Emotional Gripping

Ali turned towards the cottage, anger flooding through her. She’d believed she and Meg were friends; that they’d bonded over a vision of motherhood...a world where your baby deserved everything you could give it. She’d pulled Meg’s words - Meg’s life - around her, like a comfort blanket. But that shared vision had never existed. And Ali was alone now, with nothing to protect her.

When Louise Taylor is hit by a car as she cycles home in the rain following a fight with her boyfriend, she’s left hurt, frightened, and confused. And worse, something tells her it wasn’t an accident. Housebound in her cramped apartment while she recovers, flashbacks to her traumatic childhood begin to resurface. Desperate to keep busy and distract herself, she hires Edward - a friend of a friend - to repaint her shabby living room and, hopefully, keep the past at bay. When Edward arrives - quiet, considerate, and handsome - Lou instantly feels like they’ve met before.

The pretty market town of Sterndale is a close-knit community where everyone thinks they know everyone else. But at a lavish summer wedding, a local celebrity is discovered slumped in the gardens, the victim of a violent assault that leads to a murder investigation. As the police search for answers, suspicion and paranoia build and the lives of the locals are turned upside down. Secrets that lurk beneath the pristine façade of Sterndale come to light as detectives close in on the truth.

"Your son is missing," they say, and life as I know it is over. "Where would he go?" the police ask. "Where would he be?" my daughter begs. My heart races as images flash in my mind. The cabin we rent every autumn, surrounded by fiery-red maple trees. Voices raised. Tears falling. A marriage falling apart. And worst of all my husband telling our child, Theo, to run. The rest is a blank in my memory. If I close my eyes I can almost see it. A betrayal that has left me alone, in tatters, grieving for what we had.

It's a warm, cloudless morning on the day the envelope arrives for Daisy. Soft sunlight streams into the apartment she shares with her partner, Anderson, who is sleeping peacefully. Daisy's fought hard for this happiness, worked her way up from being a vulnerable teenage runaway to a woman with a stable job and a loving boyfriend.

Tommy Belanger was raised in a dysfunctional family, plagued with abject poverty, incest, alcohol and child abuse. His life was filled with grief, hunger and horror. The family had been moved from one poverty-stricken two-bedroom shack to another. Always hoping for a better tomorrow. Landing in a home the mirror image of the one they had escaped.

2010, San Francisco. Anna Young is content with her life, running a bustling deli and taking care of her adored grandfather Max, who raised her. Max has never spoken of his past until he hands over an old map, the plans to a grand house just north of Berlin. With a shaking finger, he points to it and says, “I left something behind under the floorboards. Please bring it home before I die.”

Three sisters. Three childhoods ruined. One chance to heal the scars of the past. After their death of their cruel and abusive mother, estranged sisters Alex, Catherine and Beth reunite once again.

When Jayne Winters learns that she has inherited half of her grandmother’s oceanside estate in North Carolina, she is stunned. It’s been 20 years since she visited Woodsong Harbor, but Jayne can still remember the taste of saltwater taffy on her tongue, the tangy scent of the ocean blending with freshly baked pastries in the air. But there is a catch: Jayne must spend the next six months renovating the house with her estranged sister, Charlotte.