What if the perfect life you envy was rotten to the core? Three brand-new friends. Three very different families. Way too many secrets. Gisela, Sally and Kate become close when they move into the same new housing estate. But behind their shiny front doors, each has something to hide. Three lives collide in this gripping story about friendship, motherhood and marriage and the façade of perfection people present to the world.

In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Birdpaints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship, and fulfillment. But it's a lie. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul. Until he receives some good news - good news that in one way turns out to be the worst news ever, news that will force him out again, into a world he has long since turned his back on.

From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of black British women. Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and short-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, Girl, Woman, Other paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.

Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues - gravediggers, groundskeepers, and a priest - visit her to warm themselves in her lodge, where laughter, companionship, and occasional tears mix with the coffee she offers them. Her life is lived to the rhythms of their funny, moving confidences. But her routine is disrupted by the arrival of the local police chief, who insists on scattering the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger.

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents - her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer.

In this singular and imaginative story collection, Cecelia Ahern explores the endless ways in which women blaze through adversity with wit, resourcefulness, and compassion. Ahern takes the familiar aspects of women's lives—the routines, the embarrassments, the desires—and elevates these moments to the outlandish and hilarious with her astute blend of magical realism and social insight.

The publication of a new book by William Trevor is a true literary event. One of our finest chroniclers of the human condition, Trevor's precise and unflinching insights into the lives of ordinary people are evidenced once again in this stunning collection of twelve stories. Subtle yet powerful, these exquisitely nuanced tales of regret, deception, adultery, aging, and forgiveness are a rare pleasure, and they confirm Trevor's reputation as a master of the form.

Isabel Delancey, a classical violinist, has always taken her comfortable life for granted. But when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of debt, she and her two children are forced to abandon their home and move to the Spanish House, a now-dilapidated manor Isabel inherited in the English countryside. With the house falling down around them, and the last of her savings disappearing fast, Isabel turns to her neighbors for help, not knowing that her mere presence there has stirred up long-standing obsessions.

At the start of the 20th century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste....

When Pixie Sampson's husband tragically dies, she inherits the beautiful Château Quiltu in Brittany, Northern France. But unbeknown to her, she also inherits a mysterious lodger, Justine Martin and her four-year-old son, Ferdie. Heartbroken and with her adventurous mum, Gwen, in tow, they travel to France to put the château on the market but are soon drawn into a quest to seek the château's secrets. Who is Justine? Why is she living at the château? How did she know her husband?

Afi Tekple is a young seamstress in Ghana. She is smart; she is pretty; and she has been convinced by her mother to marry a man she does not know. Afi knows who he is, of course—Elikem is a wealthy businessman whose mother has chosen Afi in the hopes that she will distract him from his relationship with a woman his family claims is inappropriate. But Afi is not prepared for the shift her life takes when she is moved from her small hometown of Ho to live in Accra, Ghana’s gleaming capital, a place of wealth and sophistication where she has days of nothing to do but cook meals.

Anna is distraught when her beloved mother, Ines, passes away. She inherits a box of papers, handwritten in Italian and yellowed with age, and a tantalizing promise that the truth about what happened during the war lies within. The diaries lead Anna to the small village of Rofelle, where she slowly starts to heal as she explores sun-kissed olive groves, and pieces together her mother’s past: happy days spent herding sheep across Tuscan meadows cruelly interrupted when World War Two erupted and the Nazis arrived....

The seat of the Trelawney family for over 700 years, Trelawney Castle was once the jewel of the Cornish coast. Each successive Earl spent with abandon, turning the house and grounds into a sprawling, extravagant palimpsest of wings, turrets, and follies. But as the centuries passed the Earls of Trelawney, their ambition dulled by generations of pampered living, failed to develop other skills.

Assunta has given up on love. She might run her little trattoria in the most romantic mountain town in Italy, but love just seems to have passed her by. Sarah-Jane is finished with love. She's hiring an old convertible and driving around Italy this summer—it's the perfect way to forget all about her hot celebrity ex-boyfriend! But when Sarah-Jane's car breaks down in Montenello, she has to stay longer than she intended! And the trouble is, love is everywhere....

The seat of the Trelawney family for over 700 years, Trelawney Castle was once the jewel of the Cornish coast. Each successive Earl spent with abandon, turning the house and grounds into a sprawling, extravagant palimpsest of wings, turrets, and follies. But as the centuries passed the Earls of Trelawney, their ambition dulled by generations of pampered living, failed to develop other skills.

Queenie is only 14 and has been deserted by her mother. Set in Liverpool and Wales at the outbreak of World War II, this story explores themes of female friendship and betrayal from the perspective of a group of women of widely different ages.

Sophie Duguet is losing her grip. Haunted by visions from her past of her loving husband, who committed suicide after a car accident. One morning she wakes to find Leo, the child in her care, strangled in his bed by Sophie's own shoelaces. She can remember nothing of the night before. Could she really have killed him? She flees in panic, but this only cements her guilt in the eyes of the law. Not long afterwards it happens again - she wakes with blood on her hands, with no memory of the murder committed.

Angela was just a baby when she was abandoned, and a children's home is no place to grow up. When manager Ray takes girls off to his 'den' in the garden, they always come back crying.... So, when wealthy couple James and Rosemary come to choose a child to adopt, Angela is desperate to escape. Years later, Angela starts to search for her birth mother, Evelyn, hoping to heal the scars of her childhood. But strange and sinister events start to unfold. And Evelyn fears she may not survive her daughter's return.

Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita's death, Mitra Jahani reluctantly returns to her parents' home in suburban New Jersey to observe the Iranian custom of "The One Year." Ana is always in Mitra's heart, though they chose very different paths. While Ana, sweet and dutiful, bowed to their domineering father's demands and married, Mitra rebelled, and was banished.

Over the course of a long, hot summer in London, the lives of three very different married couples collide when their children join the same tutoring circle, resulting in illicit relationships, shocking violence, and unimaginable fallout. There’s Eve, a bougie earth mother with a well-stocked trust fund; she has three little ones, a blue-collar husband, and is obsessed with her Instagrammable recipes and lifestyle.

Biddy Weir is a quirky girl. Abandoned by her mother as a baby, and with a father who's not quite equipped for the challenges of modern parenting, Biddy lives in her own little world, happy to pass her time painting by the sea and watching the birds go by. That is, until she meets Alison Flemming. Because there are a few things about Biddy that aren't normal, you see. And Alison isn't afraid to point them out to the world. All of a sudden, Biddy's quiet life is thrown into turmoil. If only there was someone to convince her that, actually, everyone's a little bit weird....

After an eventful first few months in Provence, it seems Penelope is finally settling into her delightful new life, complete with a gorgeous love interest in the mayor of St. Merlot. When Penelope and the mayor attend a glamorous gallery opening, Penelope’s biggest worry is embarrassing herself in front of her date. But the evening takes a horrifying turn when a controversial expat painter, Roland Doncaster, chokes to death.

After inheriting her mother’s fortune-telling business as a young woman, Imelda Burova has spent her life on the Brighton pier practicing her trade. She and her trusty pack of Tarot cards have seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Now, after a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, Madam Burova is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do—to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them.

A heart-warming story about family secrets and one woman’s escape to dreamy Sandy Cove on the stunning west coast of Ireland. The picturesque beach of Wild Rose Bay is the last place Lydia Butler thought she’d be. But having just lost everything, the run-down cottage she inherited from her Great Aunt Nellie is the only place she can take her daughter, Sunny. Hidden away in a tiny Irish village, she can protect Sunny from the gossip in Dublin, and the real reason they have nowhere else to live....