Showing titles in Family Life

The Silent Sister is a gripping novel from Diane Chamberlain, the best-selling author of The Midwife's Confession. What if everything you believed turned out to be a lie? Riley MacPherson is returning to her childhood home in North Carolina. A place that holds cherished memories. While clearing out the house she finds a box of old newspaper articles - and a shocking family secret begins to unravel. Riley has spent her whole life believing that her older sister, Lisa, died tragically as a teenager.

Inspired by the many frustrations of parenthood and the ever-present fear of failure, Shoes on the Stairs centers around a mother’s struggle to accept what she has left behind after her death. She takes the listener on a journey of both laughter and tears while learning even the smallest of gestures can make a significant and lasting impact.

Fall in back in love with life in this gripping read about fate and second chances. The eagerly awaited new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author. Thirty year old Izzy Sweetwell has a peaceful life. She lives in the sleepy village of Halfhidden with her aunt with her aunt Debo, who runs the local kennels, a home from home for waifs and strays in the area.You couldn't say that Izzy's life is particularly exciting, but that's just how she likes it.

The festive season is approaching, and the Bomb Girls are determined to make this a year to remember. With Myrtle's health in decline, Edna's love life beginning to take flight and a shy new arrival in their midst, life is never quiet in Pendle. But Gladys, back from performing for the troops, is sullen and sad, and her friends are sure she is hiding something.

Dora Fairweather wasn’t cut out to be a wife and mother, and as soon as she’s able, she turns her back on her young daughter Lissie. With no parents to protect her, Lissie has no option but the dangerous streets of soot-sodden Bradford or the workhouse orphanage. Life in the orphanage is bleak and Lissie longs for the warm embrace of her beloved father. As the years pass, Lissie learns to enjoy the camaraderie of the other girls in the workhouse, and when she’s taken under the wing of matron Connie Briggs, things begin to look up..

Pip Appleby seems to have it all, with her prestigious job as a human rights lawyer and her enviable London home. But then a tragic accident stops her life in its tracks, and in an instant everything changes. Retreating to her family’s rural farm and the humble origins she has been trying to hide, Pip is haunted by what she has done. When she discovers the diary of actress Evelyn Mountcastle in a box of old books, Pip revels in the opportunity to lose herself in someone else’s life rather than focus on the disaster that is her own. But soon she sees parallels....

After the death of her father, El moves into his home just outside Tavistock in Devon. Fresh out of university and dangling on the precipice of adulthood, she questions what it is she really wants from life. Although her childhood friend, Will, is there to help her through her grief she soon realises there were things her father was hiding from her.

Raised in the grandeur of Muntham Court, young Millicent has always felt like the black sheep of her family. Between a vindictive mother and a conceited older sister, her only ally is her doting father, Charles. Brought up in the traveller community and always on the move, Lena’s life has never been settled, but it has always been happy thanks to the support of her loving mother. When it is revealed that Lena is Charles’s illegitimate daughter, Milly finally has a chance at true sisterhood.

Ten-year-old Jack Larkin has seen more than his fair share of shocking sights, growing up in the notorious Crown Saloon. Broken hearts and broken bones are just a fact of life in a Gin Palace, but for orphan Dolly, the Crown is her last hope. After the death of her mother, Dolly ran away from her sleazy stepfather, Arthur, only to find herself living on the streets. When Jack discovers her hiding in the back yard of the Crown, he persuades his mother, Nellie Larkin, to take Dolly in.

Medusa is the only mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her sisters, she quickly realises that she is the only one who gets older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know. When, in Athene’s temple, desire pushes Poseidon to commit the unforgivable, Medusa’s mortal life is changed forever. Athene, furious at the sacrilege committed, directs her revenge on Medusa. The punishment is that she is turned into a Gorgon: sharp teeth, snakes for hair and a gaze that will turn any living creature to stone.

Addy and Prue Fairweather live with their widowed mother Nell, in a flat above her shop. Addy is plain and always in trouble whereas Prue is as angelic as her looks imply. To make matters worse, Nell makes no secret of her preference for the younger girl, increasing Addy's jealousy. On the other side of the coin, Giles Frobisher and his twin sister, Gillian, live in a crumbling mansion in Devon. The family have lost most of their money in the Depression, so Giles joins the Fleet Air Arm.

Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness.

1912 in The Yorkshire Dales and Alice Bentham and her brother Will have lost their mother to cancer. Money is scarce and pride doesn't pay the doctor or put food on the table. Alice gets work at Whernside Manor looking after Lord Frankland's fragile sister Miss Nancy. Meanwhile Will and his best friend Jack begin working for the Lord of the Manor at the marble mill. But their purpose there is not an entirely honest one.

When Patrick Sheppard suddenly and tragically dies, he leaves behind a family in pieces. Zoe has lost the love of her life. Ethan, Gabe and Beatrice have lost their larger-than-life dad. There’s a hole where Patrick should be, and none of them can see a way forward. For Patrick’s brother Dan, though: his mission is clear. He needs to help the Sheppards to find some sort of happy again, and he makes a promise to himself to try and come close to the man Patrick was.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring John Moffatt as the great Belgian detective. Hercule Poirot and his good friend Captain Hastings are enjoying a well-deserved break on the Cornish Riviera, in the idyllic village of St Loo. Wandering along the terrace of the Hotel Majestic on the first morning of their stay, Poirot literally falls at the feet of a pretty, dark-haired girl and, much to Hastings’ delight, insists that she join them for a cocktail.

Linnet O’Neill, great-granddaughter of Emma Harte, finds herself following in the footsteps of the original woman of substance as she battles to save the family business. She and Emma’s other great-granddaughters are tested to the limit as the final chapter in the extraordinary story of the Harte family draws to a dramatic close....

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer’s affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners—an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance.

Sam's life is on track. She has the perfect doctor fiancé, Jack (his strict routines are a good thing, really), a stable job in Manhattan (unless they fire her), and is about to tour a wedding venue near her family's Long Island beach house (if only to appease her mother). Everything should go to plan, but the minute she arrives, Sam senses a disturbance in the force. Wyatt is here. Her Wyatt. But there's no reason for a thirty-year-old engaged woman to feel awkward around the guy who broke her heart when she was seventeen. Right?

When Margo goes in search of her birth mother for the first time, she meets her aunt Nikki instead. Margo learns that her mother, Susan, was a sex worker murdered soon after Margo's adoption. To this day, Susan's killer has never been found. Nikki asks Margo for help. She has received threatening and haunting letters from the murderer for decades. She is determined to find him, but she can't do it alone.... A brilliant, thought-provoking and heart-wrenching new thriller about identity and the value of a life.

Dawn thinks she knows everything there is to know about dying. As a death doula, she helps her clients fix what is left undone so they can peacefully make the final transition. But when her plane plummets from the sky and she thinks she is experiencing the last moments of her life, she is shocked to find that she isn't thinking of her husband or teenage daughter - but of a road she strayed from 15 years earlier, when she turned her back on her PhD studies.