West End Girls

On the quayside next to the Endless Beach sits the Summer Seaside Kitchen. It's a haven for tourists and locals alike, who all come to eat the freshest local produce on the island and catch up with the gossip. Flora, who runs the café, feels safe and content - unless she thinks too hard about her relationship with Joel, her gorgeous but emotionally (and physically) distant boyfriend. While Flora is in turmoil about her relationship, her best friend, Lorna, is pining after the local doctor.

While Katie's glad it's not a man's world anymore, she'd be quite pleased if there were more men in it - or at least single ones, anyway. More likely to get murdered than married, according to gleeful media reports, Katie resigns herself to the fact there's no sex in the city and heads for the hills - or the Scottish Highlands, to be precise. Despite the fact she's never been a girl for wellies and Fairlish is in the middle of nowhere, the tiny town does have one major draw: men. Lots of them.

Now, you obviously, would never, ever look up your exes on Facebook. Nooo. And even if you did, you most certainly wouldn't run off trying to track them down, risking your job, family and happiness in the process. Posy Fairweather, on the other hand...Posy is delighted when Matt proposes - on top of a mountain, in a gale, in full-on romantic mode. But a few days’ later disaster strikes: he backs out of the engagement. Crushed and humiliated, Posy starts thinking.

Laughs, love, office life. And a little touch of magic.... Gwyneth Morgan loves her job. And she's good at it - she's never faced a challenge she can't handle - until she meets Arthur Pendleton and his motley crew. Gwyneth sets Arthur a challenge that makes his heart sink. His team can't even find their own desks, let alone win a prestigious competition.

Flora is forced to move back to the tiny island of Mure from the bright lights of London. It's tough: even the beautiful landscapes and bright blue sea can't lift her spirits - she's too busy looking after her dad and her feckless brothers. Then she chances upon her mum's collection of recipes and begins to cook her way through it. As she reconnects with her family and the place she was born, might she also find herself?

As her best friend, Tashy, cuts into her wedding cake, 32-year-old Flora realises she is disillusioned with life. Suddenly her well-paid job, cosy flat and stable relationship with sensible Olly don't amount to a whole lot. Flora wants to be 16 again. She closes her eyes and wishes. Her wish has come true. Waking up the next morning is a shock. But now Flora has the chance to right some wrongs.

As dawn breaks over the Pont Neuf, and the cobbled alleyways of Paris come to life, Anna Trent is already awake and at work; mixing and stirring the finest, smoothest, richest chocolate; made entirely by hand, it is sold to the grandes dames of Paris. It's a huge shift from the chocolate factory she worked in at home in the north of England. But when an accident changed everything, Anna was thrown back in touch with her French teacher, Claire

Evie is desperate for a holiday - a good one. Not only because she's been working all hours as a receptionist for two high-powered plastic surgeons but also because every holiday she's ever been on has involved sunburn, arguments and projectile vomiting - sometimes all three at once. Why can't she have a normal holiday like everyone else? Peaceful beaches, glorious sunshine and (fingers crossed) some much-needed sex?

Sophie is a girl about town - living the party lifestyle with Daddy footing the bill. But when she gets embroiled in a scandalous affair, she is thrown out of home and left to fend for herself on the mean streets of London. Scraping a living as a cleaner in a photographic studio, living in a bedsit on the Old Kent Road, eating baked beans from the can - this is one spectacular fall from grace. On top of that, she is papped by photographers every time she leaves the flat, with her so-called friends laughing at her downfall.

Amanda's old school friends can't believe it when the social-climbing queen of preen, Satan's very own PR girl, pulls off the ultimate publicity stunt in getting herself engaged to a Scottish laird. Who cares that Fraser McConnald has worn the same pair of Converse trainers for the last three years and that his castle is a pile of rubble with one calor gas heater - she'll be titled!

Ever dreamed of starting over? Issy Randall can bake. No, more than that - Issy can create stunning, mouth-wateringly divine cakes. After a childhood spent in her beloved Grampa Joe’s bakery she has undoubtedly inherited his talent. So when she’s made redundant from her safe but dull City job, Issy decides to seize the moment and open up her own café. It should be a piece of cake, right?

Were you a sherbet lemon or chocolate lime fan? Penny chews or hard boiled sweeties (you do get more for your money that way)? The jangle of your pocket money… the rustle of the pink and green striped paper bag… Rosie Hopkins thinks leaving her busy London life, and her boyfriend Gerard, to sort out her elderly Aunt Lilian's sweetshop in a small country village is going to be dull. Boy is she wrong. Lilian Hopkins has spent her life running Lipton's sweetshop, through wartime and family feuds. As she struggles with the idea that it might finally be time to settle up, she also wrestles with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully coloured sweets. Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams - a novel - with recipes.

Polly Waterford is recovering from a toxic relationship. Unable to afford their flat, she has to move miles away from everyone, to a sleepy little seaside resort in Cornwall, where she lives alone above an abandoned shop. And so Polly takes out her frustrations on her favourite hobby: making bread. But what was previously a weekend diversion suddenly becomes far more important as she pours her emotions into kneading and pounding the dough, and each loaf becomes better and better.

'I'm wearing a beautiful pink dress, and I'm in a big pink room with billowing curtains...and I'm dancing to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark...and my handsome partner leans over and whispers....' Yes, '80s child Ellie really thought life was going to be like Pretty in Pink, St Elmo's Fire and all those other movies - where everyone was astoundingly glamorous, popular and successful, had huge apartments and lived happily ever after. But now that she and her gang are 30, she has to admit that things haven't quite turned out that way.

Maggie went to the window and opened it wide, inhaling the lovely, ozoney air off the sea. Why had she never lived by the sea before? Why had she always looked out on housing estates and not the little white hulls of trawlers bobbing off in the distance? It's gloriously sunny in Cornwall as the school year starts at the little boarding school by the sea.