Showing titles in Family Life

Ginger isn't spending her 30th the way she would have planned. Tonight might be the first night of the rest of her life - or a total disaster. Sam is finally pregnant after years of trying. When her waters break on the morning of her 40th birthday, she panics: forget labour, how is she going to be a mother? Callie is celebrating her 50th at a big party in her Dublin home. Then a knock at the door midparty changes everything....

Catherine has experienced something so traumatic that she can't speak. Or won't speak. The doctors say the only way forward is to look into her past. Fifteen years ago, Catherine met the love of her life at university. Lucian was charming, adored her and she was drawn into the hedonistic and careless lifestyle of his wealthy friends. They were inseparable—then one morning Catherine left him without a word.

Maia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home–a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva–having been told that their beloved adoptive father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died. Each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage–a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil . . .

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her, but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore.

Georgian mansion Wharton Park was a place of childhood solace for Julia Forrester, spending summers in the Norfolk countryside with her beloved grandfather. So after tragedy strikes, she finds herself seeking comfort at Wharton and the allure of its hothouse, once home to exotic flowers from all corners of the globe but now lying abandoned. There she meets the new owner, the charming and magnetic Kit Crawford, whose own past is shrouded in sadness and mystery.

Rosanna Menici is just a girl when she meets Roberto Rossini, the man who will change her life. In the years to come, their destinies are bound together by their extraordinary talents as opera singers and by their enduring but obsessive love for each other - a love that will ultimately affect the lives of all those closest to them. For, as Rosanna slowly discovers, their union is haunted by irreversible events from the past....

Every woman makes choices. And no one has made more difficult choices than Olivia Grayson. The enormously successful businesswoman missed out on much of her children’s lives while she built her legendary home-furnishings empire. In Danielle Steel’s character-rich novel, Olivia faces the past, tries to balance the present and make amends where due, while still running her vastly successful business. As a way of making up to them for time lost, Olivia spends months each year planning a holiday that everyone in her family will enjoy.

Since inheriting Nambina, the property that's been in her family for generations, Laura Murphy has worked wonders. Rather than just focus on farming she has set up a successful school teaching women the basics of managing a property—from fencing and mustering to handling the financial side of the business. But the notoriously self-reliant Laura is lonely and still scarred by a tragedy from her past. She's also grappling with the hostility of her nearest neighbor and former best friend, Meghan Hunter. The fact that Laura's ex-boyfriend Josh is Meghan's brother only makes things worse.

Orphaned at sixteen, James Wakefield was determined to be a gun shearer like his father. Now he's killed twice, changed his name, and is on the run from the law. He had his reasons for both murders, and he felt no joy in taking life. Or did he? Ben McKinnon, meanwhile, is heir to the vast Glenfinnan sheep property near Goulburn, New South Wales. He too has a secret that, if ever revealed, would shatter the privileged lives of his father, Alastair, and his sisters, Jenna and Adele. When fate brings James and Ben together, a powerful friendship is forged.

Once upon a time, Natasha believed in love. At nineteen, her heart was captivated by a man who promised her the world, only to vanish, leaving her to carry the weight of shattered dreams—and the child she never expected. A decade later, Natasha is focused on providing love and stability for her daughter, determined to break the cycle of poverty and trauma that haunted her own childhood. As they settle into the peaceful rhythms of Settlers Bridge, Natasha is drawn to the local mechanic, Hamish, whose quiet strength stirs feelings she hadn't expected to ever experience again.

Summer, California, 1970s. Sally Samuelson is eight years old and the course of her family's life is about to change. When her golden-boy brother Ellis, just graduated from high school, drives up the coast with his two best friends, he promises to be back in a week. But he does not return. After Ellis's unexpected death, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis again - especially after Julia, Ellis's girlfriend, shows up pregnant on their doorstep.

Lou and Josh have been together for 14 years. They share two kids, a mortgage, careers and plenty of history. Now, after a particularly fraught Christmas, Lou is ready to ask herself: is this marriage worth hanging on to? Every month for a year, Lou sets a different test for their relationship - from daily sex to brutal honesty - to help her decide if she should stay or go. Secrets are exposed, old wounds reopened and a true-to-life suburban love story unfolds.

In a seaside suburb of NSW, housewife Theresa Howard takes up swimming. She wants to get fit; she also wants a few precious minutes to herself. So at sunrise each day she strikes out past the waves. From the same beach, the widowed Marie swims. With her husband gone, bathing is the one constant in her new life. After finding herself in a desperate situation, 26-year-old Leanne only has herself to rely on. She became a nurse to help others, even as she resists help herself. Elaine has recently moved from England.

It is 1945 and the House of Lords’ vote on who should inherit the Barrington estate ends in a tie, casting a long shadow on the lives of those involved. Author Harry begins to promote his novel, whilst Emma, after her father’s mysterious death, searches for the girl found abandoned in his office on the night he died. Politician Giles defends his seat in the House of Commons and finds not only his future but his family’s fortune at stake. Ultimately his fate is dictated by Harry’s son Sebastian, even as Sebastian himself becomes embroiled in an international art fraud.

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care.

It's Una Darling's 17th birthday, but nobody feels much like celebrating. It's been exactly a year since the tragic death of her father, Finn, and the people he left behind have been doing their best to get on with things. But it hasn't been easy. Daphne is tired of sadness, of mourning the long life she and her husband were meant to share, but doesn't quite know how to get past it. And she can't seem to get through to her stepdaughter - they barely speak anymore, so Daphne knows nothing of the unexpected solace Una has found, or of the risk she's about to take.

In a novel of extraordinary richness the whole sweep of British civilisation unfolds through the story of one place, Salisbury, from beyond recorded time to the present day. The landscape - as old as time itself - shapes the destinies of the five families....

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.

Oona Kelly Webster is an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. Married with two children, her twenty-five-year relationship falls apart when she books a silver wedding anniversary getaway at a luxurious château in France and her husband Charles suddenly drops a bombshell which will shatter her carefully built world. Although devastated, Oona decides to travel to France without Charles, but soon after her arrival in the charming village of Milly-la-Forêt, the world comes to a standstill due to a terrifying pandemic and all travel is forbidden.

Gerry and Bernie London are proud parents of Tony, Sean and Ned, three wayward lads whose lives have suddenly reached crisis points. Newly divorced Tony is fantasising about someone he really shouldn't. Prize-winning novelist Sean's got a hot new girlfriend and a dose of writer's block. Ned's just back from Australia, without the girl he took with him - or a clue what he's going to do with his life. If that wasn't enough for one household, the Londons also have a new lodger - a mysterious rockabilly called Gervase. Will he turn out to be a friend - or foe - to the family?