Showing results for "last days" in Family Life

"I'll tell you something, something important. Love is a decision. Not a feeling. That's what you young people don't realise. That's why you're always off divorcing each other. No offence, dear." So decrees the formidable Connie Thrum of Scribbly Gum Island. She is the chief decision-maker of a rather unconventional family and her word is law. It's been over seventy years since Connie and her sister Rose visited their neighbours and found the kettle boiling and a baby waking for her feed, but no sign of her parents.

After escaping her controlling husband, Bernadette Manson is taking the first extravagant holiday of her new life. But when her best friend cancels, will she be strong enough to fly solo? Tadgh Donovan is about to jet off to his destination wedding when he sees a shocking text. Has his bride-to-be written her wedding vows… or already broken them? Hayley Ford is the wife of a top fertility specialist yet her battle to get pregnant has almost broken her marriage. Can a trip to the sun heal their relationship or should she brace for a crash landing?

Meet the Tobin family. Joy - the mother: Unconscious in a hospital bed, Joy's latest act has thrown the family into turmoil. Frances - the middle child: Seemingly perfect wife and mother, Frances is having inappropriate dreams about an ex, and might be about to derail her whole life. Conor - the protector: Successful and famous, high-flyer Conor is walking a fine line between self-promotion and self-detonation. Sinead - the baby of the family: Bohemian rebel, trying to write the story she needs to tell, but despising herself for failing to do it.

Set against the backdrop of Iran's rich, turbulent history, this exquisite debut novel is a powerful story of food, family, and a bittersweet homecoming. When we first meet Noor, she is living in San Francisco, missing her beloved father, Zod, in Iran. Now, dragging her stubborn teenage daughter, Lily, with her, she returns to Tehran and to Cafe Leila, the restaurant her family has been running for three generations.

Set on Cape Ann in the early 1800s, The Last Days of Dogtown is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and "witches". Nearly a decade ago, Diamant found an account of an abandoned rural backwater near the Massachusetts coastline at the turn of the nineteenth century. That pamphlet inspired a stunning novel about a small group of eccentrics and misfits, struggling in a harsh, isolated landscape only fifty miles north of Boston, yet a world away.

All Sarah McIntyre has ever wanted was a loving, happy family. So when her husband JP announces on Christmas Day that he is leaving her and their two children, nine-year-old Harry and four-year-old Robyn, Sarah is left reeling. But things are set to get worse when Robyn is diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. Can JP and Sarah unite to fight their biggest battle yet? Or will they be on opposing sides once again? With the couple at loggerheads and with Robyn's condition deteriorating day-by-day, precious time is running out and JP is getting desperate....

Marnie didn’t realise – when she stormed into a bookshop one day, demanding a self-help book – that she was about to make a new best friend. Bookshop-owner Rae didn’t know she had been living like a shadow since her parents died. But then Marnie exploded into her life. And suddenly she realised things had to change...more so when she meets handsome nurse, Jack. And when Forrest’s life is turned upside down by a fatal car crash, he knew he was being given a second chance, but didn’t know why.

From the author of The Rope Walk, the story of a woman's life in its twilight, as she looks back on both a harrowing childhood and the unaccountable love and happiness that emerged from it. As the novel opens we see the Derry School in all its glorious New England fall colors and witness the loosening of the aging Peter's grasp - he will soon have to retire, and Ruth is wondering what they will do in their old age, separated from the school into which they have poured everything, including their savings.