(Charnwood Large Print Library Series)

Since she was in her teens, and had made a tragic mistake that had changed her life, Alex Cameron had left men severely alone and concentrated on her work as a jade carver - which had become the ruling passion of her life. So a man like Richard Lewis, who wanted to turn her back into a real woman, was the last thing she wanted - or was it?

As occasion to celebrate, when Desmond and Deirdre Doyle must gather family and friends around them in remembrance of the twenty-five years of marriage they've shared. A moment of reckoning as an uneasy couple is forced to face a hapless daughter still struggling to become a nun... a son who prefers the bleak family farm in Ireland to London... the once best man, now Desmond's boss... Deirdre's bridesmaid, now a successful career woman... and their priest with his guilty secret. A time of transformation for their eldest daughter, Anna. For only Anna can confront their tarnished lives and find a truth to draw them into a circle of love that might nourish, protect, and finally heal them all.

SAGAS. In the heart of teeming nineteenth-century London, Owen Oliver walks out of his gloomy, unwelcoming lodgings - and he doesn't stop his travels until he reaches Kent. There, Owen's life is dramatically altered. An orphan, he is adopted by a loving old lady and her roguish amicable son, Tom. With Tom's help, he secures employment in the shipping agency of an old sea captain and his fortunes soon increase as he proves to be invaluable in his clerical job. But Owen is not content. All around him he sees a widening gap between the comfortable middle classes and the helpless destitution of the poor. He is horrified by the plight of the thin and hungry and the evils of child labour. So when he takes the matter into his own hands and rescues a beautiful ragged child with haunting blue eyes and long golden hair, his fate is sealed ...

When Kate Fansler is offered the exciting prospect of writing a biography of Gabrielle Foxx, the obscure and enigmatic wife of a great modernist author, she accepts. But what she discovers when she meets three charming women connected with the Foxx family since childhood is a veil of secrecy that hides a fantastic pattern of events, a shocking secret that fifty years have done nothing to defuse, and a strange truth that she can never reveal.

Clementine Foster was young and unbelievably naive when she fell wildly in love with the arrogant aristocrat, Deveril Grayshott, who didn't even know of her existence. When, one golden summer night she stepped in front of his horse, he took her with all the drunken arrogance of a young aristocrat used to having whatever he wanted. But the repercussions were to reach far beyond that night, bringing hate, love and tragedy to both their lives. After the rape, Clementine became pregnant. And when she bore a son, who ultimately appears to be the only future heir to the Grayshott inheritance and according to the law of the Regency England, she had no right to keep her son if Deveril wanted to claim him. Refusing to bear this dreadful injustice, Clementine resolved to fight to keep her son - whatever the cost.

The Feather Men were a clandestine group of retired military officers from SAS, MI5, etc in UK. Ranulph Fiennes was proported to be one of them and exposed a series of assasinations of ex SAS officers ordered by the Sheik of Oman as a result of 3 of his sons being killed/murdered by these men in the war in his country in the '60s. (later made into a film with Robert de Niro) Very Complex and full of twists and deceipt. Was almost banned by HMG as a violation of the Official Secrets act but Fiennes declared some years later that it was just a work of fiction possibly as an appeasement to the government. Fiennes really was SAS and spent many years in dark corners of the world specializing in demolition and later became the explorer and the author on many feats of exploration and was later Knighted for his work. He also climed Everest 3 times despite him suffering from vertigo.

Mary Alderbrook, known as Ming, has reached a crossroads in her life. A recent illness and a disastrous relationship with her boss have led to her resignation from her job at the House of Commons. She is now under constant pressure from her parents and married sisters to 'settle down' with someone suitable. In 1955, the window of opportunity for working women - opened during the Second World War - is now firmly closed, but Ming is determined to find greater fulfilment.

A young American art historian is left holding two priceless works of art whe his Italian lover dies, and in trying to bring them to auction, he gets embroiled in the murder case of a famous artist.