When age makes you invisible, secrets are easier to hide Lydia imagines her new job running a Senior Citizen's Social Club three afternoons a week will involve drinking tea while playing gentle games of cards, listening to The Beatles and reminiscing about food rationing and The Blitz. She does not expect to find a failed actor addicted to shoplifting, a woman who's been hiding from a mysterious and very chequered past, and a prolific yarn-bomber. It turns out that their ideas about how to spend their afternoons are very different. After a tragic accident means the council threatens to sell the community centre, the Social Club, aided by their friends in the nursery next door and a geriatric orphaned mongrel, set out to save it. They might not be able to save the hall, but they might just save each other - if their pasts don't catch up with them first...

When age makes you invisible, secrets are easier to hide.

Daphne knows that age is just a number. She also knows that society no longer pays her any attention – something she’s happy to exploit to help her hide a somewhat chequered past.

But finding herself alone on her 70th birthday, with only her plants to talk to and neighbours to stalk online, she decides she needs some friends. Joining a Senior Citizen's Social Club she’s horrified at the expectation she’ll spend her time enduring gentle crafting activities. Thankfully, the other members – including a failed actor addicted to shoplifting and a prolific yarn-bomber – agree.

After a tragic accident, the local council threaten to close the club – but they have underestimated the wrong group of pensioners...and with the help of a teenage dad and a geriatric, orphaned dog, the incongruous gang set out to prove it.

As long as their pasts don't catch up with them first…

Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. As a seasoned commuter, she knows there are rules that everyone should follow: · You must have a job to go to · Don't consume hot food · Always pack for any eventuality · You must never speak to strangers on the train Iona sees the same group of people each day - ones she makes assumptions about, gives nicknames to, but never ever talks to. But then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist-Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Suspiciously-Nice-New Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction. With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don't match reality. But when Iona's life begins to fall apart, will her new friends be there when she needs them most? ­­­----------------------- 'Utterly gorgeous. A proper good pick-me-up of a book' RUTH JONES 'Warm, funny and moving' ROSIE WALSH 'Full of original characters and wisdom' KATIE FFORDE 'Sunny, funny and full of heart' NITA PROSE 'Feel-good fiction at its best' SOPHIE COUSENS 'Gloriously entertaining and completely addictive' HAZEL PRIOR

Now includes an exclusive extract of Clare Pooley's new and brilliantly uplifting novel The People On Platform 5 - available now Treat yourself to the warm, poignant and uplifting Radio 2 Book Club pick, loved by hundreds of thousands of readers... 'The first book which has made me laugh in a long time' 'A charming, funny and uplifting story' 'Full of optimism ... I defy anyone not to pick it up and be both transported and delighted' 'This book helped to lift my spirits' 'Well-written, great characters , a charming tale, and packed with feel-good factor' ------------ Six strangers with one thing in common: their lives aren't always what they make them out to be. What would happen if they told the truth instead? Julian Jessop is tired of hiding the deep loneliness he feels. So he begins The Authenticity Project - a small green notebook containing the truth about his life. Leaving the notebook on a table in his friendly neighbourhood cafe, Julian never expects Monica, the owner, to track him down after finding it. Or that she'll be inspired to write down her own story. Little do they realise that such small acts of honesty hold the power to impact all those who discover the notebook and change their lives completely. -------------- Praise for The Authenticity Project: 'A warm and endearing tale about truth, friendship and the power of connection' Mike Gayle 'Original, engaging and unforgettable' Sarah Morgan 'A joyous, funny read that leaves you all warm inside' Beth Morrey, Sunday Times bestselling author of Saving Missy

A New York Times bestseller A WASHINGTON POST "FEEL-GOOD BOOK guaranteed to lift your spirits" "A warm, charming tale about the rewards of revealing oneself, warts and all." -People The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love Clare Pooley's next book, Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting, is forthcoming Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with one another. But what if they were? And so he writes-in a plain, green journal-the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local cafe. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves-and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Cafe. The Authenticity Project's cast of characters-including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends-is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward-and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness. The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for-and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.

A bravely honest and brilliantly comic account of how one mother gave up drinking and started living. This is Bridget Jones Dries Out. Clare Pooley is a Cambridge graduate and was a Managing Partner at one of the world's biggest advertising agencies, and yet by eighteen months ago she'd become an overweight, depressed, middle-aged mother of three who was drinking more than a bottle of wine a day, and spending her evenings Googling 'Am I an alcoholic?' In a desperate bid to turn her life around, she quit drinking and started a blog. She called it Mummy Was a Secret Drinker. This book is the story of a year in Clare's life. A year that started with her quitting booze having been drinking more than a bottle of wine every day. It sees her starting a hugely successful blog, then getting and beating breast cancer. By the end of the year she is booze free and cancer free, two stone lighter and with a life that is so much richer, healthier and more rewarding than ever before. Sober Diaries is an upbeat, funny and positive look at how to live life to the full. Interwoven within Clare's own very personal and frank story is research and advice, and answers to questions like: How do I know if I'm drinking too much? How will I cope at parties? What do I say to friends and family? How do I cope with cravings? Will I lose weight? What if my partner still drinks? And many more.