Family Drama Fiction

For eleven-year-old Esme, ballet is everything - until her four-year-old sister, Lily, vanishes without a trace and nothing is certain anymore. People Esme has known her whole life suddenly become suspects, each new one hitting closer to home than the last. Unable to cope, Esme escapes the nightmare that is her new reality when she receives an invitation to join an elite ballet academy in San Francisco. Desperate to leave behind her chaotic, broken family and the mystery surrounding Lily’s disappearance, Esme accepts.

Grace first met Mimi when she blew into their sons’ toddler playgroup like a warm bay breeze that loosened Grace’s tight spaces. Despite differing approaches to life and parenting, the fast friends raised their kids together while cementing a sisterlike bond that neither believed could be broken. But when a string of ill-fated decisions results in a teen party with a tragic outcome for Grace’s son, the friendship is ripped apart and an already-splintered community explodes.

At the age of thirty-nine, Alice Chang suddenly finds herself living in the last place she expected: her mother’s house. But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice. Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years. Then she finds her father’s old journal...and uncovers a shocking family secret.

There's always time to help out a stranger...isn't there? Supermarket delivery driver Charlie enjoys his new job, because he doesn't have to spend too long with people, who, he's found, are nothing but trouble. But when he's assigned the Hope Row street, he realises there are a lot of lonely people out there - and for some, he's their only interaction. The supermarket boss tells Charlie he's a driver, not a social worker - but Charlie can't abandon the Hope Row residents and he sets about trying to draw them out of their shells and back into the world.

Rachel Smedling is not like the other women in her isolated Pennine village: she is taller, stronger, and weaves cloth like a man. Without her, the household would fall apart, for her mother is ailing and her vicious drunkard father seems to hate her so much, he would happily offer money to any man who would wed her. When her mother dies, Rachel is at the mercy of her increasingly violent father. Her only escape is by marrying a kindly man with whom she finds happiness, if not passion, and her life begins to seem complete.

Chloe Usher has had enough of men. After breaking up with the love of her life, Chloe's friends tell her she needs to get back out there and find another man before it's too late. But after a particularly disastrous date and one too many gins, Chloe has a revelation - she doesn't need a man to make her happy. It's up to her to do it herself. Never one to do things by halves, Chloe decides to make the ultimate commitment to self-love - she'll marry herself!

Gina Gray is just about to move into a small but perfect flat in Bloomsbury and DCI David Scott has come back into her life. But a family crisis brings her daughter and son-in-law to share her flat and, in the rash of hate crimes that follow the Brexit referendum, a young Indian woman is strangled just doors away from Gina’s new home. David Scott wants Gina’s help with an investigation which takes her into the world of barristers’ chambers in Gray’s Inn, a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and a clash with her difficult younger daughter.

Caroline Corbett wants nothing to do with her father, Hoff, a man who abandoned her as a young girl and then vanished from her life almost thirty years ago. But when her beloved aunt expresses a dying wish to see him once more, Caroline, despite her failing marriage and other personal troubles, drops everything to look for him.

Helen lives a decent, uncomplicated life. Satisfied in her career, she’s raising three happy teenagers, and her family has the most envied house on the street. Admittedly, she’s growing just a little disenchanted with her marriage to her workaholic husband, Werner. But that’s nothing she can’t fix. For disaffected, young petty criminals Ralf and Brian, it was a scheme to make some cash: a quick home invasion. The targets they’ve chosen are Helen and Werner. Just as planned, Brian disappears into Helen and Werner’s house. And he never comes out again.

Early one summer morning Isabel and her 11-year-old daughter, River, walk across Regent's Park. They come across a rain-soaked man sitting alone on a bench and ask him if he's okay. But he doesn't know. In fact he doesn't know the answer to any of their questions - not even his own name. Urged on by her daughter, Isabel takes the man to the hospital she works at, hoping that will be the end of it. But when the tests show there's nothing physically wrong with him, and yet he still can't remember who he is, she realises she can't walk away.

