Summer Island
£9.99From the multimillion-copy bestselling author of The Women and The Nightingale, Summer Island is a poignant, warm and tender novel about a mother and daughter and the complex ties that bind them.
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A Real Piece of Work
£16.99Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie. The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one problem: everyone in her family has an opinion about the book – and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her. It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants. But now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake. Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame.
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Mrs Dickens
£20.00London, 1836. Nineteen-year-old Kate Hogarth falls in love with the young journalist Charles Dickens. In the early days of their marriage, Charles is infatuated with his new bride and Kate delights in her new life, the balm to her husband’s irrepressible spirit. But as he finds fame as a novelist and the family rise through the ranks of Victorian society, Kate becomes increasingly aware of his frustration that real people cannot be manipulated as easily as his characters. Meanwhile, in the East End slums, a young orphan named Anne Brown has lost everything, but is determined to make her way in the world. A chance encounter with the Dickens family transports her to the heart of the household, opening up a world of privilege, travel and remarkable company. But her new-found freedom has come at a cost she cannot always ignore. As the years go by and the family expands, the cracks in the Dickens’ marriage deepen.
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The Correspondent
£9.99In her letters to family and friends we come to know the life of Sybil Van Antwerp: stubborn, cantankerous, opinionated, always steadfast in her belief in the power of the written word. But as the clock begins to tick for Sybil, the need for a few post-scripts to the life she’s led becomes apparent. Fixing her difficult relationship with her children. Taking a final chance at romance. Atoning for an old legal case which has come back to haunt her. And finally, reckoning with a devastating loss that she has spent the last 30 years holding close to her chest.
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Bad Boy Era
£9.99Everly is the matchmaking mastermind of her family, but her own love life is a bit of a flop. Back from four years in Dublin, she’s ready for a quiet summer on Fletcher Mountain helping launch her aunt’s animal rescue centre – until Conri ‘Wolf’ Reilly shows up. Wolf is her college roommate’s infuriating twin brother. He’s brooding, Irish, and college rugby’s resident bad boy with thighs that could crack a watermelon. His red card reputation has trashed his rugby prospects, until a training camp in Denver comes calling. As a favour, Everly reluctantly gets Wolf a place to stay if he volunteers at the rescue centre. Now Everly’s finds herself working and living next door to the Irish tattooed grump who treats her like a nuisance, but looks at her like he could press her up against a hay bale until they forget their own names.
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Island Calling
£9.99On remote Tuga de Oro, vet Charlotte Walker’s caseload of donkeys, cows, and ailing lizards has only increased. She still can’t believe the humiliating truth about her father. Probably, she ought to feel worse than she does. But the islanders have taken Charlotte to their hearts and somehow, between days on the farms and nights with a new love interest, she’s content to remain in blissful retreat from her real life in London. Just for now. But real life hits the island with the force of a tropical storm: Charlotte’s mother arrives. Lucinda Compton-Neville knows an identity crisis when she sees one, and has come to haul her daughter back on course: back to England, back to her career, back home where she belongs.
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All Grown Up
£16.99After thirty years of messy mothering, Louisa’s daughters can finally look after themselves. Or so she thought. Because suddenly, they’re back – apparently for good. Meg’s second-guessing her marriage. Jo’s career hangs in the balance. Amy has inexplicably quit university. None of them empty the dishwasher. Louisa knows it’s time for some life lessons. She adores her girls, but if she’s ever going to get her (sex) life back, they’ll have to grow up – and go. But maybe they’re not the only ones with lessons to learn. And Louisa might just discover that her daughters have something to teach her about being an adult too.
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People in Love
£16.99One bright blue day, on a bench by the river, Nora’s partner Robin proposes. It is unexpected; they’d always agreed that they didn’t need a wedding. But after a decade of in-jokes, dancing in the low-lit kitchen and sharing morning toast in bed, Nora says yes. Why wouldn’t she? The answer lands on the night of their engagement party, when Bren turns up on her doorstep. Growing up, Bren and Nora were the sort of best friends who everyone swore would end up together. But when a sudden heartbreak turned their lives upside down, Bren left, Nora stayed, and the silent longing between them remained unspoken. Now, he’s back, and their tentative yet undeniable spark reignites, forcing Nora to ask herself: How can you know your heart, if it feels like it’s split in two?
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A Sense of Occasion
£16.99Mary’s death is bad news – for her daughter Patch, ex-partner Robin, and niece Jude. It will mean a funeral. But Patch can barely keep track of her mother’s journey from the hospital to the mortuary, let alone host a wake in her childhood home. Robin wants to support her, but instead of assuming the role of responsible father, he heads to his former haunt: the lay-by where he used to meet farmers for sex. Jude’s on her way from Naples, worrying less about Patch, her estranged cousin, and more about whether there’s a medicinal bag of cocaine in the boot. She hasn’t told the family she’s en route. This way, any lingering acrimony will be forgotten, and Jude’s past behaviour will be forgiven. Thrown together in Mary’s tiny house, each of them is trying to feel something: to grieve, atone, join in, be better.
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The Chateau
£10.99It is 1948 and a young American couple arrive in France for a holiday, full of anticipation and enthusiasm. But the countryside and people are war-battered, and their reception at the Chateau Beaumesnil is not all the open-hearted Americans could wish for.
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Make Strange
£20.00It begins on an orange afternoon, cool but ruminant, close to Halloween. Sunny, only four years old, looks up from the terrarium-sized tub of toys in the living room and asks her mother when she died. Over the course of the next strange, strained year, Sunny will refer repeatedly to her previous lives, and how they ended. Her parents, Lena and Odhran – who rushed headfirst into family life after an accidental pregnancy and a hasty registry office wedding – are left desperate for answers. Is their child suffering from disassociation, a psychological disorder, or something more? Has she been contaminated by their own haunted histories – by Lena’s experiences as an indie musician in the era of sleaze, by a shady legacy of madness in Odhran’s family? Can we ever really protect our children? What if we can’t?
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On We Go
£20.00When Cal loses his beloved wife Nikki, and his teenage step-daughter Zoe moves out to live with her father, his whole world falls apart. But life works in mysterious ways. And when a prestigious university wants to pay tribute to Nikki with a posthumous award in Zurich, Cal sees an opportunity to both honour his wife, and mend things with Zoe. The plan is a European inter-railing trip to Zurich – but what Cal hasn’t anticipated is Zoe lying to her father about it, and inviting their other relatives to join too. What starts off as a very awkward family reunion – punctuated with some sightseeing – quickly takes a turn as tempers fray, secrets are revealed, and the pent-up grief they’re all still carrying is unleashed. There’s nothing quite like family. Except family on holiday!