Corgi book A Mother's Dilemma Hornby Emma

Moll thought she could keep her family safe • Eighteen-year-old Moll Chambers works her fingers to the bone doing all she can to support her family. With an ailing father and a wayward mother, Moll is the only one who can look after her siblings, Bo and Sissy • But Manchester is an increasingly dangerous place to live, overrun with a ferocious rivalry between gangs of so-called 'scuttlers': young men and women bent on a life of violence and crime. And they have her brother in their sights. Soon even Moll can't protect Bo from the lure of the criminal underworld • Then the scuttlers looked her way • When she herself falls for the leader of a rival gang, Moll's choices place her and Bo firmly on opposite sides of the city's turf war • With her loyalties now torn in two, and tragedy lurking round every corner, will Moll be able to rise above the conflict and protect those she loves the most? Or will stepping out with a scuttler spell ruin for them all

Fans of Dilly Court, Rosie Goodwin and Maggie Hope will love Emma Hornby • After a cold, hard winter on the streets, three orphan children are about to give up hope when an unexpected turn of events brings them to the doorstep of a grand house in Ardwick, Manchester • Taken in by the firm but kind-hearted cook, the young friends can hardly believe their luck. But behind Bracken House's impressive facade lies a household steeped in troubles and mystery, with residents above and below stairs battling their own demons and dark secrets • Not everyone is happy about the new arrivals, and soon the orphans' safety is in danger. If they want to stay in the first home any of them have known for years, they must unravel the past and bring hope to the future

For ten years, Delia has had to fend for herself and her son Jack, and as a young unmarried mother, life has never been easy. Every new coat and pair of shoes was bought with what little money she could scrape together as a singer on the stage • But when the theatre work dries up, Delia faces a dilemma: continue the search for employment with no knowing whether she’ll find the stability and security her son needs, or return to the place that should be home . . . where only spite and hatred await them • Desperate now, a chance encounter suddenly presents a lifeline. But Delia is faced with an impossible, heart-wrenching choice. Can she bear to leave Jack behind, hoping another family will care for him? Will they ever be reunited? • What else can a mother do to give her son the life he deserves? • Val Wood's wonderful historical sagas are perfect for readers of Dilly Court, Maggie Hope and Rosie Goodwin

An icon in the world of television news, Blaise McCarthy seems to have it all: beauty, intelligence and courage. But privately there is a story she has protected for years • Blaise’s daughter Salima, blinded by juvenile diabetes, lives at a year-round boarding school. But when the school suddenly closes, she returns home to Blaise’s New York apartment with her new carer, Simon. As new challenges change the way they see one another, the bond between mother and daughter deepens as never before • Then Blaise’s personal and professional worlds collide, and the well-guarded secrets of her home life are exposed. Suddenly her life is no longer perfect, but real. Can mother and daughter together learn how to face a world they can’t control? • An unforgettable novel about a mother and daughter trading perfect for real – from the incomparable storyteller Danielle Steel

Johnny Peterson could light up a room with a word or a smile. He had a future filled with promise - until he stepped into a car on prom night and, in an instant, it was all taken away. In the months that followed, Johnny's family and his high school sweetheart, Becky, struggle to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. No-one is more devastated than Johnny's mother, Alice, but amid the heartache, something miraculous is about to happen. When a sudden illness sends Alice to hospital, a glorious vision comes to her - there, standing before her, is Johnny himself, gently urging his bewildered mother to be strong for her splintered family • Through a season of hope and healing, Johnny will walk by his mother's side, leading his parents, his girlfriend, his sister and his brother out of their grief

Holderness, 1846 • For reliable, thirteen-year-old Bella, life isn't turning out quite as she'd hoped. She lives at the Woodman Inn - an ancient hostelry run by her family in the Yorkshire countryside - with her parents and siblings, but when she learns not only that her father is seriously ill, but that her mother is expecting a fifth child, her dreams of leaving home to become a schoolteacher are quickly dashed • Times are hard, and when their father dies Bella also has to take on the role of mother to her baby brother. Her days are brightened by the occasional visit from Jamie Lucan - the eighteen-year-old son of a wealthy landowning neighbour. Also grieving the loss of a parent, Jamie has more in common with Bella than she thinks • When her mother announces out of the blue that she wants to move the family to Hull, Bella is forced to leave the only home she has ever known

