The time is 1995, but everybody has a past. Brilliant Australian Caroline can command everyone except her own ghoulish mother, which means that things aren't easy for Josh and Zoe, her husband with Stravinsky-glasses and twelve-year-old daughter. Zoe reads girls' ballet books and longs for lessons; a thing denied her until a chance encounter on a school French exchange. Meanwhile, on the east coast of Africa, Hattie, Josh's first love, now writes...

Adrift in the wake of her father's death, a failed marriage and multiple miscarriages, Libby McKenzie feels truly alone. Though her new life as a wedding photographer provides a semblance of purpose, it's also a distraction from her profound pain. When asked to photograph a wedding at the historic Woodmont estate, Libby meets the owner, Elaine Grant. Hoping to open Woodmont to the public, Elaine has employed young widower Colton Reese to help restore...

Summer, 1967. As London shimmers in a heat haze and swoons to the sound of Sergeant Pepper, a mystery film - Eureka - is being shot by German wunderkind Reiner Werther Kloss. The screenwriter, Nat Fane, would do anything for a hit but can?t see straight for all the acid he?s dropping. Fledgling actress Billie Cantrip is hoping for her big break but can?t find a way out of her troubled relationship with an older man. And journalist Freya Wyley wants...

The cowboys, strippers, labourers and magicians of Pilgrims are all on their way to being somewhere, or someone, else. Some are browbeaten and world-weary, others are deluded and na�ve, yet all seek companionship as fiercely as they can. A tough East Coast girl dares a western cowboy to run off with her, a matronly bar owner falls in love with her nephew, an innocent teenager falls hopelessly for the local bully's sister. These are tough heroes...

I am Sofia. I am searching for my daughter, born in Korydallos prison, Athens, 1November 1972. Can you help me? On the beautiful beaches of Crete, an old woman is handing out this handwritten note. Sofia, 85 years old and unable to speak, is desperate to find a daughter she has never known. Following a tragic childhood in Athens and a soaring career as a singer, the man she loved was tortured by a tyrannical regime, forcing her to give up her newborn...

North London in the 21st century: a place where a son will swiftly adopt an old lady and take her home from hospital to impersonate his dear departed mother, rather than lose the council flat. A time of golden job opportunities, though you might have to dress up as a coffee bean or work as an intern at an undertaker or put up with champagne and posh French dinners while your boss hits on you. A place rich in language - whether it's Romanian, Ukrainian,...

When her old flame Sam rings up one day and invites her on a villa holiday in Italy, Jen is completely thrown off balance. Sam, as she cannot help but recall, was the best kiss of her life. With her husband Marcus constantly travelling the world for work, and seven-year-old Alfie still in the marital bed, the joys of marriage and motherhood are thin on the ground for Jen these days... What could be more appealing than being with old friends and recapturing...

1949: the celebrated Russian author Boris Pasternak is writing the novel that will become Doctor Zhivago. The Soviets, afraid of its subversive power, ban it. But in the rest of the world it is fast becoming a sensation. In Washington DC, the CIA is planning to use the book to tip the Cold War in its favour. However, their agents are not the usual spies. Two typists are charged with the mission of a lifetime: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago back into...

Mark Renton is finally a success. An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated...

'In my reckless and undiscouraged youth,' Lillian Boxfish writes, 'I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street ?' She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy?s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, 'in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it.' Now it?s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just...