He was 16 when she died and he grieved as heavily as his father, Matthew, at her passing. He longed to prove himself to his father and offered to help with the family antique business, but his father seemed beyond help – obsessed with his loss. Tilly Povey watched the boy’s lonely existence with a heavy heart.Stella, Molly’s sister, had always loved Matthew and hoped that he would turn to her in need, but Matthew was gradually falling apart and not even those closest to him could help. But Tilly was determined to help this troubled family.

    At twenty-one, she experiences further tragedy when her half-brother commits suicide, having squandered the family fortune. Robbed of her very last penny, Ally is thrust into a world of hardship for which she is ill-prepared. Her salvation comes in the form of Jack Fossett, a kind lad who takes pity on this beautiful, bedraggled girl, and welcomes Ally into his heart. But Jack's mother Flo is less convinced, and time must pass and secrets must be revealed before Ally and Flo see eye to eye - particularly when they discover that Ally is not as destitute as she thought...

    Though initially employed as a maid, Mary soon becomes the daughter the couple were never able to have. With Britain at war, unable to remain idle, Mary finds employment in the local steel works but when her fiancé Tom Downing is killed in action Mary is convinced it is retribution for their night of sin during Tom's Christmas leave. However, Mary grows to love Jack Holmes, a local miner. They marry and move into a humble terrace house with little but their love to keep them going. As the years pass Mary is determined to achieve success for herself and her family. She sets up her own dressmaking business and it seems as if she has finally found peace of mind. But the business starts to dominate her life until tragedy once more threatens to destroy all she most cherishes...

    Fabio Terranova is a brilliant dancer. Young, handsome, and enormously talented he is desperate to leave his little hometown in the mountains of central Italy. With dreams of one day making his mark on Broadway and Hollywood, he has made plans to travel to Milan to enter a dance competition he hopes will be his springboard to fame and fortune in America. All is set until the eve of his departure when a night of wild celebration with his friends ends in tragedy. Left broken in body and spirit, his dreams of dancing shattered by the events of that night, Fabio descends into bitter darkness. Fearing for her son, his mother, Liliana, makes a fateful decision. She sends Fabio across the ocean to live with her uncle, Rick Vitale, who runs a small glassmaking operation in a quaint New England village. Rick lives in solitude, his own reasons for abandoning Italy years earlier long shrouded in mystery. He takes Fabio in and sets about teaching him the art of glassblowing. Relentlessly driven, ever laboring by the searing heat of the furnace, Fabio learns to create dazzling works of glass. The endless hours of toil, however, provide him no solace and he remains tormented by the past, a past he can't bear to face. Now, with the days growing short and the darkness of winter closing in, it is up to Rick to show his nephew the way back to the light. But it is a long journey through the deepest chambers of the heart, one that Fabio must ultimately make on his own if he is to learn that the best days of his life may yet lie ahead...

    They've been friends since they were toddlers and now they've become young ladies and left school. Joan finds work at Dunlop's tyre factory, while Ginny's dream comes true when she is taken on as a counter assistant at Woolworths. But things don't work out as she had expected, and she carries around a dark secret...

    She's never heard of the world's most fashionable magazine, or its feared and fawned-over editor, Miranda Priestly: her new boss. A year later, she knows altogether too much. But this is her big break, and it's going to be worth it in the end. Isn't it?REVENGE WEARS PRADA catches up with Andrea and Miranda ten years later. Andrea is now a successful magazine editor of her own title, and is about to get married. She’s been careful to steer clear of her ex-boss, Miranda Priestly, but her luck is just about to run out. The devil is back…

    . . Maeve is on cracking form' - Jilly Cooper Lifelong friends Claudia, Ella, Laura and Sal celebrated sixty as the new forty, determined not to let age change things. But now they are looking at the future and wondering how to make growing old more fun.Why not live together and have sunny afternoons on the lawn, helping and supporting each other when any of them need it - and still keep enjoying life? Joined by Claudia’s reluctant husband and Sal’s energetic new fiancé, they ignore the protests of their children and pool their resources in a lovely manor house in the country. Only Laura holds out, determined she still has some living to do, especially now she has met the dashing Gavin through an online dating app.But life still has plenty of surprises in store plus a little romance in what the locals dub a New Age Old Age Commune. But are your best friends the last people you should end up living with? In A Country Garden is a heartwarming, hilarious tale of growing old not-so-gracefully, from the bestselling author of The Time of Their Lives, Maeve Haran.

    She recycles, obeys the water restrictions, she is even polite to telemarketers. as a mother, wife, daughter and nurse, Helen is used to putting everyone's needs before her own. But it only takes one momentary lapse of concentration to shatter her life forever.There was no momentary lapse for Gemma. Her customary recklessness leaves her pregnant, alone and estranged from her family with her one-promising advertising career in tatters.So when Gemma barges unceremoniously into Helen's life, things will never be the same again for either of them. Two very different women who have one thing in common - their lives have fallen short of their expectations. But is fate offering them a second chance?

    well, almost. As Christmas rolls round once again, she longs for a child of her own to share it with. In a town where Christmas is big business all year round, it turns out Santa Claus isn’t the only one with mysterious powers. When a psychic reveals that the answer to her future will come in red and white, Kate follows this sign. It leads her to disastrous dating agencies and demoralising dead-ends until, finally, the answer seems to be revealed. But will her search for the missing piece of her family mean she doesn't recognise the one person who's loved her from the start? Or can Kate really have it all in time for the perfect Christmas?

