Maeve Maloney may be nearing 80, but she keeps Sea View Lodge as shipshape as her parents did during Morecambe's heyday. But now only her employees recognise the heartbreak hidden beneath her spikiness. Until, that is, Vincent shows up. He is the only man alive to have known her twin sister, Edie. If only Maeve could confront the secret past she shares with Vincent, she might finally see what it means to love and be loved - a lesson that her twin may have been trying to teach her all along.

Rachel has an unusual problem: she can't die. Her recent troubles - widowhood, a failing business, an unemployed middle-aged son - are only the latest. She's already put up with scores of marriages and hundreds of children, over 2,000 years - ever since she made a spiritual bargain to save the life of her first son back in Roman-occupied Jerusalem. There's only one other person in the world who understands: a man she once loved passionately, who has been stalking her through the centuries, convinced they belong together forever.

Harrison has tremendous fun with his own reputation in the title novella about an aging writer in Montana who spars with his estranged wife, with whom he still shares a home; weathers the slings and arrows of literary success; and tries to cope with the sow he buys on a whim and the unplanned litter of piglets that follow soon after. In "Eggs", a Montana woman reminisces about staying in London with her grandparents and collecting eggs at their country house. Years later, having never had a child, she attempts to do so.

Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires. This elegant and allusive novel established Molly Keane as the natural successor to Jean Rhys. 

Nora Holliday is not that kind of woman. Not the kind who has an illicit affair with a married man. But Josh Landon is everything Nora’s alcoholic husband isn’t. And now she and Josh are so infatuated, they can’t stay away from one another. Abby Landon, Josh’s daughter, is home from college nursing a broken heart. She’s seeking solace, not more scandal, so when she catches her dad kissing Nora, she vows to take the homewrecker down.