Black Swan Other People's Children Trollope Joanna

When you've dedicated your life to your children, what happens when they grow up? • Rachel loves being at the centre of her large family. She has devoted herself fiercely to bringing up her three sons, but at their childhood home on the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk, Rachel finds that her control begins to slip away. Other women - her daughters-in-law - are usurping her position. They have become more important to her boys than she is • A crisis brings these subtle rifts to the surface • Can there be a way forward, if they are to survive as a family?

One encounter and life is never the same again • The Logans were an enchanting and admirable couple. Archie had snatched Liza from her own engagement party to someone else, wooed her, swept her off to his father in Scotland, and finally married her • Now bedded firmly into country life - three children, Archie the village doctor, Liza a teacher, everything comfortable, funny, affectionate - they awaited the arrival of Archie's father, the brilliant Sir Andrew Logan, a widower for over thirty years • When his city-clean Rover stopped in the drive, Sir Andrew was not alone. Beside him was a golden lady in caramel suede, a warm, witty, desirable widow whom everyone - except Archie - adored at once • Archie saw his father's mistress as the worm in the bud of his perfect life - a life that was to be wrenched apart before he and Liza could re-create their world

Would you take a chance and set something in motion that could change everything? • The Grey House is the final piece in the jigsaw of Alice Jordan's perfect life. It seems to be the ultimate achievement of her outwardly happy marriage - a loyal, if dull husband, three children, two cars and now the house. So why does she feel as if something is missing? • As Alice and her family settle themselves into village life, the something missing becomes something huge and then breaks, scandalizing the village and opening up old wounds • But because of it, Alice begins to feel that there is hope and humour and understanding and compassion in the new life she must build for herself

Two lives intertwined and seemingly harmonious. One decision that changes everything • Lizzie and Frances are twins, together forming part of a unit. Or at least that's the way Lizzie sees things. Lizzie is the twin who has everything: husband, children, a flourishing career and a beautiful house. She worries about Frances, who seems to lead a solitary life in London, ricocheting from one disastrous man to the next. Lizzie just wants Frances to have a complete and satisfying life, just like hers • Then one day Frances announces she isn't coming to Lizzie's for Christmas as usual - she's going to Spain instead • Suddenly and equally unexpectedly, Lizzie's world begins to tilt. Frances's Christmas defection seems overwhelmingly threatening to their unity

A family in crisis. A catalyst that threatens to change everything • The land running down to the River Dean has been farmed by the Meredith family for generations. Robin Meredith bought the farm from his father, just before he married his wife Caro and now he and his brother Joe work on the land. But now Caro has died, as much as a mystery to the family as she was when she arrived twenty years ago, and the whole family feels her loss acutely, none more so than her adopted daughter Judy • Into this unhappy family comes Zoe, Judy's London friend, an outsider with an independent spirit and a disturbing directness. Everyone underestimates Zoe's power as a catalyst for change as the realities behind the seeming idyll of a rural community become ever clearer

Merrion Palmer has been Judge Guy Stockdale's mistress for the last seven years and his wife and two grown-up sons know absolutely nothing about her. Up until now, Guy and Merrion have enjoyed a blissfully, uncomplicated relationship in stolen moments in Merrion's flat, and to the rest of the world, Guy has played the part of model husband, father and grandfather • But now the time has come for things to change. Guy has become conscious of wasted years and he wants to share his relationship with Merrion with the world • He wants, dammit, to marry her. Yet he is quite unprepared for the storm that will follow

Эпоха рок-звезд, как и эпоха ковбоев, давно прошла. Однако их образы до сих пор живы в нашем воображении • Чем они нас цепляли? Своей развязностью. Бесшабашностью. Сексуальным обаянием. Непоколебимой верой в себя. Особым поведением. Красивыми прическами. Интересными ботинками. Талантом, которому мы завидовали • Что мы от них ожидали? Что они будут выдающимися и в то же время совсем такими же, как и мы сами. Что они будут жить так, как поют в своих песнях. Что навсегда останутся молодыми. Неудивительно, что многие из них сбились с пути • В своей книге Uncommon People Дэвид Хэпуорт анализирует поворотные моменты в жизни 40 рок-звезд, популярных в период с 1955 по 1995, развенчивая мифы и создавая новые • Все эти люди начинали свой путь абсолютно ни с чем и буквально создали себя, но также изменили и наши жизни и фантазии

Chrissie, in the twenty-three years she'd been together with Richie, had always believed that he loved her • He loved their three daughters and their house in Highgate and their happy, lively existence. But if she really was the love of his life, why had he never given her the one thing that would have made her life perfect? • Then suddenly Richie is no longer there, and without him Chrissie's carefully constructed life is in jeopardy.The one big fact she had always tried to keep from her daughters threatens to overwhelm them all. For Richie had still been married to his first wife, the one with a son that he had abandoned in Newcastle • And now, with Richie gone and the practicalities of wills and money to be sorted out, it is finally time for the two families to face each other

When Noel Bostock - aged ten, no family - is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he winds up in St Albans with Vera Sedge - thiry-six, drowning in debts. Always desperate for money, she's unscrupulous about how she gets it • The war's thrown up all manner of new opportunities but what Vee needs is a cool head and the ability to make a plan. On her own, she's a disaster. With Noel, she's a team • Together they cook up an idea. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn't actually safe at all

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

The soldiers are coming home – after six months in Afghanistan. Surely being reunited with their wives and girlfriends and families will be heaven, after the hell they have been through • When Dan Riley returns to his adored wife, Alexa, and their children, his Army life still comes first. Alexa thought she was prepared to help him, and the whole family, to make the transition to normal life again – but no-one had told her how lonely and near impossible the task would be. Does marrying a soldier always have to mean that you are not marrying a man, but a regiment?