Nell is twenty-six and has never been to Paris. She's never even been on a romantic weekend away - to anywhere - before. Travelling abroad isn't really her thing. But when Nell's boyfriend fails to show up, she has the chance to prove to everyone - including herself - that she can be independent and intrepid. Alone in Paris, Nell finds a version of herself she never knew existed . . . In the ten other stories, Jojo Moyes introduces us to a cast of...

Do you believe in happy endings? Laura Foster used to be a hopeless romantic. She was obsessed with meeting her own Prince Charming until she grew up and realised real life doesn't work like that. Then she met Nick. A romantic hero straight from a fairytale, with a grand country estate and a family tree to match. They've been together four years now and Laura knows that what really matters is the two of them, not everything else around them. She can't...

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She has only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

It is the summer of 1940. Nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris arrives in New York with her suitcase and sewing machine, exiled by her despairing parents. Although her quicksilver talents with a needle and commitment to mastering the perfect hair roll have been deemed insufficient for her to pass into her sophomore year of Vassar, she soon finds gainful employment as the self-appointed seamstress at the Lily Playhouse, her unconventional Aunt Peg's charmingly...

When 8-year-old Mirren Gilchrist is orphaned after a tragic accident, she is sent to live with her estranged relatives deep in the Yorkshire Dales. She struggles to fit in, her town ways a mystery to the country children. One day, fleeing school - and the cane - she takes refuge from a fierce snowstorm in the ruins of a stone cottage. Legend has it that World's End is haunted but Mirren has finally found somewhere she can call home and her love affair...

Perdita Lee may appear your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor flat with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there?s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it?s very popular in...

When you're chasing a dream, does it matter where you come from? Upper-class Lucy Graham is expected simply to marry well. Poverty-stricken Rosie Nesbitt struggles just to get by. Both girls share the unlikely dream to become a doctor, and each will do anything to succeed. When their paths cross at a party filled with eligible bachelors it soon becomes clear that their chosen career isn't the only desire they share. With society's conventions stacked...

"Imagine if Jane Austen got angry & you'll have some idea of how explosive these works are" (John Freeman). Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante has gained admirers among authors-Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few-and critics- James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great...

100 years ago, young women were killed in this workplace. Is history about to repeat itself? Rachel, a young woman in serious debt, needs to find a job fast before she's made homeless. She gets a lucky break when she is offered a great position in a successful company. Then she discovers that the building was once a Victorian sweatshop with a tragic history. Is this why Rachel feels something increasingly sinister? Soon her new job becomes a living...

'When people in the village heard I was about to start working in the city they tried to unsettle me with tales of woe. The sun, blotted out by the tall buildings, couldn't shine and the rain was poisoned by the toxic fumes that poured from the sock factories. My skin would be covered in pimples from the hell of it all' So begins a young woman's journey to adulthood. Lizzie Vogel leaves her alcoholic, novel-writing mother and heads for Leicester to...