Showing titles in Family Life

Loretta Chambers has spent her life working at her father’s boatyard down at the docks. She’s tried hard to keep the business afloat, but with the railways taking trade away every day, Lorrie fears for the worst. The arrival of handsome Italian, Matteo Falcone brings a brief glimmer of hope and a yearning inside Lorrie for another life, away from the filthy grime of the dockside.

On June 21st, the longest day of the year. You're home, alone, your baby is in nursery. Life finally feels calm again. And then you hear the breaking news alert - there's a siege taking place just down the road, and it's being live-streamed. Three hostages sit in three chairs, bags over their heads. Their shoulders are moving up and down, almost imperceptibly. Living, breathing, frightened people. And then you see the person who has taken them, who's standing in front of them, on camera, with a gun. It's your husband. Nobody knows it but you. What do you do?

In the heyday of the British Raj, 11-year-old Anahita, from a noble but impoverished family, forms a lifelong friendship with the headstrong Princess Indira, the privileged daughter of rich Indian royalty. Becoming the princess's official companion, Anahita accompanies her friend to England just before the outbreak of the Great War. There, she meets the young Donald Astbury - reluctant heir to the magnificent, remote Astbury Estate - and his scheming mother.

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change her life. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. It was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons.

Today is Ruth's first day of third grade at Dalton. The prestigious institution on New York's Upper East Side couldn't be more different from her old school in Harlem. Despite being the smartest girl in her grade, Ruth suspects that her classmates and teachers only see her dark skin. She also notices that Christina, the daughter of her mother's employer, treats Ruth very differently when they're hanging out with the popular girls rather than playing together.

Saskia Wyle spent one sultry European summer on Île de Re when she was nineteen. The bright salt flats and sun-soaked beaches are now a distant memory, and one she made herself forget after an unspeakable tragedy. But the French heiress she befriended over twenty years ago has left half of her magnificent home to Saskia and the other half to Felix Allard, the now-reclusive film star living on the island. How did Simone Durant die? Was it the family curse that haunted her? And why has she included Saskia in her will after all this time?

When your life changes in a moment, how do you rewrite your story? In 1940s Britain, with the Second World War raging, Alice is working in a laboratory developing a new miracle medicine. Made to leave school at sixteen and abandon her aspiration to be a teacher, she learns instead how curing people may be her destiny.

Jodie Boyd is a shy and anxious twenty-something, completely unsure of what to do with her life. Meanwhile, her older sister, Bree, is an adventurous, globe-trotting Instagram influencer with more than a million followers. Bree is the most alive person Jodie knows – until her unfathomable, untimely death from leukaemia. The Boyds are devastated, not to mention overwhelmed with medical debt. But Bree had a plan, and to Jodie's surprise a new post appears on her sister's Instagram feed.

Every table at Quentins Restaurant has a thousand stories to tell: tales of love, betrayal and revenge. Ella Brady wants to make a documentary about the renowned Dublin restaurant that has captured the spirit of a generation and a city in the years it has been open. In Maeve Binchy's magical Quentins you will meet new friends and old: the twins from Scarlet Feather, the Signora from Evening Class, Ria from Tara Road - and a host of fresh faces.

Thirty years ago, my father became the other half of a broken love story. A relationship he’s kept hidden for decades. Upon unearthing his secret through a series of emails in our paper’s archives, I began my search for the truth. Haunted by my father’s love story, and in my quest for answers, I never imagined I would discover a love of my own. Or that my love for Easton Crowne would be key in discovering the reason behind what split our parents up.

What is the connection between a failed suicide attempt, a wrongful accusation of theft against a schoolgirl, and the romantic life of a famous tennis player? To the casual observer, apparently nothing. But when a houseparty gathers at Gull's Point, the seaside home of an elderly widow, earlier events come to a dramatic head. It's all part of a carefully paid plan for murder.

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is … complicated. So when her real dad - a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago - suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw.

With new arrivals comes new responsibilities.... The sun is shining, wild flowers are blooming and Hedgehog Hollow is officially open for business. For Samantha, the proud owner of this beautiful rescue centre, life has never been busier. But with an influx of new hogs and hoglets to take care of, not to mention a full-time job and ongoing family issues, can she accept the possibility that she has taken on more than she can handle?

When the Bruny bridge is bombed, UN troubleshooter Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, her mother is fading and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go.

While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Twenty-five years later, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history.

Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply lovable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her. Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.

Isobel Ashworth breezes through life, blissfully accustomed to the privilege which comes with her family name. But that changes when she arrives in the exclusive town of Hartwell. Sent there by her father to complete a controversial property development—and prove herself a serious player in the succession plan—her perfect life is unravelling. Isobel's fiance is telling lies, the project is a disaster and the locals hate her; could her father be setting her up to fail? Buzzing with the promise of a big story, journalist Meg Hunter arrives in Hartwell to expose the Ashworth family dealings.

Spring has arrived at The Potting Shed and things seem to finally be going Maddie's way. Her relationship with lovable lawyer Ed is going well and the business is thriving with the help of her new friend Jo and his bright orange coffee van. But troubles are just around the corner... the upgrade of The Potting Shed from a nursery to a garden centre is at a critical point, turning part of Maddie's business into a building site. And just as she has to temporarily move out of her home, a major garden centre announces its grand opening only twenty miles away.

The last time Esther Wilding's beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura's disappearance, Esther's family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister's death, Esther reluctantly travels from Lutruwita, Tasmania to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body.

Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill. The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked. But this morning all of that will change. Because Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer.