change.Looping between the 1920s and the present day, Little Egypt is a beautifully-observed novel about the loss of innocence, parental neglect and the eternal human quest to ‘belong’. By turns poignantly humorous, deeply moving and mysterious, it also evokes the wonder and majesty of Howard Carter’s Egypt on the cusp of Western discovery. This enormously accomplished novel took twenty years to come to fruition: it is well worth the wait.

     The Bradleys see the world as a place where miracles are possible, and where nothing is more important than family. This is their story.   It is the story of Ian Bradley—husband, father, math teacher, and Mormon bishop—and his unshakeable belief that everything will turn out all right if he can only endure to the end, like the pioneers did. It is the story of his wife, Claire, her lonely wait for a sign from God, and her desperate need for life to pause while she comes to terms with tragedy.   And it is the story of their children: sixteen-year-old Zippy, experiencing the throes of first love; cynical fourteen-year-old Al, who would rather play soccer than read the Book of Mormon; and seven-year-old Jacob, whose faith is bigger than a mustard seed—probably bigger than a toffee candy, he thinks—and which he’s planning to use to mend his broken family with a miracle.   Intensely moving, unexpectedly funny, and deeply observed, A Song for Issy Bradley explores the outer reaches of doubt and faith, and of a family trying to figure out how to carry on when the innermost workings of their world have broken apart.

    17-year-old Muriel Dearlove has weathered the Blitz unscathed, earning her keep in Miss Chapman's grocery shop. But with her sweetheart Bill away fighting and and her friends conscripted into the WRENs and WAAF, life has become tedious for Muriel. Then one day an old friend returns from a stint in the Land Army. She is rosy cheeked and looks healthier than ever, thanks to the outdoor work she has been doing on Northumberland's farms, and she comes with tales of dances with the troops stationed nearby and high jinks with her fellow Land Girls. Desperate for the chance to broaden her horizons, Muriel signs up to become a Land Girl. But getting back to the land is not all about making hay in the sunshine. Back-breaking work and rising before dawn are the least of their troubles when disagreements between town girls and locals arise, and their warden, Mrs Hubbard, is a hard-nosed slave-driver. Then Muriel meets Ernst, a German prisoner of war. And now Muriel has a choice to make. In fraternizing with the enemy, she breaks the law, but to never see Ernst again would break her heart.

    The compelling new novel from the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Workhouse Girl.Eleven-year-old Stella Barry is forced into service when her family find themselves living hand-to-mouth.Leaving her mother and younger brother and sister behind, Stella goes to a big country house outside London. When she returns home one Sunday, she discovers they have disappeared. Thrown out of their lodgings, no one knows where they have gone.Seven years later it looks likely Stella will soon become Cook. But circumstances compel her to flee with no references and only a few personal possessions to her name.She has never forgotten her loving family and is determined to find out what happened to them - once and for all.

    Lawlessness is spreading throughout the country and looters have plundered the museums and historical sites. Mina Osman, a young American archaeologist of Iraqi descent, is fighting to preserve the country's antiquities. When she stumbles upon an ancient cuneiform tablet, it proves to be of unimaginable significance - its cryptic language holds a secret that will play a part in a series of earth-shattering events. Aided by ex-US Army Major Jack Hillcliff, Mina travels across the world to unlock the secrets of the 13th Tablet but at each step she is pursued by deadly enemies who will stop at nothing to obtain the tablet and its power for themselves.

    While she strives to adapt to Amish life, she bonds with the family, especially with two of the Yoder siblings: Jacob and Becca.Jacob, the eldest son, refuses to baptize and join the church, and according to his frustrated father, lacks direction. He not only faces a grave physical challenge resulting from his actions that June night, but also harbors a secret that threatens to upend his family and community. Becca is 16, entering her rumspringa, the time period when she is free to explore the normally forbidden modern world. When Taylor returns to her Philadelphia penthouse, Becca accompanies her for the summer and for the first time is exposed to city life—museums, music, technology, restaurants, fashion, even religious faiths different from her own.Taylor mentors Becca’s city fling and helps Jacob conceal his secret, actions that jeopardize her relationship with the Yoder family and her father. As the two cultures clash, both families struggle to determine whether the deep ties that bind them are greater than the differences that may tear them apart. Ultimately, Taylor, Jacob and Becca must answer for themselves: Are we more than what we do for a living or where we’re born? And if so, what price, if any, is too steep to walk away from family expectations?To Everything A Season is a perfect book club selection—smart and sophisticated women's fiction that invites discussion as well as touches the heart.Awards for To Everything A Season:2018 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Finalist, Multicultural Fiction category12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards, Finalist, Multicultural Fiction category

