EMMA BURSTALL

A swanky new gym has opened in leafy south west London. Four women bond over push ups and Pilates and become firm friends. Slowly but surely Gym and Tonic becomes far more than a fitness club to them. It is a haven, the place where the girls go to have a laugh and sort out their lives over a cafe latte. Yet trouble is looming and the special friendship is severely tested when two of them discover that their husbands are lovers. Can the other two help their friends to survive the catastrophe, what will they do when they discover the bitter truth about their own marriages? IGym and Tonic/I is a snappy, warm, wise and witty tale about female friendships, families, intrigue and betrayal, amidst the posing and perspiring. The gym is the place where the women go to hold everything together, whilst emotionally it all starts to hang out.

Evie, Nic and Becca are wannabe writers. The three friends are members of a creative writing group and they decide to enter a national competition. But while they ponder their plots and agonise about their characters, their own lives are going far from smoothly. Evie's still pining for the husband who left her for a younger woman and is relying increasingly on clairvoyant Zelda. But who is Zelda really? Nic's battling a drink problem and is in despair about her workaholic husband who is addicted to his laptop. A shocking discovery shakes her to the core, but will she realise in time that she must stop protecting him? Becca's a City highflyer who seems to have everything - until a childhood friend turns up, threatening to expose the secret she's kept buried for nearly thirty years. How will her marriage, her children, her friendships survive it? And on top of that there's a deadline. The women have just eleven months to complete their manuscripts. Who will win the competition - and can there be any real-life happy endings?

Be careful what you kiss for...Esme Posorsky is an enigma. She has long been part of community life in the quaint Cornish fishing village of Tremarnock, but does anyone really know her? When an old school friend turns up with a secret from the past, nothing will ever be the same again.Meanwhile teenager Rosie is excited to find a bottle washed up on the beach with a message from a former German prisoner of war. But little does she know that her discovery will unleash a shocking chain of events that threatens to blow her family apart...'Pure escapism' Alice Peterson.