Showing titles in Family Life

It's nearly Christmas, Julia Devine's favourite time of the year. She's just programmed a wonderful lead into the holidays at Sunny Street Cinema, which leaves her plenty of time to worry about going home to Cumbria for Christmas. Her mum and stepdad are fine, but the thought of spending another holiday with her awful stepsister Becca is enough to make a Scrooge out of anyone. When Becca calls to let her know about the dreamy pilot she's bringing to Christmas lunch, Julia finally snaps and does something very silly.

When Loretta Ashton dies suddenly, her family is shattered. As a devoted wife and mother, Loretta was their rock—a woman admired by the entire community. But at her funeral, an unexpected guest turns their grief into confusion. A stranger claiming to be Loretta’s sister takes a seat with the family, only to vanish before anyone can confront her. The problem? Loretta was an only child.

As WWII rolls across Europe, Kitty boards a ship set for England. Money is what she really needs right now, especially with tiny baby Billy back in Dublin. In Lancashire, Kitty settles into the hard work and soon makes new friends, playing in the Bomb Girls Swing Band by night. Life seems to be looking up. But when a letter arrives from home, she realises she might need her friends’ help before it's too late and she loses her baby forever....

The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words); his wife, Beverley, a celebrated novelist; and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant.

When Emily Mattison falls victim to a near-fatal accident shortly after receiving an unexpected inheritance from a distant cousin, her ruthless nephew George seizes the opportunity to take control of his aunt's assets. It's only when Emily reaches The Drover's Hope, the former pub on the edge of the Lancashire moors bequeathed to her by her late cousin Penelope, that she begins to feel safe. She also discovers that love can be found in the most unexpected places. But it's not so easy to escape the clutches of someone as determined as George.

Esther Hamilton, is finally finding her feet after her split with her horrible ex, and is looking forward to her new single life. She has a job she loves in the busy Accident and Emergency department, a new home and for the first time ever, a chance to just have fun with her good friends. Love is very much off the cards…Until the arrival of Joe Carter – the brother of Esther’s best friend, Danni.

Lisette lives in East Berlin but brings her new-born baby to a hospital in West Berlin. Under doctor's orders, she goes home to rest, leaving the baby in the care of the hospital. But overnight the border between East and West closes, slicing the city - and the world - in two. With a city in chaos and armed guards ordered to shoot anyone who tries to cross, her situation is desperate.

Marooned in a sprawling farmhouse in Norfolk, teenage Linda Radlett feels herself destined for greater things. She longs for love, but how will she ever find it? She can't even get a signal on her mobile phone. Linda's strict, former rock star father terrifies any potential suitors away, while her bohemian mother, wafting around in silver jewellery, answers Linda's urgent questions about love with upsettingly vivid allusions to animal husbandry.

From the outside, the Delaneys appear to be an enviably contented family. Even after all these years, former tennis coaches Joy and Stan are still winning tournaments, and now that they've sold the family business, they have all the time in the world to learn how to 'relax'. Their four adult children are busy living their own lives, and while it could be argued they never quite achieved their destinies, no one ever says that out loud.

Some said it was tragic, what happened to the Van Laars. Some said the Van Laars deserved it. That they never even thanked the searchers who stayed out for five nights in the freezing forest trying to help find their missing son. Some said there was a reason it took the family so long to call for help. That they knew what happened to the boy. Now, fifteen years later, the daughter the family had in their grief has gone missing in the same wilderness as her brother.

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother's apparent insanity, Izzy, now 17, refuses to visit her in prison. But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy's help in cataloguing items at a long-shuttered state asylum. There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.

The first book in Bernard Cornwell's best-selling series on the American Civil War. It is summer 1861. The armies of North and South stand on the brink of America's civil war. Nathanial Starbuck, jilted by his girl and estranged from his family, arrives in the capital of the Confederate South, where he enlists in an elite regiment being raised by rich, eccentric Washington Faulconer.

Six years ago, Evie Cormac was discovered, filthy and half starved, hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a shocking crime. Now approaching adulthood, Evie is damaged and self-destructive and has never revealed her true identity. Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven, a man haunted by his own past, is investigating the death of champion figure skater Jodie Sheehan. When Cyrus is called upon to assess Evie, she threatens to disrupt the case and destroy his ordered life.

The second in a new trilogy that extends the Dollanganger Family series that began with Flowers in the Attic. Picking up where Beneath the Attic left off, Out of the Attic goes back two generations before Corrine Foxworth locked her children in the attic. See how the twisted, beloved Dollanganger legend came to be. With five new Lifetime movies (beginning with Heaven) and the 40th-anniversary celebration of Flowers in the Attic, there has never been a better time to experience V.C. Andrews and the peculiar darkness of the human heart.

On a hot day in 1960s Maine, six-year-old Joe watches his little sister, Ruthie, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of the blueberry fields, while their family, Mi’kmaq people from Nova Scotia, pick fruit. That afternoon, Ruthie vanishes without a trace. As the last person to see her, Joe will be forever haunted by grief, guilt, and the agony of imagining how his life could have been.

The villagers of Thrush Green celebrate Christmas traditionally, in a way that has hardly changed over the generations. Children eagerly hang up their stockings, families go to church together and everyone enjoys the treats of the festive season. And when it snows as the carol singers make their way round the cottages on the green, it looks as if Christmas will be perfect this year. But not everything is as peaceful as it seems.

'There is only one book to a man,' Steinbeck wrote of East of Eden, his most ambitious novel. Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity; the inexplicability of love and the murderous consequences of love's absence.

Former Met police officer Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker is working a trial period as an auxiliary Detective Sergeant with the Penstowan police force. But living and working alongside DCI Nathan Withers – while still trying to grow her catering company – brings its own challenges, especially when Jodie’s attention is quickly taken up by the suspicious drowning of a local fisherman.

On a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the pond below 'The Paper Palace'—her family's holiday home in Cape Cod. As she dives beneath the water she relives the passionate encounter she had the night before, against the side of the house that knows all her darkest secrets, while her husband and mother chatted to their guests inside.... So begins a story that unfolds over 24 hours and 50 years, as Elle's shocking betrayal leads her to a life-changing decision—and an ending you won't be able to stop thinking about.

Joan Liang's life is a series of surprising developments: she never thought she would leave Taiwan (and for all places, California), nor did she expect her first marriage to implode - especially as quickly and spectacularly as it did. She definitely did not expect to fall in love with an older, wealthy American and become his fourth wife and mother to his youngest children. Through all this she asks herself the question familiar to so many of us: what are we living for? And are we ever truly satisfied?