Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort - a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny', and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything...

When Sarah Haywood rescues a young girl in trouble, she expects nothing in return. But her instinctive act of bravery puts her in the debt of a powerful and dangerous man, and he has other ideas. He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid - in the only way he knows how. He offers Sarah a way to solve an impossible situation with her intolerable boss. A once-in-a-lifetime deal that could turn her life around and make all her problems...

When laundress Mercy Seaton?s chance meeting with Peter Lisburne at the annual Torquay regatta leads to a whirlwind proposal, she?s swept into her husband?s glittering world at ?I do?. But all that glitters is not gold and Mercy?s discomfort in the drawing rooms of Edwardian society leave her adrift in a world she?s ill prepared for. Combined with the onset of war, Mercy?s life becomes an ever-changing landscape of uncertainty. As the world falls...

Somewhere on the French Riviera, tucked between glitzy Monte Carlo and Cannes' red carpets, lies the pretty town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer. Sheltered from the glittering melee, it is home to many an expat - including an enterprising team who plan to open a new restaurant. Snapping up a local property and throwing themselves into preparations, Theresa, Carol, William and Benjamin's plans are proceeding unnervingly well. But when Theresa encounters a mysterious...

Alexander McCall Smith?s delightful series of novels form the basis of these radio dramas featuring the inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement building With its multiple-occupancy flats, Scotland Street is an interesting corner of Edinburgh?s New Town. Verging on the Bohemian, here the haute bourgeoisie rubs shoulders with students and the more colourful members of the intelligentsia. In these three BBC Radio 4 series, Domenica MacDonald and Angus Lordie...

Life couldn't be better for Lucinda Purefoy. She's got a steady boyfriend, a degree in social sciences and the offer of a job in advertising. With all this, she felt she should 'pay back her debt to society' and 'do a little good in the world'. That's why she joined SCRAP (short for 'Social Carers, Reformers and Preceptors'), an organisation which trains girls like Lucy to become the 'guide, philosopher and friend' to ex-convicts coming out of prison,...

Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed.

Two backcountry skiers find the body of a young woman embedded in the ice of a remote mountain creek. All through the night police work with arc lights and chainsaws to prise her out. Identifying her doesn't take so long. Abbie Cooper is wanted for murder and her picture is on law enforcement computers all across America. But how did she die? And what was the trail of events that led this golden child of a loving family so tragically astray?

Summer is coming to a close on Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome. One misstep at a dinner party and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources, but a gift for navigating the desires of others, Alex stays on the island. She drifts like a ghost through the gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world, trailing destruction in her wake.

Lizzie is orphaned and living in Liverpool with her Aunt Annie and Uncle Perce. Lizzie loves her aunt, but hates her violent uncle and escapes whenever she can to play by the canal. There she meets Geoff and Clem, and the three become firm friends.