When Claire Cooper was 15 she'd swear on her Wham! album that: big hair and rah-rah skirts were here to stay; Spandau Ballet would never split up; she would marry her idol, heart-throb footballer...

Kelly had always known Barney would leave, but she could never have envisaged how his leaving would turn her whole world upside down. But now he was gone, and she wondered if she would ever see...

Everyone knows the story of the Ark. The flood rising, the animals entering two by two, Noah. But what about the women and children? Did they all accept Noah’s orders to ignore their friends and...

In the title story, we find Wallis Simpson aged and bedridden, forbidden to leave the house by her Paris lawyer who will not allow anyone, friend or foe, to visit her.

Rose Tremain...

Sarah Roberts used to be good. Then she did something bad. Very bad...

Now, years later, she’s living a good life. She works as a local newspaper reporter and lives with her saintly...

Fairacre's retired schoolmistress was looking ahead joyfully to an easier way of life. But right from the start Miss Read receives lots of advice on how to spend it. Then there are the many...

For sixteen-year-old Lizzie McDougall, life in the Glasgow tenements comes as a culture shock after her sheltered upbringing in the Highlands. But for her father, who has just lost his job,...

Twins Tanwen and Donna Evans are as different as chalk and cheese. Tanwen is pretty, a bubbly extrovert – but selfish and as sharp as a needle. Donna is plain, placid and shy, although...

It’s nearly thirty years since the Chadwick siblings arrived at the Keep in Devon to live with their grandmother, Freddy. And while much has altered since then, the Keep remains a sanctuary for...

Liverpool, 1937. Jessica is married to Bertie, a mean, patronising man who she has stayed with purely for the sake of her two young children. To make up for the love and passion that is missing...

In this humorous and charming story, Miss Read draws us magically into the world of the primary school. Anna Lacey, a young country girl, is given her first job in Greater London, and as she...

This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. When her husband discovers her deception, he exacts a terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him...

Two wildly different couples meet in an antenatal class and loathe each other on sight.

Flashy Hugo and Amanda plan a five-star birthing experience with private hospitals and maternity...

Liverpool, 1945. Three women, the strongest of friends, return home, trying to fit back into their old lives after they've been demobbed. They've been thrown together by the war and shared all...

When a naive encounter at a Coronation party leaves 16-year-old Janet Slater pregnant there's no question in her scandalised parents' mind of her keeping the baby. Bundled off to a home for...

Stand and deliver! Hand over your valuables if you value your life!' Sophia's duty is clear: look pretty, behave well, and find a husband as soon as possible. But Sophia hates the social whirl of...

It’s devastating enough when Pru’s husband confesses to a long-term affair on their twentieth wedding anniversary. Then, when her daughter, Molly, announces she’s leaving for Vietnam on a...

Twin sisters Winnie and Dora are accustomed to conflict. Their fisherman father has always been a controversial figure, stirring up resentment among the locals for his modern fishing techniques...

On a small stretch of coast, five clapboard houses which gaze out to sea are visited by the same group of families every year. When May arrives at the beach for the summer, she is on the brink of...

Hope Merriott has always thought of herself as truly blessed; her three daughters bring her much joy.

But when Hope’s fourth daughter arrives, her birth coincides with the failure of...

Katie Simmonds wants to be an educational psychologist. Last week she wanted to be a teacher, and the week before that a film director. Katie isn’t short of ambitions, but none of her ambitions...

1967: thirteen-year-old Maisie is at her decaying family home, once a medieval abbey. Lucas, an artist and friend, is painting a portrait of Maisie and her sisters. Maisie embarks on a portrait of...

What is left when the tide recedes and it’s over?

Don and Louise’s 18-year-old daughter Miranda has died in a sailing accident. While Louise takes steps to move on with her life,...

Jenny and Ruth were best friends at school until Ruth abruptly moved away from their Cornish village and they lost all contact. Fourteen years later, a chance meeting on a train throws both their...

It was Harold Shoosmith who had restored the name of Nathaniel Patten to its rightful place as part of the heritage of Thrush Green, for Patten was one of the village’s most famous sons. A...

Gwenllyn Lyons, young and spirited, has married the drover Harry Rees, but only to give her unborn child a name. Caradoc Jones, whom she nursed back to health after a terrible accident in which he...

It was a time of poverty and overcrowding. Food was rationed and carrying gas masks was compulsory. The threat of death and destruction from German bombers meant that nights were spent in air-raid...

Agnes Campion is thirty when she inherits Flagge House from her uncle. Together with its resident aunts, it feels more of a burden than an inheritance. As she struggles with its upkeep, she...

Emily Fox-Seton is poor but well-bred, and makes a living as a general dogsbody for rich aristocrats. Sweet, kind and unselfish, she does not resent her situation and thinks only of how she can...

Lady Pamela Bentham is old, difficult, and disliked by most of her family, who plot unceasingly to evict her from the lovely Somerset house which has been her home all her married life. Once...