Lina Henry is a wife and mother who likens herself to a pretty paper doll. She lives in a beautiful home in the Atlanta suburbs. Her husband, David, is a well-to-do investment banker. She’s raised two wonderful teenagers. To the outside world, the Henry family is perfect. What no one knows is that Lina’s paper doll life is being torn apart in a controlling and abusive marriage. Then Lina develops an unexpected friendship with another man, and reconnects with her former best friend. But as David senses his loss of control, he becomes more dangerous.

The only life Mae has ever known is on the island, living on the charity of the wealthy Prosper family who control the magic on the island and the spirits who inhabit it. Mae longs for magic of her own and to have a place among the Prosper family, where her best friend, Coco, will see her as an equal, and her crush, Miles, will finally see her. Now that she’s 18, Mae knows her time with the Prospers may soon come to an end.

When Susan Tate's 17-year-old daughter, Lily, announces she is pregnant, Susan is stunned. A single mother, she has struggled to do everything right. She sees the pregnancy as an unimaginable tragedy for both Lily and herself.

Deborah Monroe and her daughter, Grace, are driving home from a party when their car hits a man running in the dark. Grace was at the wheel, but Deborah sends her home before the police arrive, determined to shoulder the blame for the accident. Her decision then turns into a deception that takes on a life of its own and threatens the special bond between mother and daughter.

As the First Lady of Zion Hill, Rachel is not only Pastor Lester Adams's wife - she's currently his eight-months-pregnant wife, who's going toe-to-toe with Lester's onetime mistress, congregant Mary Richardson, who is also pregnant. Her baby may or may not be Lester's, but Mary's doing all she can to win sympathy and turn her fellow churchgoers against Rachel - even threatening to blackmail Pastor Adams with a paternity agreement. After all, where can an unmarried mother-to-be go but to the Lord? Rachel has a few choice answers for exactly where Mary can go....

Thomasin Marwood is one of Queen Catherine's ladies-in-waiting at the court of Henry VIII, and she does not trust Lady Anne Boleyn. But when an accident forces Thomasin and her family to take refuge at the Boleyn family home at Hever Castle, Thomasin is entrusted with an unexpected mission by Anne's mother.

It's 1915 when young Bess Ravenhart, recently widowed, leaves her baby son, Frazer, with her mother-in-law, Cora, while she sails from India to Britain to set up a home. But Cora has no intention of returning Frazer to his mother's care. Though Bess makes a new life in Edinburgh and knows the joy - and pain - of motherhood with further children, her heart always aches for the little boy she left behind. When Frazer travels to Scotland 20 years later, it seems Bess' dreams of a reconciliation will come true.

Julie Jones has left her suffocating marriage. With her teenage daughter, Jess, she’s starting over. Their new house in Oceanside is the first step toward a new life. Even if it does come with the unexpected. The previous owners, a pastor and his wife, have left something - or rather someone - behind. Tom Dean has a bitter hatred for the father who considers him a lost cause, and for the woman who’s moved into their family’s house. The only home he’s ever known. He’s never going to leave. She thinks he’ll be gone in three days, but Tom has the perfect plan.

I’m Cora Fletcher, a twenty-something book-loving public relations executive, living with my overly Zen best friend and my attention-loving cat. I’m newly single and focusing on my exciting career, so I feel like I’m in a good place. I’ve even been invited on an all-expenses-paid Hawaiian vacation! The only catch? It’s a family reunion . . . and my family can be a lot to handle. My mom has filled the itinerary with endless activities, and she’s even invited my ex-boyfriend in a misguided attempt to get us back together.

Heart Resort, a private resort in the Outer Banks, is a romantic getaway for couples but a hotbed of family drama for its proprietors, the Puso family. Brandon Puso, the youngest of the four siblings, prefers life on his own as a licensed contractor in DC after a falling-out with his eldest brother. After a hurricane plows through the Outer Banks, Brandon has a change of heart. He returns to the resort to help with the grand reopening but encounters his big sister’s best friend, designer Geneva Harris, who’s there to do the same thing. But Geneva and Brandon have a secret.