To the outside world, Sarah and Oliver Watson had the perfect marriage. Happy and successful, with three beautiful children, they seemed to have it all. But under the surface, Sarah felt lost, empty and inadequate. And one Christmas, after eighteen years of marriage, she walked out • Left alone, Oliver struggles to cope with raising his three children. Seventeen-year-old Benjamin rebels with disastrous consequences, while fifteen-year-old Melissa angrily turns against her father, and nine-year-old Sam, the 'baby', is too shaken to deal with his mother's abandonment • And then tragedy strikes once more when Oliver's mother dies in an untimely accident and three generations of the Watson family find that they must pull together to cope, and maybe one day move on and love again

Winter, 1860 • Rosalie has been granted a life of comfort and wealth but neither of these protects her when her mother suddenly dies • Polly has lead a life of grinding poverty; after losing her own mother, she finds herself alone on the bitterly cold streets of Hull • Then fate intervenes, bringing the two girls together when Polly takes a job as a scullery maid in Rosalie’s lonely house. The girls become unlikely friends and, when forced to leave the city behind, find themselves setting out to live with Rosalie’s uncle on the North Yorkshire Moors. Here they discover a life that neither of them has known before; though after finding momentary joy they soon learn once again that tragedy is never far away…

As Hurricane Ophelia bears down on New York City, millions are caught up in the horrific flooding it unleashes • Successful interior designer Ellen Wharton flies into New York from London, heedless of the hurricane warnings. She is intent on seeing her mother, Grace. But when the storm hits, the women are forced to wade through freezing waters to the police boats outside • British investment banker Charles Williams is travelling on business but is also eager to see his young daughters, who live with his beautiful, estranged ex-wife. As the hurricane rages, he desperately checks the shelters where thousands have taken refuge to find them, and runs into Ellen and her mother • Meanwhile Juliette Dubois, a dedicated ER doctor, fights to save lives when the generators at the hospital fail

Alan Johnson's childhoodwas not so much difficult as unusual, particularly for a man who was destined to become Home Secretary. Not in respect of the poverty, which was shared with many of those living in Britain's post-war slums, but in its transition from being part of a two-parent family to having a single mother and then to no parents at all • This is essentially the story of two incredible women: Alan's mother, Lily, who battled against poor health, poverty, domestic violence and loneliness to try to ensure a better life for her children; and his sister, Linda, who had to assume an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age and who fought to keep the family together and out of care when she herself was still only a child • This Boy is one man's story, but it is also the story of England and the West London slums which are hard to imagine in the capital today

It is the early 1920s and Kate Hannigan is happily married to Dr Rodney Prince, who has willingly accepted her illegitimate daughter, Annie, as the eldest child of their household. Everything seems to be going well for the Prince family, but soon spiteful rumours about Kate's earlier life seem to haunt both her and Annie - an insidious threat that revives memories of the poverty and narrowness of life in the Fifteen Streets district that they have so recently left behind • Annie will be faced with some of the problems that earlier beset her mother: religious prejudice and a choice between two different ways of life - the comfortable middle-class existence offered by Brian Stannard and the uncertain prospects of Terence McBane, a brilliant mathematician from the underprivileged world Annie and her mother have just escaped

Extraordinary acts of faith and courage unite a family after a tragedy threatened to tear them apart • At eleven, Pip Mackenzie’s young life has already been touched by tragedy; nine months before, a terrible accident plunged her mother Ophelie into inconsolable grief. But on a chilly July afternoon in San Francisco, Pip meets artist Matt Bowles, who offers to teach the girl to draw – and can’t help but notice her beautiful, lonely mother • Matt Bowles senses something magical about Pip, who reminds him of his own daughter, before a bitter divorce swept his children halfway across the world. At first, Ophelie is thrown off-balance by her daughter’s new companion – until she realizes how much joy he is bringing into their lives. As Matt confronts unfinished business from his past, and Ophelie is struck by a stunning betrayal, out of the darkness that has shadowed them both comes an unexpected gift of hope