Sarah Stagg thought she had it all: a lovely husband, twin teenage sons, a cottage in the country. Then her husband, a keen amateur thespian, leaves her for his leading lady, her sons go off to...

Under normal circumstances bohemian, skint Izzie would never have met Maddy, a Gucci-clad, Beemer-driving urbanite.

But when they are dumped into the English countryside, fish out of...

Abi has spent her life in the shadow of her stunningly beautiful, glamorous older sister Cleo. Headhunted as model when she was 16, Cleo has been all but lost to Abi for the last 20 years, with...

Danielle Steel's fifty-first bestselling novel tells the story of an extraordinary man, the woman who loved him, and a bond so powerful it could never be brokenThe phone call came on a snowy...

A group of high-achieving ladies gather at the remote and expensive Castle Spa over the ten days of Christmas and New Year. None of them have met before. As the ladies lounge around in the...

This is Judith Earle's story - her solitary childhood spent in the seclusion of her riverside house, her awkward, intense experiences at Cambridge rounded with passion and disillusionment, and her...

A harassed single mother (of almost teenaged Flora), Annie O’Harran has escaped her faithless first husband with a few shreds of dignity intact, and against all expectations met her hero: David...

Plump, virginal Janice Gentle reluctantly writes her delicate romances with one goal in mind: to make enough money to find the man she loved and lost twenty years ago. Before she begins each book...

In between looking after four-year-old Grayer and running a thousand errands for Mrs X, his rich, uptight Manhattanite mother, Nan is trying to have a life. There's college, shopping, her friends,...

With her family living abroad, Judith Dunbar was to spend her teenage years at boarding school. It is not an unhappy life, but sometimes a lonely one. So when her new friend, Loveday Carey-Lewis,...

Sadie Drew thinks she must be the world's worst wife. She only needs to walk into a room to make it untidy. She wears flannel pyjamas in bed. Furry things breed in her fridge. But she's a busy...

Helen Forrester’s moving story of an English girl and her love affair with an Indian man.
Peggy Delaney was a Lancashire girl born and bred, beginning to live again after the heartache of...

As soon as George Lampeter, a submarine commander, sets eyes on Thea, twenty years his junior, he’s found his partner for life. Just about everyone knows of George’s long-standing affair with...

As the financial crisis tightens its grip on Europe, the gilded world of Zurich's leading restaurant, Chez Huwyler, seems immune to plunging stock markets and collapsing banks. But behind the...

Minty Lloyd is struggling to make her life work as Nathan’s second wife. Mother to six-year-old twins, sidelined at family gatherings by Nathan’s hostile family, ostracized by his friends, she...

Mad Nicholas to his friends, Scourge of Spain to the enemy, Sir Nicholas Beauvallet has never been known to resist a challenge.When a captured galleon yields the lovely Doña Dominica de Rada y...

It’s spring again in the village, and with the change of the seasons comes change in the lives of many villagers. The Young family’s tranquillity is disrupted by the sudden arrival of Joan’s...

After 20 years of comfortable marriage, and with the kids finally off her hands, Sarah Lewis realises she has filled the washing machine once too often. Surely there must be more to life than...

CC is trapped by a job she no longer loves in an unfriendly city. So when her new boyfriend decides it's time to sell up and move to the South of France, she decides in seconds to change her life....

Tabitha’s Beauty Parlour is a haven. The women who cross its portals enter a perfumed world where never a harsh note is struck. To Tabitha, Beauty is a broad canvas from which she will draw out...

When a man and a woman get married, things can get complicated. When they have children from previous marriages, "complicated" can become the understatement of the year.

From the grown...

At thirteen, Megan Williams had been sent from her family’s farm to keep house for her widower uncle and his five children. But when her uncle can no longer pay her wages, she is forced to seek...

Everything in Elizabeth Egan’s life has its place. Order and precision keep life under control, and keep Elizabeth’s heart from the pain and hurt she has suffered in the past. The only cloud...

Beatrice and Miriam are sisters. Their lives fall short of what they would have wished for themselves: love, acknowledgement in the eyes of the world, even a measure of respect. Each discovers to...

As the Second World War enters its final year, Ruth Bentley feels life has dealt her more than her fair share of trials and tribulations. For the second time, she has lost her home in a bomb...

'The Pursuit of Love' is one of the funniest and most biting novels about love and growing up ever written, by the author of 'Love in a Cold Climate'... Oh, the boredom of waiting to grow up!...

On a mild winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a...

Rowena wants a baby. What she doesn’t want is the baby’s father. Yet, five years after the birth of Christabel, Rowena is dead, tragically killed in a climbing accident.

The battle...

Laura has it all: a gorgeous husband, two beautiful children and an idyllic lady-of-leisure Parisian lifestyle. She spends her mornings sharing croissants and a grand crème with her friends, her...

Victoria Stratford’s birthday party for her husband, David, is a resounding success. It shows off their beautiful Wimbledon house, their wonderful children, their perfect lives. It also conceals...