The Kashmir Shawl

Gracie Burton is a grandmother living quietly in Devon. She has rarely left the village over the past 40 years. Her daughter, Carina, is immensely high-powered, with her own fast-paced business in London. She has very little time for her 17-year-old daughter, Anastasia, away at boarding school, and even less time for her ageing mother. In many ways, the three of them barely know each other. 

Rowena Tipton isn't looking for a new life, just a new adventure, something to while away the months as her long-term boyfriend presses pause on their relationship before they become engaged. But when a chance encounter at a New York wedding leads to an audition for a coveted house share in The Hamptons - Manhattan's elite beach scene - suddenly a new life is exactly what she's got. Stretching before her is a summer with three eclectic housemates, long days on white-sand ocean beaches and parties....

Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was 84 and she was 36. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside. Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. 

Belle Hatton has embarked upon an exciting new life far from home: a glamorous job as a nightclub singer in 1930s Burma, with a host of sophisticated new friends and admirers. But Belle is haunted by a mystery from her past - an old newspaper clipping found in her parents' belongings after their death, saying that the Hattons were leaving Rangoon after the disappearance of their baby daughter, Elvira. 

On holiday with friends, young historian Briony Andrews becomes fascinated with a wartime story of a ruined villa in the hills behind Naples. Briony’s grandfather had been a British soldier during the Italian campaign of 1943 in that very area. Handed a bundle of letters that were found after the war, Briony sets off to trace the fate of their sender, Sarah Bailey. As Briony begins to uncover the story, she encounters resentments and secrets still tightly guarded.

Running from heartbreak, Chloe Marston leaves her old life in London for a fresh start in New York. Working at a luxury concierge company, she makes other people’s lives run perfectly, even if her own has ground to a halt. But a terrible accident forces her to step into a new role, up close and personal with the company’s most esteemed and powerful clients. Charismatic Joe Lincoln is one of them, and his every wish is her command, so when he asks her to find him a secluded holiday home in the Greek Islands, she sets about sourcing the perfect retreat.

Somewhere along the cobbled streets of Paris, an apartment lies thick with dust and secrets: full of priceless artworks hidden away for decades. High-flying fine art agent Flora from London, more comfortable with the tension of a million-pound auction than a cosy candlelit dinner for two, is called in to assess these suddenly discovered treasures. As an expert in her field, she must trace the history of each painting and discover who has concealed them for so long.

Jules and Holly have been best friends since university. They tell each other everything, trading revelations and confessions and sharing both the big moments and the small details of their lives: Holly is the only person who knows about Jules’ affair; Jules was there for Holly when her husband died. And their two children - just three years apart - have grown up together. So when Jules’ daughter, Saffie, makes a rape allegation against Holly’s son, Saul, neither woman is prepared for the devastating impact this will have on their friendship or their families.

The Spanish House is a mixture of designs, Georgian, Gothic and Moorish, as if whoever started it had simply got bored. It has long been known as an architectural folly to locals, and is now nearly derelict to boot. When its reclusive owner dies intestate, the Spanish House is left to his city-dwelling niece. For Isabel, recently widowed, the house is a potential lifeline - the only hope she has of providing for her two children without having to sell her most treasured possession.

Shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year, 2007.

A story of love, loss, and the distance between three generations of one family, this novel centres on Iris and Ruby, a grandmother and her granddaughter, as they try and make sense of their respective lives.

The devastating consequences of the slave trade in the 18th century are explored through the powerful but impossible attraction of well-born Frances and her slave, Mehuru. From the best-selling author of The Other Boleyn Girl. 

Olivia has settled on the tiny Greek island of Halemni; she is married to a Greek man and is mother of two small sons. As the turquoise of summer dissolves into the cool of autumn, so the rhythm of island life goes on unchanged, until an earthquake ravages the Turkish coast, sending a tidal wave to envelop the island. Its force devastates Halemni, tearing apart the fabric of the small community.

1995, London. When Sir James Harrison, one the greatest actors of his generation, passes away at the age of 95 he leaves behind not just a heartbroken family but also a secret so shocking, so devastating that it could rock the English establishment to its core. Joanna Haslam is an ambitious young journalist assigned to cover the legendary actor's funeral. The great and the good of the celebrity world are there. But Joanna stumbles on something dark beneath the glamour: the mention of a letter James Harrison has left behind, the contents of which others have been desperate to conceal for over 70 years. 

London 1870: a terrifying place for a young, beautiful woman of limited means. But Eliza is modern before her time. Not for her the stifling if respectable conventionality of marriage, children, domestic drudgery. She longs for more. Through her work as an artist’s model, she meets the magnetic and irascible Devil - a born showman whose dream is to run his own theatre company. Devil’s right-hand man is the improbably named Carlo Bonomi, an ill-tempered dwarf with an enormous talent for all things magic and illusion.

In the beautiful village of Vernazza, the Mazzone family have transformed an old convent overlooking the glamorous Italian Riviera into the elegant Lemon Tree Hotel. For Chiara, her daughter, Elene, and her granddaughter, Isabella, the running of their hotel is the driving force in their lives. One day, two unexpected guests check in. The first, Dante, is a face from Chiara's past, but what exactly happened between them all those years ago, Elene wonders. Isabella is preoccupied with the second guest, a mysterious young man who seems to know a lot about the history of the old convent.