Having fled London and been on the run around Europe, Vita Casey has established a new life for herself, keeping a low profile as a dresser at a cabaret hall where Nancy is part of the risqué dance troupe. It’s a vibrant world of wild parties, drugs and jazz music. But despite the fun, hedonistic lifestyle they lead, Vita longs for a proper career and to re-kindle her dream of designing lingerie. When an opportunity to work for famous couturier Jenny Sacerdote presents itself, Vita grabs it with both hands and is soon exposed to an altogether different side of Paris society.

From the author of The Girl from Lace Island and A Twist of Fate. When five random people simultaneously receive 'the key', they don't realise that their lives are about to change forever. Shrouded in secrecy, the mysterious silver key is delivered to each of them along with a code, a web address and a promise that - if used wisely - it can unlock a door to luxury and privilege beyond their wildest dreams. However, as each of them begins to use the key, they are propelled into a world of hazy moral choices and soon start to question their enigmatic gift.

1989: When 15-year-old Leila is exiled from her exotic home on Lace Island to a cold English boarding school, the life she once loved becomes a distant memory. 2016: Jess dreams of far off places, of white sandy beaches and warm tropical seas. When she gets her longed-for job as cabin crew, those dreams are suddenly realised. But Jess has a troubled past, and her present is about to become complicated and dangerous....

In the heyday of the British Raj, 11-year-old Anahita, from a noble but impoverished family, forms a lifelong friendship with the headstrong Princess Indira, the privileged daughter of rich Indian royalty. Becoming the princess's official companion, Anahita accompanies her friend to England just before the outbreak of the Great War. There, she meets the young Donald Astbury - reluctant heir to the magnificent, remote Astbury Estate - and his scheming mother.

Twins Calida and Teresita Santiago have never known a world without each other...until Teresita is wrenched from their Argentinian home to be adopted by world-famous actress Simone Geddes. Now, while Teresita is provided with all that money can buy, Calida must fight her way to the top - her only chance of reuniting with her twin. But no one can predict the explosive events which will finally bring the Santiago sisters into the spotlight together....

Virginia Keile has a secret dream. To have a second chance at loving the tall, handsome Cornish farmer she met - and foolishly lost - the heady summer she was a debutante. Life has taught Virginia a great deal in 27 years - about wedding a titled bachelor picked out by her mother, about a lonely marriage that ended in her husband's accidental death, and about nearly losing her children to her husband's mother and bossy Nanny. Now she has come back to picturesque Cornwall to rent a battered seaside cottage.

Max Sall is powerful, wealthy, and utterly ruthless. A man without a past. Max's women are very different, but they all demand his attention. While Amber and Paola are growing up in the 1970s, their mothers somehow find a way to share Max between them. But when Amber and Paola fall in love with the same man two decades later, they're determined that this time there will be no sharing.

In a beachfront mansion in Martha's Vineyard, Annick and Rebecca relax, safe in the knowledge that their young children are in the care of lifelong friend Tash. But by the end of the afternoon, one of the children will have vanished.... Annick, daughter of an actress and an assassinated president, has spent her life running from the truth of her family's wealth. Rebecca has always done the right thing. Perfect daughter. Perfect wife. Perfect mother. She's beginning to wonder if she'll ever get chance to live for herself.

Jo and Ed are unlikely best friends. He is the only son of wealthy parents. She was born on 'the wrong side of the tracks'. He loves sport, messing around with cars, and drinking. She's ambitious and hardworking. They are, in fact, a perfect team. They've stood by each other for almost 30 years. They've built a successful business together. There's just one problem. Jo is having an affair with Ed's wife. And now someone knows their secret.

Artist's daughter Penelope Keeling can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children - and learned to accept them as they are. Yet she is far too energetic and independent to settle sweetly into pensioned-off old age.

Elfrida Phipps loves her new life in her pretty Hampshire village. She has a tiny cottage, her faithful dog, Horace, and the friendship of the neighbouring Blundells - particularly Oscar - to ensure that her days include companionship as well as independence. But an unforeseen tragedy upsets Elfrida's tranquillity: Oscar's wife and daughter are killed in a terrible car crash, and he finds himself homeless when his stepchildren claim their dead mother's inheritance.

Kate and Naz are struggling. Jamila is avoiding Peter. Saskia is surprising everyone by making a success of Waltham Lodge.And Jaiden is on the trail of a stolen Art Deco figurine. Her search will lead her through the streets of London. Into the dark secrets of suburbia. Beyond the night time city and the people who inhabit it. And to the limits of her own capacity to forgive. 

Born in Colombo, Judith Dunbar spends her teenage years at boarding school while her beloved mother and younger sister live abroad with her father. When her new friend, Loveday Carey-Lewis, invites Judith home for the weekend to Nancherrow, the Carey-Lewises' beautiful estate on the Cornish coast, it is love at first sight.

As a child, Julia Forrester spent many idyllic hours in the hothouse of Wharton Park estate, where her grandfather tended the exotic flowers. So when a family tragedy strikes, Julia returns to the tranquility of Wharton Park and its hothouse. Recently inherited by charismatic Kit Crawford, the estate is undergoing renovation. This leads to the discovery of an old diary, prompting the pair to seek out Julia's grandmother to learn the truth behind a love affair that almost destroyed Wharton Park.

On the eve of an unusual voyage, a young woman reviews her life. Her story begins with a 'beautiful visit' to friends in the country which serves as an awakening experience. What follows is an account of her struggle to retain the mood of her visit.