Once in a Lifetime

Ginger isn't spending her 30th the way she would have planned. Tonight might be the first night of the rest of her life - or a total disaster. Sam is finally pregnant after years of trying. When her waters break on the morning of her 40th birthday, she panics: forget labour, how is she going to be a mother? Callie is celebrating her 50th at a big party in her Dublin home. Then a knock at the door midparty changes everything....

The warm and wonderful new novel from the natural heir to Maeve Binchy.... Tess used to be happy with her lot: she lives in the idyllic Irish coastal village, Avalon, with her teenage son, Zach, and nine-year-old Kitty, and works in the local antiques shop. Her only regret in life is that everything went so horribly wrong with her first love. Then her marriage falls apart and her first love returns to Avalon.

Izzie Silver left the small Irish town of Tamarin behind her for life in New York. She's big, beautiful, and dreams of her own model agency for plus-sized women (what her grandmother would call "healthy" women). Life is good - but she's just broken one of her cardinal rules and fallen for a married man.

To discover the sweetest things in life, you sometimes have to lose your way…It’s easy to fall in love with the beautiful town of Redstone – the locals wave and chat to each other, the shops and cafes are full of cheerful hustle and bustle. And amidst all this activity, two women believe they are getting on just fine.

The wonderful and heartwarming new novel full of secrets, lies and family ties from Sunday Times best-selling author Cathy Kelly. Bess is hoping to show everyone just how happy her recent marriage is, but behind all the party planning the cracks are beginning to show. Why is joining a family so difficult?

Eve Glace - co-owner of the theme park Winterworld - is having a baby, and her due date is a perfectly timed 25th December. And she’s decided that she and her husband, Jacques, should renew their wedding vows with all the pomp and Christmas ceremony that was missing from the first time round. But things keep going wrong in Winterworld - is it because the the usually competent site manager, Effin Williams, has lost his focus, or is there something more sinister going on? 

This edition features an interview with Cathy Kelly. It all started with Paris... At the top of the Eiffel Tower, a young man proposes to his girlfriend, cheered on by delighted tourists. With her trademark warmth and insight, Cathy Kelly weaves a delightful tale spinning out from this once-in-a-lifetime moment, drawing together a terrific cast of characters with stories of their own. Vonnie, a widow and exceptional cake-maker, is just daring to let love back into her life, but someone is determined to stop it.

The brand-new novel from the Sunday Times best-selling author of The Perfectly Imperfect Woman - a gorgeous listen full of love, life and laughter. Sophie Mayhew looks like she has the perfect life. Wife of rising political star John F Mayhew, a man who is one step away from the top job in the government, her glamour matches his looks, power, breeding and money. But John has made some stupid mistakes along the way, some of which are threatening to emerge. 

The warm and wonderful new novel from the natural heir to Maeve BinchyEleanor Levine left Ireland seventy years ago with little more than a suitcase and her mother's handwritten recipe book. Now, a lifetime later, she's returning from New York with hard won wisdom and memories of her own. A renowned psychoanalyst, Eleanor knows there's one final journey she has to make…Lovely young actress Megan Bouchier didn't have to chase success – it arrived effortlessly.

When a shocking news report shatters Juno Ryan's world, she suddenly finds herself without the man she loves - and with no way of getting the answers she so desperately needs. A distraught Juno flees to the enchanting Villa Naranja in Spain. The blue skies and bountiful orange groves - along with Pep, the winemaker's handsome son - begin to soothe her broken heart, but only Juno herself can mend it.

Molly Baker is living her best life. Thirty-eight years old, she lives on the 25-acre Hope Farm in Buckinghamshire, surrounded by (mostly) four-legged friends and rolling hills. An ex-teacher, Molly runs the farm as an alternative education for kids who have special needs or behavioural issues. It's full on, but she wouldn't have it any other way. So when the well-groomed Shelby Dacre turns up at Hope Farm asking to enrol his son Lucas, Molly isn't fazed. But Lucas is distant, and soon Molly realises he might be more of a handful than she anticipated.

Abbey Andersen is the last person to go looking for change. Yes, it's tough that she barely sees her mother these days - but in San Francisco she has great friends, a steady relationship and a job she enjoys. When Abbey is contacted by Irish lawyer Ryan Gilligan, she learns in an instant everything she believed about her roots is a lie. She must travel to Dublin to find out more - but she's scarcely off the plane when she's plunged into a new crisis. One that will change everything not just for Abbey but for the family in Ireland who had no idea that she even existed.

Four hundred and twenty pearls hand sewn onto the wedding dress. The Mediterranean honeymoon booked for months. A pile of presents bigger than Everest. And her lovely Tim, the most perfect bridegroom a girl could wish for. Except, two weeks before the wedding, he changes his mind...Isobel's wedding is off. Her world in tatters, Isobel turns to Spain, a new job, a new life and as many men as she can decently manage. Including the very appealing Nico with whom, she feels, there could be a long-term future. But part of Isobel knows that she will have to go back home some day. And that, despite all that's happened since she left, she still has unfinished business....

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is...don't make any afternoon plans.  

Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way.   

Sitting between her ex-husband and her new lover, Anna is coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy at the age of 40. Also at the table are her ageing grandmother, her promiscuous sister, her flamboyantly gay brother and a memory too terrible to contemplate.  

Until, that is, a letter arrives from the person Anna scarred all those years ago. Can Anna reconcile her painful past with her uncertain future?  

Juliet Ashton weaves a story of love, friendship and community that will move you to laughter and to tears. Think Cold Feet meets David Nicholls, with a dash of the joy of Jill Mansell added for good measure.

Clara Casey has more than enough on her plate. Her daughters are a handful and Clara, a senior cardiac specialist, has a new job to cope with.... For Ania, meeting Clara Casey is a miracle: she had never intended to leave her beloved Poland, but after the love of her life has turned sour, her world seems rather empty. Perhaps a new job in a new country will mend her broken heart?