JOANNA TROLLOPE

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. Which relationships - if any - will survive?

Alexa ist aufgeregt. Endlich kommt ihr Mann Dan wieder zuruck, nach sechs Monaten Afghanistan. Das Haus ist von oben bis unten gewienert und aufgeraumt, die Kinder sind bei Freunden untergebracht, Alexa war bei der Manikure. Dan wird uberglucklich sein. Doch was, wenn alles ganz anders kommt?Alexa ist aufgeregt. Endlich kommt ihr Mann Dan wieder zuruck, nach sechs Monaten Afghanistan. Das Haus ist von oben bis unten gewienert und aufgeraumt, die Kinder sind bei Freunden untergebracht, Alexa war bei der Manikure. Dan wird uberglucklich sein. Doch was, wenn alles ganz anders kommt?

Susie Moran is a success. She has founded and run her own highly profitable company, and now her three daughters are all involved in the business. Rooted in the traditions of the Stoke-on-Trent potteries, and producing charming, useable objects of distinctive design, Susie is justly proud of her family and her achievement - and has no intention of letting it change. But what of the men in the family? Susies husband, a musician and artist, has always seemed happy to take a back seat. One of her sons-in-law has few ambitions outside the home. Another daughter, though, has brought her husband into the company - and they want to change things, much to Susies distress. And then, into the mix arrives Susies father, an ageing hippy who abandoned Susie as a baby. Now hes alone, and wants to build bridges, although Susies daughters are outraged at the idea. Can the needs of a family business override the needs of the family itself? In wanting to preserve her business, will Susie lose something much more precious?

Joanna Trollope's much-anticipated contemporary reworking of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility launches The Austen Project and is already one of the most talked about books of the year.

When Fanny Dashwood descends on Norland Park with her Romanian nanny and her mood boards, Belle Dashwood's three daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret must face the reality of life without their father, their home, or their money. As they come...

It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely, and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then one of them meets a man - an enigmatic significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break. With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.

An intriguing and timely novel about inheritance, and what happens in a tangled family when someone dies. Richie had been a celebrated musician, wealthy, popular, and adored by Chrissie and their three daughters. But when he dies, without warning, Chrissie has to deal not only with her grief but with the knowledge that her beloved Richie had another family, one which he had deserted many years before but which now needs to be involved. And their involvement extends not only to the immediate aftermath of a sudden death, but to the longer-term and much more difficult issue - who will inherit his legacy? Chrissie and her girls, comfortably off in London, or Margaret, the deserted wife, living in the North East with Richie's only son?

Rachel has always loved being at the centre of her large family. She has fiercely devoted herself to her three sons all their lives,and continues to do so even now they are all grown up. They are, of course, devoted to her - she and Anthony, their father, hold the family together at their big, beautiful, ramshackle house near the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk. But when Luke, her youngest, gets married, Rachel finds that control is slipping away. Other people seem to be becoming more important to her children than she is, and she can no longer rely on her role as undisputed matriarch. A power struggle develops which can only end in unhappiness; her three daughters-in-law want to do things their own way, and so, to her grief, do her sons...

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, livelyexistence. 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 ?

We all need to know where we come from, where we belong. But for David and Nathalie, this need to know is more urgent than for most people, because they are adopted. Brought up by the same parents, but born to different mothers, they have grown up, fiercely loyal to one another, as brother and sister. Their decision, in their late thirties, to embark upon the journey to find their birth mothers, is no straightforward matter. It affects, acutely and often painfully, their partners, the people they work with and, most poignantly, the two women who gave them up for adoption all those years ago, and who have since then made other lives, even borne other children. Exploring her subject with inimitable imagination and humanity, Joanna Trollope once again works her magic. In this rich narrative, at once gritty and graceful, she exposes the extraordinary challenges that arise at the heart of ordinary lives.