The promise

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Cathy Sharp

"When Lucy and her brother, Joshua, are orphaned, it falls to Joshua to provide for them both, but he is barely into his teens and in his naivety, falls prey to bad influences and drink. Lucy is desperate to avoid the workhouse, but when Joshua loses their meagre savings they are thrown out onto the street and, in dire poverty, it isn't long before Lucy finds herself at its gates - almost a fate worse than death. Inside the workhouse, Lucy meets with unkindness and cruelty and she knows she must dig deep within herself if she is to survive, let alone thrive. What Lucy needs is a friend and she is surprised to find one in the most unlikely place ..."--Publisher.

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Suzanne Goodwin

Catherine and Sara share the same father—and that is all they share. Catherine, a reserved English aristocrat, grew up at her family's country estate in the years before the First World War. Sara, a passionate red-headed beauty, lived with her selfish socialite mother in a marble palace on the French Riviera. Catherine is a confirmed virgin; Sara made love to a stranger to celebrate the Armistice. Within the rapidly-changing world of between-the-wars England, the two strong personalities clash in a struggle to control the international auction-house founded by their father. It's a time of new freedoms for women - in enterprise and in sexuality. But sex doesn't guarantee romantic involvement, and a "financially wise" marriage can bring both profit and loss. Readers of Suzanne Goodwin's earlier novels Cousins and Sisters will welcome Daughters with the knowledge that they're in the hands of a master storyteller with a special insight on the modern woman's heart.

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Frances Itani

The new novel from the award-winning author of Deafening is a poignant exploration of one eighty-year-old life, as its heroine lies at the bottom of a ravine where she has crashed en route to visit the queen. Born the same day as Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Canadian Georgina Danforth Witley is one of ninety-nine privileged Commonwealth subjects invited to an eightieth birthday lunch at Buckingham Palace. All she has to do is drive to the airport and board the plane for London. Except that Georgie drives off the road, her car plunging into a thickly wooded ravine. Thrown from the car and unable to move, she must rely on her no-nonsense wit, her full store of family memories, and a recitation of the bones in her body -- a childhood exercise that reminds her she is still alive. As Georgina lies helpless, she reflects on her role as a daughter, mother, sister, wife, and widow -- on lost loves and painful secrets -- offering a whimsical and profound insight into the life of one ordinary woman who, while drawing on her instincts to survive, asks herself: what has it all amounted to?

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Charles Dickens

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.