Showing titles in Family Life

Ever dreamed of starting over? Issy Randall can bake. No, more than that - Issy can create stunning, mouth-wateringly divine cakes. After a childhood spent in her beloved Grampa Joe’s bakery she has undoubtedly inherited his talent. So when she’s made redundant from her safe but dull City job, Issy decides to seize the moment and open up her own café. It should be a piece of cake, right?

After a bruising divorce, headstrong Juliet Miller invests in a flat and advertises for a flatmate, little believing that in her late 30s she'll find anyone suitable. But along comes self-employed copywriter Floz, raw from her own relationship split, and the two woman hit it off. When Juliet's twin brother, Guy, meets Floz, he is overcome with a massive crush, just as his friend Steve develops the hots for Juliet. But being a shy, gentle giant, Guy communicates so clumsily with Floz as to give her the opposite impression.

As she approaches the milestone birthday of forty, delicate blond beauty Amanda Delanoe finds joy in running a chic contemporary art gallery in the City of Light. The only child of a French businessman and an American model, both now deceased, Amanda lives well and adores her dog, Lulu, but so far the love of her life has eluded her.

Globetrotting Libby Jacobs has lost her job but is looking forward to spending more time in her home village of Cranfield. She dreams of turning her chocolate-making hobby into something more permanent. There’s only one problem: Ethan Connolly. Despite being soul mates growing up, Libby hasn’t been close to Ethan since their disastrous date at the school prom. But now he’s back and he has just what Libby needs… a large kitchen! But can they even bear to be in the same room together?

Despite a deathbed warning from her beloved mother, Phoebe Mulligan has no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of her uncle, Edward. Wrenched from all she holds dear, the tragic young girl is delivered to Blackburn town, where she must live in a household terrorised by the cold, forbidding presence of her mother's brother. Phoebe cannot understand why she is treated so harshly by Edward Dickens. She is not to know the guilty secret that lies in his past, a secret that casts a sinister shadow over his feelings for his lovely niece.

Former Met police officer Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker is working a trial period as an auxiliary Detective Sergeant with the Penstowan police force. But living and working alongside DCI Nathan Withers – while still trying to grow her catering company – brings its own challenges, especially when Jodie’s attention is quickly taken up by the suspicious drowning of a local fisherman.

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred unpicks the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

Just like the whole town of Starr’s Fall, thinks Laurie Ellis – as she and her beloved dog Max head to collect the store keys. Maybe she has seen better days, too, but she’s certainly ready for a new start—and to leave her past behind. Still Laurie wonders whether she made a terrible mistake in coming to lovable but shabby Starr’s Fall. Will she even find customers for her pet store and bakery, never mind a community to welcome and accept her?

It's an incendiary moment for St Oswald's school. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls. Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely 40, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.

21-year-old Lucy feels content with her life in Hertfordshire—not least because she lives next door to Tom and Jamie, two very different brothers for whom she has equally great affection. But her comfortable life is turned upside down when Tom decides he must travel to Spain to fight for the Democratic party in the bloody Spanish Civil War. He is quickly followed by Jamie, who, much to Lucy's despair, is supporting General Franco and his Fascist party.

It's 1924, and Peter and Patricia have what looks to be a very modern marriage. Both drink. Both smoke. Both work, Patricia as a head copywriter at a major department store. When it comes to sex with other people, both believe in "the honesty policy." Until they don't. Or, at least, until Peter doesn't—and a shell-shocked, lovesick Patricia finds herself starting out all over again, but this time around as a different kind of single woman: the ex-wife.

The first book in Bernard Cornwell's best-selling series on the American Civil War. It is summer 1861. The armies of North and South stand on the brink of America's civil war. Nathanial Starbuck, jilted by his girl and estranged from his family, arrives in the capital of the Confederate South, where he enlists in an elite regiment being raised by rich, eccentric Washington Faulconer.

In Western Australia, Sarah chuckles as she describes her final will and testament—which will throw the metaphorical cat among the family pigeons—whilst sharing a bottle of wine with her neighbour Thomas as they sit on the terrace of her luxurious waterside home. Six months later, at the age of 95, she peacefully passes on. Married and widowed three times, Sarah has had a great life as a successful businesswoman. Now she's left her Australian house to her two great-nieces—on the condition that they live in it together for a year.

When Patrick Sheppard suddenly and tragically dies, he leaves behind a family in pieces. Zoe has lost the love of her life. Ethan, Gabe and Beatrice have lost their larger-than-life dad. There’s a hole where Patrick should be, and none of them can see a way forward. For Patrick’s brother Dan, though: his mission is clear. He needs to help the Sheppards to find some sort of happy again, and he makes a promise to himself to try and come close to the man Patrick was.

One lied. One died. When one sister dies, the other must go to desperate lengths to survive. After a tragic accident, still haunted by her twin sister's death, Abi is making a fresh start in Bath. But when she meets siblings Bea and Ben, she is quickly drawn into their privileged and unsettling circle. When one sister lies, she must protect her secret at all costs.

After escaping her parents’ unhappy marriage to sleepy Cranbridge a long time ago, Belle Clarke dreams of staying at The Black Swan Inn forever. But with the rundown inn threatened with closure, Belle may be forced to leave, unless a buyer can be found...quickly. So, when her oldest friend, Pete Kennedy, returns from working abroad with a plan to save the Inn, Belle should be overjoyed. The trouble is, Pete has some rather radical ideas for the renovation which Belle disagrees with.

Faith Jackson fixes herself up with a great job in TV and the perfect flatshare. But neither is that perfect—and nor are her relations with her overbearing, though always loving, family. Furious and perplexed when her parents announce their intention to retire back home to Jamaica, Faith makes her own journey there, where she is immediately welcomed by Aunt Coral, keeper of a rich cargo of family history.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple. Recuperating from a flying accident, Jerry Burton needs to take a break somewhere peaceful. He and his sister rent a house in the little village of Lymstock, where they know no-one and hope to be able to relax. Their quiet life is shattered, however, by the arrival of an obscene anonymous letter accusing them of impropriety. Jerry refuses to take it seriously and throws it on the fire.

Young Elly's world is shaped by those who inhabit it: her loving but maddeningly distractible parents; a best friend who smells of chips and knows exotic words like 'slag'; an ageing fop who tapdances his way into her home, a Shirley Bassey impersonator who trails close behind; lastly, of course, a rabbit called God. In a childhood peppered with moments both ordinary and extraordinary, Elly's one constant is her brother Joe. Twenty years on, Elly and Joe are fully grown and as close as they ever were. Until, that is, an earth-shattering event that threatens to destroy their bond for ever.

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. He is brutalised, held for ransom and then returned to his family. Miraculously, Carl, his wife and his three kids are left to move on with their lives, and resume their prized places in the ongoing saga of the American dream.