Growing up in an Australian country town before World War 1, Jackie, Hanna and Cushie Moy are carefree and innocent in their love for each other. But Jackie is a dwarf, and his devotion to the beautiful Cushie is condemned by her parents. This is the story of their life-long odyssey, and of the triumph of a special kind of courage.

Small, dark and intense, Simon grows up aware that there is something different about him, something that causes late-night quarrels and sometimes tears. With the rise of Hitler in Germany and the coming of war to Sweden's neighbours, the tensions increase. Befriending a young Jew, Isak, who is quickly taken under his mother's wing, enriches Simon's life, but makes it more difficult too - for Isak seems to fit in much better at home than Simon does himself. With the war's end comes the day that Simon, no longer a child, must be told the reason for his affinity for the lake and its surrounding oak trees; for the strange dreams of an old man beneath the waves; for his dark good looks and uncanny musical ability

Emma Litton couldn't get on with her life until she found out what place she'd had in her father's heart. She'd been going to school in Europe since she was fourteen, then found a job in Paris, always wondering what her famous artist father was doing in Japan or America or their cottage in Cornwall. Even after she met Robert Morrow, the handsome gallery owner, and rediscovered her stepbrother, Christo, she felt compelled to probe into the truth about her past. But Emma might learn too late that it was the truth about herself that she had to find and that letting go is the first step to keeping love.

As spring comes to Scotland and the hills burst into life, a dance is planned for September. The invitations summon home the group of people Violet Aird has cared for most in her long life. The oldest, strongest and wisest of the all, she sees Alexa, her vulnerable granddaughter, find love for the first time, while the decision to dens her little grandson away to school is driving parents Edmund and Virginia ever further apart.

Three years after they broke up, Karen and Neville decide to resume their life together, and they return to the remote Highland croft where April, Karen's sister, had shattered their marriage...Since then the selfish and beautiful April has vanished...When Karen finds April's suitcases buried near the croft she knows she is dead....And when Melissa, Neville's ex-mistress, is found dead, Karen knows that one of the people she loves best - perhaps Neville himself - is a double murderer...

A family saga that combines macabre humour with Dickensian sentiment and outrage at cruelty, dogmatism and injustice

The single working mother's dilemma. Assailed on all sides by the politically correct view of single working mothers, the poverty trap looming, Rosie is presented with an unusual way out of her predicament - reconciliation with the handsome but unreliable Rory, whom she divorced years ago. Her friends are horrified, her mother is thrilled. Rosie knows it's a gamble, but becoming part of a couple again could make the world treat her as a human being once more. 'What's sex got to do with it?' she demands. 'This is the Nineties. This is business.'

At once humorous and dramatic, Three Dollars is about Eddie, an honest, compassionate man who finds himself, at age thirty-eight, with a wife, a child and three dollars. How did he get that way? And who is Amanda? He cared about people; he was, Amanda notwithstanding, a good husband, father and son. At any other time the world would have smiled on him. But this was the nineties and the world valued other things.

Women hate me,' thought Lauren Slaughter, newly arrived in London to write a thesis on oil revenue. But men were a different matter. Men admired - and wanted - her for her striking good looks and ability to please. She despised most of them, but she needed their money; and London had to offer more to a pretty American than a cold, uncomfortable Brixton flat. So Lauren welcomed the anonymous introduction to Mayfair's Jasmine Escort Agency, oblivious to danger and quite unaware - until it was too late - that money was not all that was involved...

Josh Bell is a high school senior who helps his single mother make ends meet by delivering meals-on-wheels every afternoon. Initially, he fails to make any particular connection with his customers. What, after all, can homebound elderly people have to say that can relate to his life? When Josh agrees to help William Davis, an 84-year old customer, record his memories, he quickly realises that any knowledge he has to offer is negligible when compared to the insight and wisdom the old man imparts to him.