Tess Durbeyfield knows what it is to work hard and expect little. But her life is about to veer from the path trod by her mother and grandmother. When her ne'er-do-well father learns that his family is the last of a long noble line, the d'Urbervilles, he sends Tess on a journey to meet her supposed kin- a journey that will see her victimized by lust, poverty, and hypocrisy. With its sensitive depiction of one of literature's most admirable and tragic...

Thirty years old, successful and stunning, Darcy Rhone used to think that 'being down and out' meant not finding a size four at the Barney's Warehouse Sale. Now she is pregnant, unmarried and recovering from a broken engagement to Dex and the betrayal of her ex-best friend Rachel who stole Dex's affections. Marcus, Darcy's new man and father of her baby, helps her paper over the cracks in her seemingly charmed life, but reality quickly catches up....

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled 'A Story of a Man of Character', Hardy's powerful...

Recalled from a romantic vacation with his girlfriend Helen Weeks, Tom Thorne investigates the abduction of two girls in Helen's hometown, convinced that the police have the wrong person in custody.

Gwendoline, Lady Muir, has seen her share of tragedy, especially since a freak accident took her husband much too soon. Content in a quiet life with friends and family, the young widow has no desire to marry again. But when Hugo, Lord Trentham, scoops her up in his arms after a fall, she feels a sensation that both shocks and emboldens her. Hugo never intends to kiss Lady Muir, and frankly, he judges her to be a spoiled, frivolous - if beautiful...

All of London is abuzz over the imminent arrival of Wulfric Bedwyn, the reclusive, cold-as-ice Duke of Bewcastle, at the most glittering social event of the season. Some whisper of a tragic love affair. Others say he is so aloof and passionless that not even the greatest beauty could capture his attention. But on this dazzling afternoon, one woman did catch the duke?s eye?and she was the only female in the room who wasn?t even trying. Christine Derrick...

When a Member of Parliament shows up at New Scotland Yard requesting an investigation into the suicide of the son of one of his constituents in the beautiful town of Ludlow, the Assistant Commissioner sees two opportunities in this request: the first is to have an MP owing him a favour, and the second is to get rid of Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, whose career at the Met has been hanging by a thread for quite some time. So he assigns Havers to...

"How do you move on after losing the person you loved? How do you build a life worth living? Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can't help but feel she's right back where she started. Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started...

Alicia Berenson is a famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, living in a posh area of London. One evening, her husband Gabriel returns home late. Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word.

Emma is sitting on a turbulent plane. She's always been a v. nervous flyer. She really thinks that this could be her last moment. So, naturally enough, she starts telling the man sitting next to her - quite a dishy American, but she's too frightened to notice -all her innermost secrets. How she scans the backs of intellectual books and pretends she's read them. How she does her hair up like Princess Leia in her bedroom. How she's not sure if she has...