Family Drama

1905: Ruby Caselton may only be 25 years old but she already has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Heavily pregnant with her second child, penniless and exhausted, she is moving her family into a new home. The Caseltons left their last place when they couldn’t pay the rent, but Ruby’s husband Eddie has promised this will be a fresh start for them all. And Ruby desperately hopes that this time he will keep his word.

With her deceased sister’s Route 66 bucket list in hand, California girl Joy Evers sets out on a cross-country road trip to meet up with her fiancé, checking off the bullets along the way. Singer-songwriter Dylan Westfield has a serious case of wanderlust and a broken-down car. Stuck at a diner between LA and Flagstaff, he meets Joy, his complete opposite. She’s energetic. He’s moody. She’s by the book. He’s spontaneous. She believes in love at first sight. He thinks love is a complicated mess. But Joy has a brand-new convertible.

Organised. Neat. Lonely. Kathy Simmonds is alone at Christmas this year, after her beloved husband John passed away a few months ago. She keeps her home spick and span, struggling with her grief for a family she has lost or lost touch with. But a chance phone call from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home opens the door to something new. She meets Scruff, a messy Jack Russell with a heart of gold who has been left for dead on the streets of London.

To the outside world, beloved advice columnist Lane Meckler has all the answers. What no one knows is that she also has a secret: her life is a disaster, and it's just gotten worse. Her husband, whom she was planning to leave, has died in a freak accident. Her six-year-old son, Henry, has stopped speaking to everyone but her. Lane's solution? Move. Growing up, that was what her family did best.

These are the memoirs of ME, Holly Hopkinson, aged almost 10, except without any of the rubbish adults usually put in, thank you very much. My dad just lost his job, which means me and the rest of my family have to leave London and move to the middle of nowhere, which is a TOTAL DISASTER! There’s no Wi-Fi, the local kids are FERAL and there’s animal poo EVERYWHERE. But then for my birthday, my eccentric aunt gave me a magic pocket watch, which I can use to hypnotise and control people.

Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended. She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed. Worse, Tessa’s mother has unexpectedly passed away, and her sister, Margot, turns on her after tensions from their past escalate. Hounded by a bullying press, Tessa needs an escape. That’s when she learns of a strange inheritance bequeathed by her mother: a derelict and isolated estate known as Fallbrook. It seems like the perfect refuge.

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.

Sisters Amanda Foster and Erin Turner have little in common except the childhood bedroom they once shared and the certainty each feels that her way of life is best. Amanda follows the rules - at the school where she works; in her community; and as a picture-perfect daughter, wife, and mother-to-be. Erin follows her heart - in love and otherwise - living a bohemian lifestyle on a shoestring budget and honoring her late father’s memory with a passion for music and her fledgling bath-products business.

Seventeen-year-old Constance has had a privileged upbringing in Clapham, with staff to attend to her every need. But her parents have always been cold and distant, never showing her love.Craving affection, Constance falls into the arms of Albie Jones, the cook’s grandson. But one fateful encounter leaves her ashamed and pregnant, and she is soon shunned from the family home. Heartbroken and threatened by scandal, Constance is forced to wed Albie and moves to Battersea, where she suffers unforgiving stares and cruel whispers from the neighbours.

A young woman arrives at the grand ancestral home of her husband’s family, hoping to fortify her cracking marriage. But what she finds is not what she expected: tragedy haunts the hallways, whispering of heartache and a past she never knew existed. Inspired by the true titans of the steel-boom era, Bethlehem is a story of temptation and regret, a story of secrets and the cost of keeping them, a story of forgiveness. It is the story of two complex women - thrown together in the name of family - who, in coming to understand each other, come finally to understand themselves.

Lifestyle journalist Ella Skye remembers every celebrity she interviewed, every politician she charmed, and every socialite who eyed her with envy. Her husband. But what she can’t remember is the tragic car accident that ripped her unborn child from her. Ella can’t even recall being pregnant. Hoping to find the memories of a lost pregnancy that’s left her husband devastated and their home empty, Ella begins delving into her past when she’s assigned an exclusive story about Nathan Donovan, a retired celebrity adventurer who seems to know more about her than she does him.

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.

Most men barely survive one mother, but Terrance Ellis has three: his aunts. His grandmother Essie's sisters - Eva, Dorothy Mae, and Mamie - lovingly raised him after Essie died in a tragic accident. They made sure that troubled young Terrance got on the right path and made something of his life. And now that he's all grown up and the rising pastor of Houston's Lily Grove church, the endlessly argumentative sisters agree on one thing: Terrance needs to find a wife.

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....

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.

For one little boy, however, life had become anything but "normal." To all appearances, he and his family lived an almost idyllic life. The father was a respected professor, the mother a witty and elegant lady, someone everyone loved. They were parents to three bright, smiling children: two boys and a girl. They lived on a sunny street in a small college town nestled neatly in a leafy valley. They gave parties, hosted picnics, went to church - just like their neighbors. To all appearances, their life seemed ideal. But it was, in fact, all appearances.

In the middle of the night, Evie is torn away from her beloved home and close-knit community as her family run away to the south. Her father's luck has finally run out, but what should mark a hopeful new beginning is just the start of young Evie’s troubles. With the weight of her family's future on her shoulders, Evie has no one to turn to. Her mother, worn down by life, runs off with a new man, and with her grandmother's sight failing, it's left to Evie to earn their keep and run the house. Holding her family together is only made harder when tragedy strikes at its heart.