The past is a foreign country: this is your guidebook. If you could travel back in time, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. It is the age of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London; bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II; Christopher Wren in architecture, Henry Purcell in music and Isaac Newton in science - the civil wars are over and a magnificent new era has begun. But what would...

Find out everything you need to know about dealing with bereavement in just 50 minutes with this straightforward guide. The loss of a loved one can leave us feeling devastated, isolated and adrift, and in this situation it is often hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As bereavement affects everyone differently, this guide contains clear, practical advice to allow you to work through your grief at your own pace and adapt to the change in...

Dawn is a death doula, and spends her life helping people make the final transition peacefully. But when the plane she's on plummets, she finds herself thinking not of the perfect life she has, but the life she was forced to abandon fifteen years ago, when she left behind a career in Egyptology, and a man she loved. Against the odds, she survives and the airline offers her a ticket to wherever she needs to get to - but the answer to that question...

From a very early age she knew she was different from other boys, but growing up in the 50s and 60s was not conducive to discussing feelings of gender difference and for many years Julie didn't even know there was a medical term for her dilemma: she was transsexual. Becoming Julie details how Julie Clarke spent many years battling her demons. As a man she married and became a firefighter and later, a charter boat skipper on the Isle of Coll, hoping...

Since the tragic accident that killed her husband and young son, Ginny has dedicated herself to humanitarian work that takes her far away from her home and her memories. On a rare return to New York over Christmas, she walks the windswept streets, struggling with grief and guilt. It's there that she stumbles across Blue, a young boy with his own problems. In a single moment, Ginny and Blue connect and she welcomes him into her home, reminded of her...

Two sisters - Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger sister's protector; Lucia, the headstrong, unpredictable one, whose impulses are huge and, often, life changing. When their mother dies and Lucia starts hearing voices, it is Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister. But Lucia impetuously plows ahead, marrying a bighearted, older man only to leave him, suddenly, to have a baby with a young Latino immigrant. She moves her...

Carol, the heroine of Cock, is extremely dissatisfied with her married life. Realisation that her husband Dan is not the man for her has come too late and insult follows injury as Dan's drinking problem gives way to an obsessive fervour for Alcoholics Anonymous. One evening while Dan is out, Carol discovers something entirely unexpected about herself that leads her into rather twisted and distinctly uncharted waters ... On the flip side, there is...

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: when she was eleven and her mother disappeared, being proposed to at twenty-one, the accident that would make her a widow at forty-one. At each of these moments, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others. So when she receives a phone call telling her that her son?s ex-girlfriend has been shot and needs her help, she drops everything and flies across the country. The spur-of-the...

Beth has never stuck at anything. She's quit more jobs and relationships than she can remember. Its not that she hasn't TRIED to grow up; it's just that the only commitment she's held down so far is Friday drinks at the village pub. Then, in the space of a morning, her world changes. An unspeakable tragedy turns her life upside down, and she finds herself guardian to her teenage niece and toddler nephew; catapulted into an unfamiliar world of bedtime...

1991. Near Checkpoint Zulu, 100 miles from the Kuwaiti border, Thomas Benton meets Arwood Hobbes. Benton is a British journalist who reports from war zones, in part to avoid his lacklustre marriage and a daughter he loves but cannot connect with; Hobbes is a Midwestern American private who might be an insufferable ignoramus, or might be a brilliant lunatic with a death wish - it?s hard to tell. Operation Desert Storm is over, peace has been declared,...