Lisa Jewell

East Yorkshire. Single mum Alice Lake finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement she invites him in to her home. Surrey. Twenty-one-year-old Lily Drew has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Then the police tell her that her husband never existed....

London: On a fine avenue of grand houses, big cars and electronic gates, lies a neglected urban wasteland. It is nearly midnight and very cold. Yet in this dark place of long grass and tall trees where cats hunt and foxes shriek, a girl is waiting. When Saffyre Maddox was 10 something terrible happened and she's carried the pain of it around with her ever since. The man who she thought was going to heal her didn't, and now she hides from him, invisible...

Meet the residents of 31 Almanac Road in a romantic and funny novel that takes you up the garden path, through the front door and into the most intimate parts of other peoples' lives. Ralph's Party is Lisa Jewell's first novel.

Everyone in the leafy suburb of Melville loves Tom Fitzwilliam. The charismatic head teacher has saved the local school from ruin and brought the community together as a result. His wife adores him, his students moon over him - and his next-door neighbour Joey Mullen is obsessed by him. And she believes he feels the same about her - he's been giving her signs recently that she simply can't ignore. Joey thinks her crush on Tom Fitzwilliam is a secret....

It's late at night and Kim is waiting. Her daughter, Tallulah, is out on a date, and hasn't returned. Desperate to find out where she might be, Kim contacts her friends, and discovers that Tallulah was last seen heading to a party at a house in the woods. The locals call it Dark Place. Two years on, the mystery of Tallulah's disappearance remains unsolved. But could a note discovered in the woods lead to the truth about what happened that night?

Clare and her two pre-teen daughters, Grace and Pip, move into Virginia Terrace, a cluster of flats and houses surrounding a communal garden. It's a place where families feel safe and children can run free. Neighbours have known each other for years, and trust each other implicitly. But then, after the annual garden party - a glorious summer's day of getting together and enjoying a barbecue, listening to music, having a few glasses of wine, letting...

Brothers Tony, Sean and Ned had the perfect upbringing. They adore their parents and actually look forward to coming home for Sunday lunch. But now they're grown up, real life is starting to get in the way.

When she was nine years old, Melody Browne's house burned down, taking every toy, every photograph, every item of clothing and old Christmas cards with it. But not only did the fire destroy all her possessions, it took all her memories - Melody Browne can remember nothing before her ninth birthday.

Arlette works in Liberty by day, and by night is caughty up in a glamorous whirl of parties, clubs, cocktails and jazz. But when tragedy strikes she flees the city, never to return. Over half a century later, in the grungy mid-'90s, her graddaughter Betty arrives in London. She can't wait to begin her new life. But before she can do so, she must find the mysterious woman named in her grandmother's will. What she doesn't know is that her search will...

It's 11 years since Jem Catterick and Ralph McLeary first got together. They thought it would be forever, that they'd found their happy ending. As everyone agreed, they were the perfect couple. Then two became four, a flat became a house. Romantic nights became sleepless nights. They soon found that life wasn't so simple anymore.