    Estranged siblings Beck, Ashley and Jake find themselves under one roof for the first time in years, forced to confront old resentments and betrayals, when their mysterious, eccentric matriarch, Helen, passes away. But their lives are about to change when they find a secret inheritance hidden among her possessions—the Florentine Diamond, a 137-carat yellow gemstone that went missing from the Austrian Empire a century ago.Desperate to learn how one of the world’s most elusive diamonds ended up in Helen’s bedroom, they begin investigating her past only to realize how little they know about their brave, resilient grandmother. As the Millers race to determine whether they are the rightful heirs to the diamond and the fortune it promises, they uncover a past more tragic and powerful than they ever could have imagined, forever changing their connection to their heritage and each other.Inspired by the true story of the real, still-missing Florentine Diamond, The Imperfects illuminates the sacrifices we make for family and how sometimes discovering the truth of the past is the only way to better the future.

    The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. from Red's father and mother, newly-arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red's grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.Brimming with all the insight, humour, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler's work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.

    A tour-de-force about two women and the piano that inexorably ties their lives together through time and across continents, for better and for worse.In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, built at the turn of the century in Germany, on which she discovers everything that she herself can do with music and what music, in turn, does for her. Yet after marrying, she emigrates with her young family from Russia to America, at her husband's frantic insistence, and her piano is lost in the shuffle.In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy loses another boyfriend and again has to find a new apartment, which is complicated by the gift her father had given her for her twelfth birthday, shortly before he and her mother died in a fire that burned their house down: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Ophaned, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, who in his car-repair shop trained her to become a first-rate mechanic, much to the surprise of her subsequent customers. But this work, her true mainstay in a scattered life, is put on hold when her hand gets broken while the piano's being moved--and in sudden frustration she chooses to sell it. And what becomes crucial is who the most interested party turns out to be. . .

    1942, Manchester World War Two is in full swing and Lily Mullins is determined to do her bit for the war effort. Her friends and sweetheart have all joined up and Lily's sure there must be a role for her that goes further than knitting socks for the troops! When she decides to volunteer for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, Lily soon discovers that she has a talent as a wireless operator. Helped along the way by a special gang of girls, she finds strengths she didn't know she had and realises that the safety of the country might just be in her hands . . . Meanwhile, Danny is determined to marry Lily, but his letters home become more and more distant. Will a long separation mean the end of their love story?An uplifting and inspiring novel of women on the home front. '[The story] read so true to me and I really didn't want to put it down . . . It may be fiction but those things could, and did, happen.' Vera Morgan, wartime WAAF 'An impeccably researched and uplifting story of love, loss and courage: a heartwarming read that will captivate all those who love a good war story.' Clare Harvey, author of The Gunner Girl'A wonderful, inspiring story. I can't wait to read more from Shirley Mann.' Sheila Newberry

    Nearly twenty years later, Michelle has accepted the fact she isn't worthy of the love she so desperately needed as a child. She lives alone on the family farm and is content in the niche she's carved out for herself. All that changes the morning Nicole abandons her two young children under Michelle's lilac bushes. Michelle doesn’t want her life to change. She doesn't want to be responsible for fixing Nicole's mistakes. Nor does she want to admit she may be more like her grandmother than she ever imagined. Two little kids suddenly dependent on her aren’t the only changes in Michelle's life. The only man to ever make her take a chance on love reenters Michelle's life. Kyle Swann reminds her of all the bad choices she ever made. He also makes her realize shutting her heart against the world might not be as easy as she thought. This thought-provoking contemporary romance examines the changing dynamics of family relationships and issues. Infused with honesty and humor, it will capture the hearts of readers who love children, understand their challenges and appreciate the many definitions of family.

    It’s 2008 and things are falling apart: Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are going under, and the residents of Pepys Road, London—a banker and his shopaholic wife, an old woman dying of a brain tumor and her graffiti-artist grandson, Pakistani shop owners and a shadowy refugee who works as the meter maid, the young soccer star from Senegal and his minder—are receiving anonymous postcards reading “We Want What You Have.” Who is behind it? What do they want? Epic in scope yet intimate, capturing the ordinary dramas of very different lives, this is a novel of love and suspicion, of financial collapse and terrorist threat, of property values going up and fortunes going down, and of a city at a moment of extraordinary tension.

    Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be “a place where it’s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.” Miller’s Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, “No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.” Miller’s Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.'