Mad About the Boy

A tale of perfumes, exploring life, love, loss and forgiveness - Maggie Alderson's new best seller. Are you still married if you haven't seen your husband for months? Polly's life is great. Her children are away at uni, her glamorous mother - still modelling at 85 - is happily settled in a retirement village, and her perfume blog is taking off. Then her husband announces he needs some space and promptly vanishes. As Polly grapples with her bewildering situation, she clings to a few new friends to keep her going.

When you listen to this audiobook, you will make many assumptions. It's about a jealous wife obsessed with her replacement. It's about a younger woman set to marry the man she loves. The first wife seems like a disaster; her replacement is the perfect woman. You will assume you know the motives, the history, the anatomy of the relationships. You will be wrong.

James never intended to lead a double life; with a wife in London and a mistress in the country, it's exhausting. But that's all about to change. Stephanie, his wife, isn't really snooping when she finds a text message from a strange woman on her husband's mobile. But now she's found it, how can she ignore it? It's time to track the woman down and find out what's going on. Katie has no reason to believe her boyfriend, James, is cheating on her until someone claiming to be his wife gets in touch.

Amelia Bradlow seems to have everything she needs to be happy - a handsome husband, a beautiful home, money, good looks and a glamour job. Everything, that is, except the thing she wants most - a baby. Ed, her husband, is funny, affectionate and sophisticated but simply not interested in parenthood. He likes his life neat and tidy. And he likes having a wife who attends solely to his needs.

It's 1974, and Elena Damiani lives a gilded life. Born to wealth and a noted beauty, no door is closed to her, no man can resist her. At 26 she is already onto her third husband when she meets her love match. But he is the one man she can never have, and all the beauty and money in the world can't change it. It's 2017, and Francesca Hackett is living la dolce vita in Rome, leading tourist groups around the Eternal City and forgetting the ghosts she left behind in London.

Sadie Nelson has two men to choose from, and neither is hassle-free. First there's Gil McGann, a Hollywood producer who's flown Sadie from grey London to sun-soaked LA in order to win her heart. He has more to offer her than Sadie could ever have imagined.... Then there's gorgeous actor Tavis Jones, whose sense of fun makes Sadie feel immediately at home. But can they ever be more than just good friends? The longer she leaves it, the harder it gets.

When Zoe Barry walks into Professor David Connolly's office and announces that she is his daughter, he is left reeling. Suddenly his family - imperfect, flawed but working - is trying to find space for someone new. But Zoe's stories don't quite add up, and lies become indistinguishable from truths. The family struggle to make sense of whether she is a sister, a daughter, a friend, an enemy. But no one could have expected where it all might end.

Laura has been married to the man of her dreams for seven months. But, she now discovers, a week before the wedding Matthew made a terrible mistake.... Escaping the heartache and humiliation, Laura is whisked off to Florida's Key West by her best friend, Marty. A carefree holiday full of cocktails and fun, surrounded by gorgeous, tanned men, is exactly what the doctor ordered. Distraction comes in the form of sexy Cuban scuba diver Leo. As the end of the holiday approaches, Laura doesn't want to go home.

A Dorset summer, a chance meeting, and Joe and Alice, both 18, fall into step as if they have known each other forever. But their idyll is shattered as quickly as it began. Joe leaves without warning; Alice heads off to Cambridge University and slowly picks up the pieces of her broken heart. Years later, when she catches the attention of gorgeous, gifted, rich boy Lukas, Alice is carried along by his charm and swept up in his ambitious plans for a future together. Until news of Joe reaches her once more, but he's out of reach....

Onetime celebrity personal assistant to wild boy of rock Johnny Jefferson, Meg Stiles is now settled and living in the south of France with her doting boyfriend, Christian, and their son, Barney. But they're living a lie - a lie that will turn their lives upside down and inside out because as Barney reaches his first birthday, Meg can no longer deny that her son is growing to look more and more like his rock star father every day and less and less like Christian, and sooner or later the world is going to realise....