Phoebe Giamatti lives with her boisterous Italian family in the heart of London's East End. Phoebe's father was killed in gang warfare and she and her family share a deep hatred for the Paxman brothers - whose lawless ways strike terror into the whole community. Despite her English mother's feckless ways, Phoebe is fiercely protective of Annie. Then just as the family are about to go to Italy for the winter, Phoebe discovers Annie is in trouble -...

Young Mikey Quinn, scavenging on the streets of Hull, is thrown into prison for stealing a rabbit from the butcher. His chief accuser, a well-to-do lawyer, has a daughter, Eleanor, whom he badly mistreats. When Mikey is released he finds that his mother has died and his brothers taken into the workhouse - determined to find a better life for his family, he walks all the way to London to seek his fortune. There he finds that the grim realities of city...

Two women arrive in a Spanish village, a dreamlike place caught between the desert and the ocean, seeking medical advice and salvation. One suffers from a mysterious illness: spontaneous paralysis confines her to a wheelchair. The other, her daughter Sofia, has spent years playing the reluctant detective, struggling to understand her mother's illness. Surrounded by the oppressive desert heat and the mesmerising figures who move through it, Sofia waits...

Mary Hetherington was a mother who dominated her family. She was kind, efficient and generous--providing they did what she wanted. But when David brought home Sarah from the 'wrong end' of the Fifteen Streets, a girl who brought life and laughter into her dustless house, she soon took against her. Then when she discovered that Sarah was loved not just by David but by all her menfolk, Mary Hetherington realised that this 'interloper', if allowed to...

Paradise has been home to generations of Trevannions: Paradise, the house at the head of a sheltered Cornish valley where Mrs Trevannion lives, surrounded by her family. But frail and elderly Honor Trevannion, bedridden following a nasty fall, is inexplicably anxious and distressed by the arrival of a young American.

It's springtime in the Cornish village of Pendruggan, and as the community comes together to say a fond farewell to parish vicar, Simon, and his wife, Penny, a newcomer causes quite a stir. Reverend Angela Whitehorn has come to Cornwall to make a difference. With her husband, Robert, by her side, she sets about making changes - but it seems not everyone is happy for her to shake things up in the small parish, and soon Angela starts to receive anonymous...

He said he?d do anything to protect her. She said she?d do anything to protect her family. And they both said they would forget what happened twenty-two years ago. But now it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to make them remember. Who is playing the blame game?.

Petra's romantic life has always been a car-crash, and even in her sixties she's still capable of getting it disastrously wrong. But then she falls in love with Jeremy, an old chum, visiting from abroad. The fatal catch? Jeremy is her best friend's husband. But just as Petra is beginning to relax into her happy ever after, she finds herself catapulted to West Africa, and to Bev, her best friend who she's been betraying so spectacularly. Meanwhile,...

Despite her beloved mother's deathbed warning, Phoebe Mulligan has no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of her uncle, Edward. Her natural warmth and cheerfulness win her many friends and although she must endure horror and heartbreak, all the riches a woman can have come within her reach.

. . Hypnotherapist Ellen is fascinated by what makes people tick. So when she falls in love with Patrick, the fact that he has a stalker doesn't faze her in the slightest. If anything it intrigues her, and the more she hears about Saskia, the more she wants to meet this woman. But what Ellen doesn't know is that they've already met . . . Saskia has been posing as one of Ellen's clients. Unable to let go of the life she so abruptly lost, she wants...