Showing results by publisher "Oakhill Publishing" in Family Life

Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman’s life – middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn’t one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage ‘an intervention’ and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn’t she enjoy a drink now and then? But we start to see another side to Hildy Good.

Twelve-year-old Bobby Nusku catalogues traces of his mother’s life and waits for her to return home. Bobby thinks that he’s been left to face the world alone until he meets lonely single mother Val and her daughter, Rosa. They spend a magical summer together, discovering the books in the mobile library where Val works as a cleaner. But as the summer draws to a close, Bobby finds himself in trouble, and Val is in danger of losing her job. There’s only one thing to do - and so they take to the road in the mobile library.

Helen Cooper has a charmed life. She's beautiful, accomplished, organised - the star parent at the school. Until she disappears. But Helen wasn't abducted or murdered. She's chosen to walk away, abandoning her family, her husband, Sam, and her home. Where has Helen gone, and why? What has driven her from her seemingly perfect life? What is she looking for? Sam is tormented by these questions and gradually begins to lose his grip on work and his family life.

Fourteenth century England.The country is in turmoil.The King is in debt to the City,and the old order had broken down.The King's mistress,Alice Perrers,becomes the virtual ruler of the country. Dislaked and despised by the Black Prince, her strong connections to the merchants make her a natural ally for the King's ambitious second son,John of Gaunt. Together, they create a powerfull position for one of his henchmen, Geoffrey Chaucer.

Violet Dimond, the Holy Terror, has delivered many of the town children in her capacity as handywoman. But Violet’s calling is dying out with medicine’s advances. Grace, Violet’s adopted daughter, is a symbol of change herself. In the place where she has grown up and everyone knows her, she is accepted, though most of the locals never before saw a girl with skin that colour. For Violet and Grace the coming war will bring more upheaval: can they endure it, or will they be swept aside by history’s tide?

Sisters Ella and Roberta O’Callaghan live in separate wings of their crumbling Irish mansion. They haven’t spoken for decades, torn apart by a dark family secret from their past, and communicate only through the terse notes they leave for each other in the hallway. Debbie, an American, is searching for her birth mother, hoping to discover who she really is and what happened to her. With the bank threatening, Ella tries to save the family home by opening a café in the ballroom, much to Roberta’s disgust.

July 1942, and 23-year-old nightclub singer Kate Watson has made a home for herself in bomb-blitzed London. A motley crew of friends has replaced the family she's not spoken to in years. Until Kate's sister Sarah walks back into her life, asking her to return home to Dorset for one month to look after her daughter, Lizzie. Reluctantly Kate agrees, though it means facing the troubled past she hoped she'd escaped. 

Cameron Spark's life is falling apart. He is separated from his wife and has moved in with his widowed dad. Then he receives a letter. It is from Christie. Twenty-five years earlier, the shy Cameron attended university where he made three unlikely friends: Christie, the rich Canadian; Tommo, the wannabe rock star; and Bex, the feminist activist.

When Elizabeth Price engages private detective Roland ‘Orlando’ Gibbons to find out the truth about her husband’s suspected affair, she unwittingly sets off a chain of correspondence that reunites four formerly close-knit couples. They all live just a few suburban streets away from each other, they are all still married, so how – and why – did they become so estranged? In a series of letters, each protagonist is far more self-revealing than they would ever be in person.

Bryony and Hannah are sisters, but they couldn't be more different, and war has brought even more of a rift between them. Bryony is happiest at Combe Lodge, the family home, while young, headstrong Hannah has fled to Jersey. At Combe Lodge, everyone else is pitching in with the war effort. The family home fills with evacuees, and Bryony is doing her bit, flying planes at the nearby Combe Lodge Airlines. But Bryony knows that she needs to reach out to Hannah. Only she will be able to keep her flighty younger sister's feet on the ground. But is Bryony too late to help her? Will Hannah ever come home?

The wedding of Thomas, an idealistic German architect, and Irene, an English artist, brings together the Curtius and Benson families. But their peace is soon shattered by the outbreak of war in Europe. While Irene struggles to survive in a country where she is the enemy, her sister, Sophia, faces the war as a nurse on the Western Front. For their brother, Mark, diplomatic service sees him moving between London, Washington and Copenahagen, all the while struggling to confront his own identity.

