Rachel Doe is a shy accountant at a low ebb in life when she meets charismatic Ivy Schneider, nee Wiseman, at her evening class and her life changes for the better. Ivy is her polar opposite: strong, six years her senior and the romantic survivor of drug addiction, homelessness and the death of her child. Ivy does menial shift work, beholden to no...

Honey Santana - self-proclaimed queen of lost causes - has a plan. She may be a single mother living in a trailer-park with her teenage son; she may have just been sacked from her day job for whacking an over-friendly co-worker in the balls with a crab mallet; she may be an obsessive compulsive with an anger management problem. But, she's determine...

On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s, her story moves on to a social worker and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of...

It's devastating enough when Pru's husband confesses to a long term affair on their 20th wedding anniversary. Then when her daughter, Molly, announces she's leaving for Vietnam on a Gap Year project, Pru knows her comfortable family life is over for good. Just as she's picking up the pieces, an email brings news that Molly has become involved with...

Fern Kendal has the voice of an angel but, as a badly paid barmaid and pub singer, her talent is wasted. All she needs is a break, but in the real world she knows that'll never happen. Evan David's exquisite tones have enthralled opera buffs throughout the world. But what Evan needs now is a break - from it all. When Fern takes a job as Evan's PA t...

From her hospital bed in Dublin, the elderly Dilly awaits the visit of her daughter, Eleanora, from London. The epochs of her life pass before her; emigrating to America in the 1920s, a romantic liaison she had there, the destiny that brought her back to Ireland, and her marriage. She also retraces Eleanora's precipitate marriage to a foreigner, an...

Elizabeth Webster is a spinster pushing seventy. Forced out of her teaching job, she unleashes her sharp tongue and dogmatic opinions on everyone in the English village of Little Blessington. Then, one night, she grinds to a dead halt. To recover from this illness, she travels to North Africa where she has a brush with terrorism - not that she care...

It's not easy being the mother of a twelve-year-old boy who's in love with his babysitter and having trouble at school. Nor are matters helped by the unexpected arrival of an elderly mother who's suddenly footloose and fancy free. At least Susie Vine feels secure at Arland and Shaw, London's leading theatrical agency, where her clients love her alm...

Set in Brooklyn in 1947, this is the story of Sophie, a Polish Catholic immigrant who is haunted by her memories of the concentration camp in wartime Europe, and the terrible choice she was forced to make. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE/ADULT THEMES.

Catherine Dessin, a young French girl living in Paris during the occupation, falls for an older, married German officer. The novel examines the tensions this causes within her family of patriots and resistance workers. Meanwhile Klaus, the German officer, who is Oxford educated and a professed Anglophile, faces his own moral dilemma as he comes to...

'There is no cure for being alive.' Thus speaks Dr. David McBride, a psychiatrist for whom death exerts an unusual draw. As a young child, he witnessed the death of his six-year-old brother and it is this traumatic event which has shaped his own personality and choice of profession. One day, a failed suicide, Elizabeth Cruikshank, is admitted to hi...

As a young woman, clever, self-reliant Lydia Templeton scandalised society by rejecting Lewis Durrant, the county's most eligible bachelor. Ten years later, Lydia has no regrets and, having concluded that matters of the heart need no longer trouble her, she is quite happy to remain unwed. But others still seek Lydia's advice on their love lives, an...

This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Rolling around New York and London, he makes deals, spends wildly and does reckless movie-world business, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography, a mountain of junk food and more. This is a tale of life lived without restra...

Didn't anyone tell you that divas don't knit? Knit-one. Jo Mackenzie needs a new start and jumps at the chance to take over her grandmother's wool shop in a small seaside town. Purl-one. But it's not going to be easy with two young sons to cope with, an A-list actress moving into the local mansion and a knitting group addicted to cake. CONTAINS STR...

October 15th, 1974: Miss Baker for telling me how to blow my nose and not believing when I still couldn't do it. February 6th, 1977: David Llewellyn for saying my landscape painting looked like a pig's trough and then making honking noises every time he saw me. April 12th, 1987: Peter Elton for 'borrowing' my cigarettes and never buying any of his...

On 20 July 1944, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassin's bomb. Axel von Gottberg and his conspirators were hunted down and hanged from meat-hooks, and the executions filmed. Sixty years later, Conrad Senior is left a legacy of papers by von Gottberg's close friend, the legendary Oxford professor Elya Mendel, and becomes obsessed with what they...

Marian is determined to be ordinary. She lays her head gently on the shoulder of her serious fiancee and quietly awaits marriage. But she didn't count on an inner rebellion that would rock her stable routine, and her digestion. Marriage a la mode, Marian discovers, is something she literally can't stomach... This is a novel about emotional cannibal...

When you peak at fifteen, where can things go but downhill? Former teen pop sensation Heather Wells has hit rock bottom: tired of singing other people's lyrics, she hasn't exactly been bombarded with recording contracts for her own songs. Worse, Dad's in jail, Mom's bolted for Buenos Aires, and Heather can't seem to stop drowning her sorrows in Kit...

As their holiday unfolds, Colin and Maria are locked into their own intimacy. They groom themselves meticulously, as though there waits someone who cares deeply about how they appear. Then, they meet a man with a disturbing story to tell and become drawn into a fantasy of violence and obsession. THIS AUDIOBOOK CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND/OR ADULT...

When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house and a beautiful girl hidden within it, he has been changed forever. In his restless search for his 'Lost Estate' and...

When Amy Marsham walks into his smart Harley Street practice, therapist Patrick McIlhenny knows that this will be no ordinary session. Amy, a woman on the eve of a new life, needs answers. So she visits the only person who may be able to provide them, who may know her husband better than she does. In the calm of Patrick's office, they begin to unta...