Memories of the Storm

Paradise has been home to generations of Trevannions: paradise, the house at the head of a sheltered Cornish valley where Mrs Trevannion lives, surrounded by her family. Frail and elderly, Honor Trevannion, bedridden following a nasty fall, is inexplicably anxious and distressed by the arrival of a young American bearing an old black and white photograph of a double wedding and looking for a long-lost relation.

The Keep that beautiful, ancient family home where the Chadwick family had lived for generations is still a haven from the heartbreaks and storms of life. Jolyon Chadwick, a famous television presenter, takes his new girlfriend Henrietta home to meet his extended family and also to meet Marie, the mother who deserted him and his father many years ago, now reappeared and seeming to want forgiveness. Jolyon, however, is not in the mood for forgiveness.

Sweeping powers of description transport her listeners to another time and place. Rosanna Ley, author of best-selling The Villa and Return to Mandalay. Some memories can be forgotten.... Others won't ever go away. For renowned actor Sir Mungo, his quiet home village in Devon provides the perfect retreat. Close by are his brother and his wife, and the rural location makes his home the ideal getaway for his old friends in London.

Nearly 25 years after a tragic accident forced Mim to give up her successful career as one of the world's leading ballerinas, history is repeating itself. Daisy, Mim's most talented former pupil, is suffering from injuries and she too will have to rethink her career. Mim arranges for Daisy to take a holiday in Cornwall, in the strange and beautiful house on the edge of Bodmin Moor where Mim's brother, Roly Carradine, is living.

Dan and Sally Oliver and their friend Chloe Hennessey are lucky to be alive. Three years on, after surviving one of the world's biggest natural disasters - the Boxing Day tsunami - their lives have changed dramatically. Dan and Sally are now parents. Dan is enjoying being a stay-at-home father taking care of their young son, and Sally is the bread winner and loves her job as a partner in a Manchester law firm.

Flora and Rose are identical twins who do not know of each other's existence. Rose has been raised by her frivolous mother with the glossy international jet set. Flora has spent her childhood in the beauty and quiet of her father's Cornish cottage. And then, by chance, they meet. The encounter seems heaven-sent to Rose, who longs to escape from a man she no longer desires. Flora can free her, and, in taking her sister's place, her uneventful life is changed forever.

Elfrida Phipps loves her new life in her pretty Hampshire village. She has a tiny cottage, her faithful dog, Horace, and the friendship of the neighbouring Blundells - particularly Oscar - to ensure that her days include companionship as well as independence. But an unforeseen tragedy upsets Elfrida's tranquillity: Oscar's wife and daughter are killed in a terrible car crash, and he finds himself homeless when his stepchildren claim their dead mother's inheritance.

Caroline Cliburn was to be married next Tuesday, and yet she suspected that gratitude was the wrong reason to become a bride. Perhaps that was why she and her younger brother Jody had taken the long drive north to Scotland in search of her missing brother Angus.... When a sudden spring blizzard leaves them stranded by the roadside, it is the snow that gives both her and a lonely young Scot one last chance to find the healing warmth of love.

Jess Penhaligon is on her way to Devon to receive an award for her botanical painting. Hosting her will be Kate, who gladly welcomes her into her home. Jess's own family fell apart several years ago, so she is grateful for Kate's friendliness - and her close unit of extended family and friends, who embrace Jess just as warmly. As this group begins reminiscing on their pasts and sharing their stories with Jess, it becomes apparent that her family history may be linked with theirs.

Summer 1939: After touring an unsettled Europe to promote her latest book, Romily Temple returns home to Island House and the love of her life, Jack Devereux. But when Jack falls ill, his estranged family are called to his bedside. With war now declared, each member of the family is reluctantly forced to accept their new stepmother and confront their own shortcomings. But can Romily cope with the life that has been so unexpectedly thrust upon her?

Evie loved the house. The bright, sunny rooms looking across the river. The terraced gardens with fruit trees growing against the high stone walls. The scent of lavender at the end of a hot day. It was a family house. As summer beckons, Evie's family gathers once more at the beautiful old riverside house they all adore. But when Evie discovers a secret that threatens their future, a shadow falls over them all: this summer by the river could be their last together.

Can you ever re-create that first great love? Victoria Bradshaw fell in love with London playwright Oliver Dobbs when she was just 18. But he left her and disappeared from her life. Now, years later, he is a widower standing on her doorstep with his two-year-old son in his arms. And Victoria is foolish enough to want to take him back. Their early spring journey to a castle in Scotland becomes an odyssey of emotional discovery....

Virginia Keile has a secret dream. To have a second chance at loving the tall, handsome Cornish farmer she met - and foolishly lost - the heady summer she was a debutante. Life has taught Virginia a great deal in 27 years - about wedding a titled bachelor picked out by her mother, about a lonely marriage that ended in her husband's accidental death, and about nearly losing her children to her husband's mother and bossy Nanny. Now she has come back to picturesque Cornwall to rent a battered seaside cottage.

Artist's daughter Penelope Keeling can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children - and learned to accept them as they are. Yet she is far too energetic and independent to settle sweetly into pensioned-off old age.

When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.