Surviving motherhood? It's all about having the right support network. Lawyer and new mum Cassie has a husband who converses through jokes, a best friend on the other side of the world, and a taskforce of Babycraft mothers who make her feel she has the maternal aptitude of a jellyfish. Husband Jonathan dismisses Cassie's maternal anxieties, but is he really paying attention? Then sexy ex-boyfriend Malkie saunters into Cassie's life again. He'd like to get her into bed again, too...

No one in Carniskey has ever understood what led local fisherman Sean Delaney to risk his life in a high storm in the dead of night. Three years on from that tragic night, his wife, Alison, is struggling with grief and increasing financial worries. She has grown distant from her daughter and estranged from her friends and fellow villagers, particularly her best friend, Kathleen, who harbours a secret of her own. But the arrival of an outsider artist and lifelong nomad, William, offers Alison a new perspective on life and love that threatens to unearth the mysteries of the past.

When Tess finds herself unexpectedly alone and back in Ribblemill, the childhood village she thought she'd escaped, she's sure she can survive a temporary stay. Determined to throw herself into village life, Tess starts a choir and gathers a team of volunteers to restore the walled garden at Ramblings, the local stately home. Everything could be perfect, if she weren't sharing a cottage and a cat with prickly Noah.... As winter approaches, Tess finds herself putting down her own roots as fast as she's pulling them up in the garden. But the ghosts of her past hover close by....

Chrissie loves London, her job as an events manager and her daughters Scarlet (loud, vegan, activist) and Ruby (quiet, musician, boffin). She even loves her husband, Rob, despite him deciding to cycle across Africa. For a year. But Chrissie is stressed and overworked, so when her mum calls her home to Devon to help with the struggling family vineyard, she is almost relieved. Chrissie gives herself a year: if she can make it until then, maybe they can celebrate as a family with their own fizz? But adjusting to West Country life takes more than she bargained for.... 

Charlotte Maynard rarely leaves her mother's home - the sprawling Connecticut lake house that belonged to her late stepfather, Whit Whitman. While Charlotte and her sister grew up at Lakeside, their stepbrothers, Spin and Perry, were welcomed as weekend guests. But now the grown boys own the estate, which Charlotte's mother occupies by their grace.

When Tess agrees to move into her aged mother-in-law's idyllic country cottage, she sees it as the perfect opportunity to escape the distractions of the city and start work on a novel. However, life in the Gingerbread House is no fairy tale. Tess is utterly unprepared for the reality of caring for Eleanor, who suffers from dementia. Feeling increasingly isolated, she struggles to cope as Eleanor fluctuates between violent mood swings, childlike dependency and moments of heart-wrenching lucidity. Meanwhile, Tess' teenage daughter, Katia, is helpless to intercede. In the end she can only watch as things fall apart and a tragedy even closer to home surfaces....

Tat, is the first of his family to leave the Upper Eden Valley in Cumbria. He is clever, excels at rugby and has a fine singing voice. From Appleby Grammar School he gains a place at University College London. Tat mixes with art students from The Slade School, and an exciting relationship develops with Jane Cranshaw, a beautiful upper class painting student. They fall in love but he is unaware that Jane conceals a dark secret which fatally flaws their relationship.

It is the summer of 1989 when Lucas witnesses an event that will tear his family apart. Over a decade later, his estranged father succumbs to a suspected heart attack. Lucas shuns grief and escapes to New York with his colleague Mariana. However, a dark secret from his past threatens to reemerge and destroy the burgeoning relationship before it has even begun. When his father's girlfriend fails to reappear after reporting his death, the true cause of his demise falls under scrutiny. And as the startling truth comes to light, Lucas must confront the fact that father and son may not have been so different after all.

As a child, writer Maggie Wadey was aware her mother was different from her father and his family, and that the difference was do with her Irishness, but she knew nothing of her Tipperary background. Then, before she died, Agnes Kavanagh began to talk about the past. Gradually, Maggie began to piece together her mother’s early life. But it was only after Agnes's death that she discovered another story - a life and a secret hidden in layers of silence.