Black Swan Friday Nights Trollope Joanna

Only a miracle can unite a congregation in turmoil • In the gentle precinct of Aldminster Cathedral, crisis looms • The urbane and worldly Dean wants nothing so much as to restore and beautify his beloved Cathedral - even if it means sacrificing the Choir School to pay for it • Alexander Troy, Headmaster of the school, a conscientious man, is determined that nothing and no-one - certainly not the overbearing Dean - should destroy the Choir • As the rift widens to take on immense dimensions, many others find themselves caught in the schism - Leo Beckford, brilliant but wayward organist, repelling the adoration of the Dean's dreadful daughter; the gentle, left-wing Bishop, trying to soothe the angry protagonists; Sally Ashworth, mother of the leading chorister, fighting loneliness and an erring and absent husband

Four strong women. All working in a family business. But what happens when they begin to want different things? And what about the men – and the children – in their lives? • Susie Moran has always been the breadwinner in her family. Her husband was the one who was there for their three girls. But now he wants something of his past back – the life he had before Susie’s career took off, before they had children. And those children don’t see their mother’s business the way she has always seen it, thereby threatening the balance she has worked so hard to achieve • And then, amidst the simmering tensions, someone significant from the past, someone almost forgotten, turns up. The problems of the past, the present, and the future all become challenges to the stability of both family and work

Nathalie and David have been good and dutiful children to their parents, and now, grown-up, with their own families, they are still close to one another. Brother and sister • Except that they aren't - brother and sister that is.They were both adopted, when their loving parents, found that they couldn't have children themselves. And up until now it's never mattered • But suddenly, Nathalie discovers a deep need to trace her birth parents and is insisting that David makes the same journey. And through this, both learn one of the hardest lessons of all, that sometimes, the answers to who we are and where we come from can be more difficult than the questions

When the children have come and gone, can a marriage pick up where it left off? • Ben is, at last, leaving home. At twenty-two, he's the youngest of the family • His mother, Edie, an actress, is distraught • His father, Russell, a theatrical agent, is rather hoping to get his wife back • His brother, Matthew, is struggling in a relationship in which he achieves and earns less than his girlfriend • And his sister, Rosa, is wrestling with debt and the end of a turbulent love affair • Meet the Boyd family and the empty nest, twenty-first-century style

Mother to five children, Clover Stroud has navigated family life across two decades, both losing and finding herself. In her touching, provocative and profoundly insightful book, she captures a sense of what motherhood really feels like - how intense, sensuous, joyful, boring, profound and dark it can be • My Wild and Sleepless Nights examines what it means to be a mother, and reveals with unflinching honesty the many conflicting emotions that this entails: the joy and the wonder, the loneliness and despair

It is the hottest August in living memory • A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers. From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again • She will tell him about her family, and their strange life in the show home of an abandoned housing estate. The long, blistering days spent sunbathing; the airless nights filled with inexplicable noises; the words that appear on the windows, written in dust • Why are members of her family disappearing, one by one? Is she telling the truth? Is he? • In a world where reality is beginning to blur, how can we know what to believe?

Molly has lived on the streets for nearly a decade. She has close friends but spends most of her nights sleeping rough in dangerous places. So when a new acquaintance invites her on a journey across the country, she decides to go along. He is searching for treasure while she is searching for hope • At every stop on their unusual quest, Molly senses something close behind her: the footsteps of an old enemy and the memories of a life she has tried to erase. And yet she must find the courage to continue if she’s ever going to discover a place that really feels like home • A vibrant, invigorating, and affecting novel and the inspiring portrait of a young homeless woman from Observer New Face of Fiction Mahsuda Snaith

'I wanted someone to know, you see. To know my truth, now that I am gone. How everything and none of it happened.' • Everyone knew bestselling novelist Cassandra Tipp had twice got away with murder • Even her family were convinced of her guilt • So when she disappears, leaving only a long letter behind, they can but suspect that her conscience finally killed her • But the letter is not what anyone expected. It tells two chilling, darkly disturbing stories. One is a story of bloody nights and magical gifts, of children lost to the woods, of husbands made from twigs and leaves and feathers and bones • The other is the story of a little girl who was cruelly treated and grew up crooked in the shadows • But which story is true? And where is Cassie now?

Summer, 1972: In the claustrophobic heat, eleven-year-old Byron and his friend begin ‘Operation Perfect’, a hapless mission to rescue Byron’s mother from impending crisis • Winter, present day: As frost creeps across the moor, Jim cleans tables in the local cafe, a solitary figure struggling with OCD. His job is a relief from the rituals that govern his nights • Little would seem to connect them except that two seconds can change everything • And if your world can be shattered in an instant, can time also put it right?

A fascinating and revelatory journey along the Danube to appeal to fans of Michael Palin's New Europe • The Danube is Europe's Amazon. It flows through more countries than any other river on Earth - from the Black Forest in Germany to Europe's farthest fringes, where it joins the Black Sea in Romania. Andrew Eames' journey along its length brings us face to face with the Continent's bloodiest history and its most pressing issues of race and identity • As he travels - by bicycle, horse, boat and on foot - Eames finds himself seeking a bed for the night with minor royalty, hitching a ride on a Serbian barge captained by a man called Attila and getting up close and personal with a bull in rural Romania. He meets would-be kings and walks with gypsies, and finally rows his way beyond the borders of Europe entirely

Sue Black confronts death every day. As a Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster • In All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and examining what her life and work has taught her • Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue's book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour in stories as gripping as the best crime novel • Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light

At sixty-four, Jenni Murray's weight had become a disability. She avoided the scales, she wore a uniform of baggy black clothes, refused to make connections between her weight and health issues and told herself that she was fat and happy. She was certainly fat. But the happy part was an Oscar-worthy performance. In private she lived with a growing sense of fear and misery that her weight would probably kill her before she made it to seventy • Interwoven with the science, social history and psychology of weight management, Fat Cow, Fat Chance is a refreshingly honest account of what it's like to be fat when society dictates that skinny is the norm. It asks why we overeat and why, when the weight is finally lost through dieting, do we simply pile the pounds back on again? How do we help young people become comfortable with the way they look? What are the consequences of the obesity epidemic for an already overstretched NHS? And, whilst fat shaming is so often called out, why is it that shouting 'fat cow' at a woman in the street hasn't been included in the list of hate crimes? • Fusing politics, science and personal pain, this is a powerful exploration of our battle with obesity