    Heartbroken, she fills the emptiness by embarking on a series of flings that her traditional Sri Lankan mother would (mostly) disapprove of.Yet she can no longer avoid her mother or Shanthi, her distant older sister. And so begins her real journey, one that will make Anjali confront a past she's been desperate to forget. But maybe the past can also be the bridge to her future . . .Set in Bristol and Sri Lanka, Things My Mother Told Me is a warm, moving and funny story about love, loss, family, cultural divides and the voices we hear in our heads. It will stay with you long after you've turned the final page.

     Hard-hitting newspaper journalist turned stay-at-home mum and part-time failing food columnist, Marnie is wondering when her life went so wrong. While her husband Matt’s career takes off, she’s left with the impossible task of pairing socks and locating Lego. His late nights at the office are turning into late nights who knows where else and they haven’t had a proper conversation in weeks, sex in months, or a full night’s sleep in years. On the brink of losing everything when a fantasy about movie star Maddox Wolfe leads to a missed deadline and a disastrous case of food poisoning, Marnie becomes Mrs Make Believe: anonymous blogger, secret spiller, and voice of imperfect mums everywhere. However, Marnie Martin could never have imagined that her movie star daydream would walk off the screen and into her reality, turning her already muddled world totally on its head. Will Marnie find happiness in the arms of the (literal) man of her dreams? Or will she find that true love is just make believe?

    By the end of the night, the parish priest, Father Leo Galvin, is dead.The lives of four teenagers - Tom, Conor, Tess and Nina - who had been drinking beer and smoking in a shed at the back of the house, will never be the same. But one of them carries a secret from that night that he has never shared. The friends go on to lead very different, separate lives - some quiet, others in the media spotlight - but the four remain connected by what happened during the time of the big snow.As the thirty-fifth anniversary of Father Galvin's murder approaches, Conor, now a senior police officer, becomes obsessed with the crime his father failed to solve. He believes that Tom can help identify Father Galvin's killer. But does Tom wish to break his silence? His dilemma draws the four friends back together, forcing them to question their lives and to confront their differences. But only Tom can decide whether Kilmitten's secret will finally be revealed.

    Patrick is a struggling restaurateur who wishes he could spend more time with his wife. As they drift apart, Jane decides she wants more from her relationship than friendship, and so at age thirty-six she sets off on a journey to find what it takes to complete her life. She travels to India where she falls rapturously in lust with her tour guide, Rajiv. Meanwhile Patrick falls for baby-faced American food critic Stella, who could lose him more than his peace of mind; she could lose him his restaurant. Both affairs are disastrous and as their lives spiral toward disaster, Patrick and Jane reassess the decisions they’ve made. Has Jane thrown away true love with both hands?Prue Leith, one of England’s top chefs, displays her expertise in her insider’s details of the restaurant business and the breathtaking food of India. In Leaving Patrick, Leith has created a well-written and moving story with wry humor and intelligence about the real choices adults have to make once they start taking stock of their lives.

    She was lonely and unsettled - her parents had been killed in a car accident, her boyfriend had decided to go back to his wife, and as a painter she led a solitary life in her North Yorkshire home town. But she felt immediately at home in the gracious stone house that had been bequeathed to her, and was made welcome by the local residents - in particular, by the members of the Mindon Amateur Dramatic Society (somewhat appropriately known as MADS) presided over by the formidable Ursula. Ursula liked to run things her way, and brooked no opposition when the ambitious decision was made (largely by herself) to put on A Midsummer Night's Dream as their next production. Petra , to her surprise and pleasure, was put in charge of the wardrobe. Rivalries, squabbles, love affairs and seething resentments threatened to scupper the production, and all Ursula's managerial skills were needed to prevent disaster. But Petra had more pressing things on her mind than the costumes for the cast. A mystery from her past began to haunt her - and the answer to that mystery might solve the puzzle of why she had been left such a beautiful house by a total stranger.

    Though the rest of her adoptive family scorned her as an outsider, Gram and her grandson Ian always loved Laina like she was one of their own. Now Laina is all grown up and a foster parent in her own right, to a little girl named Jada whose upcoming adoption by strangers is sure to break Laina’s heart. But Laina faces the prospect of another devastating loss when Gram’s health begins to fail. As she has so many times before, Laina turns to Ian for advice, only to find that her feelings for her handsome, warm-hearted friend have changed, deepening into a love that could transform her life...or ruin her dearest friendship.When Laina and Ian come together at the family summer home on the windswept shores of Hatteras Island, the sparks igniting between them cannot be ignored. But with stakes as high as these, can they overcome their fear of heartbreak to claim the promise of love?