Cherry, Maggie and Rose are mother, daughter and granddaughter, each with their own hopes, dreams and even sorrows. They have always been close, so when, in a moment of impulse, Cherry buys a gorgeous but run-down pub in the village she grew up in, it soon becomes a family affair. All three women uproot themselves and move to Rushbrook, deep in the heart of Somerset, to take over The Swan and restore it to its former glory. Cherry is at the helm, Maggie is in charge of the kitchen, and Rose tends the picturesque garden that leads down to the river.

Christmas 1926: the Forbes family are hosting a celebration at Eden Hall. Eighteen-year-old Daisy is preoccupied by a sense of change. Overnight, her relationship with Stephen Jessop, the housekeeper’s son, has shifted, and every encounter seems fraught with tension. Before the festivities are over, Daisy has received a declaration of love, a proposal and a kiss - from three different men. Unable to bear the confusion, she flees to London. By the following summer, Daisy has bowed to the persistence of the man who proposed to her. 

Anne and Edmund Cornhill have a happy marriage and a charming house. They are content, complete, absorbed in their private idyll. Arabella, who comes to stay one lazy summer, is rich, rootless and amoral - and, as they find out, beautiful and loving.With her elegant prose the author traces the web of love and desire that entangles these three; but it is Arabella who finally loses out.

When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won't allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts' family life over the decades, from giving a child a ride to a painstaking Easter lunch, a fateful train journey to an unexpected homecoming. And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake.

Canon Daniel Clement is rector of Champton. He has been there for eight years, living at the rectory alongside his widowed mother—opinionated, fearless, ever-so-slightly annoying Audrey—and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. When Daniel announces a plan to install a lavatory in church, the parish is suddenly (and unexpectedly) divided: as lines are drawn in the community, long-buried secrets come dangerously close to destroying the apparent calm of Champton. And then Anthony Bowness is found dead at the back of the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs.

The war is over but life goes on for Land Girls Prue, Stella and Ag. While two of the girls are married, Prue, the incorrigible flirt, is engaged in a quest for a man to provide her with security. A year after the girls leave Hallows Farm, Prue finds just such a man and a marriage that protects her from post-war hardships. The lives of her two old friends, Stella and Ag, have moved on; neither her visits to them nor her newly wedded state supply the answers she seeks.

When Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail in 2009, Browder cast aside his business career and made it his life’s mission to pursue justice for Sergei. One of the first steps of that mission was to uncover who had killed Sergei and profited from the $230 million corruption scheme that he had exposed. As Browder and his team tracked the money that flowed out of Russia—through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas—they discovered that Vladimir Putin himself was one of the beneficiaries of the crime. 

Since the sudden death of her husband, Naomi has steadily rebuilt the life they shared in the village of Tilsham by the sea. Her eldest daughter, Martha, is sensible and determined - just like her father was - and very much in control of where her life is going. If she could just get pregnant with her husband, life would be perfect. Willow, the youngest, was always more sunny and easy-going, yet drifted through life, much to her father’s frustration. But now, with charming new boyfriend Rick, she has a very good reason to settle down. 

Laura, an impoverished Cornish girl, meets her husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura's husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. In a small, class-obsessed town she raises her boy alone, working as a laundress and gradually becomes aware that he is some kind of genius.

The twisted maze of Venice's canals has always been shrouded in mystery. Even the celebrated opera house, La Fenice, has seen its share of death. But nothing so horrific and violent as that of world-famous conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer - poisoned during a performance of La Traviata.

Before the Second World War breaks out, Chevrons, the idyllic country house where the Garlands have lived for centuries, has already been touched by events in Europe. To the horror of her family, Katherine, the eldest daughter, has run off to join the Nazis. On the outbreak of war, Caro, her younger sister, her friend Robyn, and the maids, Trixie and Betty, leave Chevrons to help the war effort, and the old house is left to be managed by men too old to fight.

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?

 In 1914, despite the threat of war in Europe, Pearl Gibson’s future is bright. She has secured a desirable position as a lady’s maid for Lady Ottoline Campbell. Her new role sees her transported from a life of drudgery to the Campbells' vast Scottish estate. Pearl is quickly drawn into a whirlwind of intrigue, glamour and scandal as she realises her job requires her to become her lady’s confidante as well as her maid. In the confusing world of the upper classes it is Ottoline’s cousin, Ralph, whom Pearl comes to rely on, trust - and love. 

Wanting to support her family through the depression in 1930s Glasgow, Jean Logan is seduced by the glamour of the city's many palais de danse. Working as a paid dancing partner, she is taken on by the new and sophisticated Luxor and it seems that all her dreams have come true. But she soon finds herself drawn into the sinister world that lurks behind the club's dazzling façade and learns, to her own great personal cost, that not all that glitters is gold.

At 29, Claire is full of the joys of life - that is, until her husband leaves her on the day she gives birth to her baby. With a broken heart, a beautiful newly born and an expanding mirror image, she decides to visit her eccentric family in Dublin. There she starts to feel better. So much better, in fact, that James is in for a surprise when he decides to slither back into her life....