Not My Daughter

I know you. I know you in a way you can’t even imagine. I have been searching for you in the years since you wrote that letter - the letter that told me you were looking for me too. But now that I’ve found you, I don’t know if I can say the terrible truth of what I am. It would ruin your perfect life. It would hurt your beautiful daughter. So, I hesitate - bide my time, for now.

Your life isn’t perfect, but you’re still happy. Your husband has stuck by you, and he’s a good dad. Your daughter, Becca, makes your heart explode with love. And then, in the time it takes to say ‘bad mother’, there’s no longer a place for you in your own family. Your right to see your child has disappeared. Life goes on in your house - family dinners, missing socks and evening baths - but you aren’t there anymore. Becca may be tucked up in bed in Rose Cottage, but she is as lost to you as if she had been snatched from under your nose.

Claire has everything she’s always wanted. A newborn baby. A doting husband by her side. A picturesque home in the countryside. But behind closed doors, Claire’s life is falling apart. Her husband is barely ever home, she’s struggling to bond with her baby girl, and she swears that she is being watched in the remote, lonely cottage. And when a threatening note is posted through her letterbox, saying she doesn’t deserve her daughter, it’s clear that someone knows about the terrible mistake that Claire made.

Evelyn Taylor-Clarke sits in her chair at Forest Lawns Care Home in the heart of the English countryside, surrounded by residents with minds not as sharp as hers. It would be easy to dismiss Evelyn as a muddled old woman, but her lipstick is applied perfectly and her buttons done up correctly. Because, Evelyn is a woman with secrets, and Evelyn remembers everything. She can never forget the promise she made to the love of her life to discover the truth about the mission that led to his death, no matter what it cost her.

An eight-year-old girl, Chelsea Compton, is missing in Pine Valley, California, and for Detective Katie Scott it’s a cruel reminder of the friend who disappeared from summer camp 20 years ago. Unable to shake the memories, Katie vows she won’t rest until she discovers what happened to Chelsea. But as Katie starts to investigate, the case reveals itself to be much bigger and more shocking than she feared. Hidden deep in the forest she unearths a makeshift cemetery: a row of graves, each with a brightly colored teddy bear.

Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.

You will love every moment of this absolutely brilliant wartime saga, perfect for fans of Diney Costeloe, Soraya M. Lane, and Nadine Dorries. As war takes its toll, the love and care of two brave young nurses become everything to the wounded soldiers they tend... 1914. Two plucky young nurses pledge to help the war effort: Mairi, a wholesome idealist hoping to leave behind her past and Elsie, a glamorous single mother with a weakness for handsome soldiers. Despite their differences, the pair become firm friends.  

Two women’s lives are forever entwined by the love for the same child and by the agonizing choices they will both have to make. A Mother’s Choice will make listeners ask themselves what it truly means to be a parent and whether they could make an ultimately selfless decision when it comes to their child’s future.

Thomasina "Hitch" Waycott loves living and working on the remote family farm and B&B. But she also wants more. To see the world. To own her own home. To fall madly in love. But those are fairy tales, and if her life is a fairy tale, then she’s the ugly duckling. Her deformed lip, her crooked limbs and her weak heart have kept her from taking chances. But that’s about to change. When Grayson Potts comes to stay, he’s unlike anyone Thomasina has ever met.

From Nick Alexander, the number one best-selling author of The Photographer's Wife and The Other Son. Penny and Victoria are about as different as two siblings can be, one with a smart London lifestyle, the other struggling to make ends meet. But they are joined by more than blood, and their shared tragic past is affecting the present more than they realise. When events begin to tug at the fabric beneath which dark secrets are hidden, the resulting chaos threatens to tear the two families apart.

Faye Townsend has planned the perfect summer trip for her family. But returning to the small seaside town her husband grew up in does not go to plan - the rain pours, and the long days become stifling. And then the unthinkable happens.... Her husband, Jake, and her six-year-old son, Dylan, go for an early morning walk along the beautiful, windswept clifftops. They don’t come back.

Everyone knows Leona would do anything for her daughter Beth: she moved to Church Langdon to send Beth to the best school, worked hard to build a successful business to support them and found them the perfect little cottage to call home. People say they’re more like best friends than mother and daughter. But their closeness means that Beth struggles to make friends. Her mother has kept her sheltered from the world. When Beth finds an envelope hidden under the floorboards of their home, the contents make her heart stop. Everything she thought she knew about her mother is a lie.

A man is found dead on a beach on a small island off the coast of Germany. The gruesome discovery rocks the close-knit community of Amrum: in a town where nothing stays secret for long, who among them has a motive for murder? DI Lena Lorenzen is brought in to investigate. For her, it is an unwelcome homecoming to the isolated island she turned her back on fourteen years ago. But now her past - and the island’s - is catching up with her.

From the queen of white-knuckle suspense and searing family drama comes a harrowing glimpse into the real world behind the headlines. This is a novel of immense power and compassion - one that will move all who listen to it. Tina is a young woman hiding from her grief on the streets of the Cross. On a cold night in the middle of winter, she breaks all her own rules when she agrees to go home with a customer. What she finds in his house will change her life forever. The Boy Under the Table is gritty, shocking, moving and, ultimately, filled with hope.

All Malia needed was a single litre of milk, and now she's surrounded by police and Zach has disappeared. Detective Ali Greenberg knows that this is not the best case for her - not with her history, but she has to get back to work at some point. Edna is worried about the new residents at the boardinghouse. She knows Mary would turn in her grave if she knew the kinds of people her son was letting in. And then there is someone else. Someone whose heart is broken.