Lisa Jewell

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...

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?

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....

London, 2011. In the early hours of a summer morning, a young woman is killed by a bus. A tragic accident? Or suicide? A year later, her devastated husband, Adrian Wolfe, is determined to find out. Adrian and Maya had only recently married, and he'd always believed they were happy together. His children from his two previous marriages loved her. And Maya loved them. She had a job she enjoyed, she had plenty of friends, and she and Adrian were trying...

In a hospice in Bury St Edmunds, a man called Daniel is slowly fading away. His friend Maggie sits with him every day; she holds his hand and listens to the story of his life, to his regrets and to his secrets. And he tells her about the children he has never met, conceived with women he never even touched.

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.

Libby Jones, twenty-five and living on a shoestring budget, is shocked to discover that she has inherited an eight-bedroom property in the heart of Chelsea. But the house is dilapidated and has a sinister past - one in which she and her birth family are tangled. For this is also the day that Libby discovers she has a brother and a sister. That her birth parents were poor, selling their furniture and sleeping on mattresses inside their palatial home....

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.

YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WATCHING You?re back home after four years working abroad, new husband in tow. You?re keen to find a place of your own. But for now you?re crashing in your big brother?s spare room. That?s when you meet the man next door. He?s the head teacher at the local school. Twice your age. Extraordinarily attractive. You find yourself watching him. All the time. But you never dreamed that your innocent crush might become a deadly obsession....