Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recounting their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage and the lives they built with other people, Strout paints a portrait,...

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...

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...

Cut off by her own relations, pretty, dainty widow Eliza Budley must visit some other family manor to purloin expensive baubles. Happily, the rich Marquess of Peterhouse is in his dotage and wouldn't know a relative from a bedpost, so Eliza is sent to play the imposter. But things do not go as planned and Eliza is met by the new Marquess - wickedly handsome, and with all his wits about him. And somehow Eliza finds herself confessing her bluff to him...

On a moonlit night in 1903, a mysterious young woman flees alone across the Canadian wilderness, one quick step ahead of her pursuers. Mary Boulton is nineteen years old, half mad, and widowed - by her own hand. Tearing through the forest with dogs howling in the distance, she is desperate, her nerves burning, and she is certain of one thing only - that her every move is being traced. Two red-headed brothers, rifles across their backs, lurch close...

A touching and atmospheric love story - When Anna Harvik travels to Norway in 1946 in order to visit the family of her late husband, the country is only just recovering from five cruel years of Nazi occupation. So it is with surprise that she finds in this cold and bitter country the capacity for new love and perhaps even a new home.

Has the boy who broke her heart... Become the man to mend it? Widowed nurse Shona has returned to the safety and familiarity of her Scottish childhood home. Getting roped into playing Chief Elf to lifeboat crew leader Alasdair's Santa isn't part of the plan, but his delicious smile has the power to tempt her out of her comfort zone... She still hasn't forgiven the reformed bad boy for once breaking her heart - could he now be the one to rebuild it?...

1939. After the sudden and tragic loss of her husband, Helen is returning home to her mother's house in Biggin Hill, Kent - the one place she vowed she'd never go back to again. Alone and not knowing where to turn, Helen finds herself joining the local women's sewing circle despite being hopeless with a needle and thread. These resourceful women can not only make do and mend clothes, quilts and woolly hats, but their friendship mends something deeper...