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,...

All the inhabitants of Thrush Green are eagerly anticipating the arrival of Mrs Curdle’s fair - especially as rumour has it that this may be the last time it comes. Molly Piggott is hoping...

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...

Captain John Staple's exploits in the Peninsula had earned him the sobriquet Crazy Jack amongst his fellows in the Dragoon Guards. Now home from Waterloo, life in peacetime is rather dull for the...

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...

Four Maeve Binchy short stories, exclusively written for BBC Radio 4.

Maeve Binchy is one of Britain’s most popular storytellers, and these four tales demonstrate the warmth and...

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...

Past Secrets' is a warm and moving novel from the best-selling Cathy Kelly, author of 'Always and Forever'.

Behind the shining windows and rose-bedecked gardens of Summer Street, there...

This, the third volume of the bestselling ‘The Cazalet Chronicles', takes up the story of the Cazalet family in the spring of 1942 and follows them through the war to VE Day.Polly and Clary...

In ‘Prized Possessions', Jessica Stirling introduced the Conway women: indomitable Lizzie, who endures despite everything that life in Glasgow’s notorious Gorbals slums can throw at her, and...

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...