Cress lived in fantasy land, she always had. Her schoolmates, with whom she wasn't necessarily always on guard, might call it telling lies, but nobody thought anything of it at home, it was just Cress, so much the youngest that she made her own world... nobody thought it was dangerous. She would grow out of it when she married and joined the real world. Cress did grow up, and she did marry, but she didn't leave her fantasies behind. The situation into which they carried her was so terrible that she was afraid to tell the truth - so afraid that, in fact, she lost sight of where fantasy ended and the truth really began. And Debbie Nankervis, driving to Cornwall through a blizzard to talk business with her friends Tim and Lesley, was all unknowing on a collision course with the consequences. A great painter with words, Jane Hatton shows us just how difficult family relationships can sometimes be.

They were the beautiful, rich and indulged daughters of a very famous man who adored them, but when Austin Willerby died, Julie-Anne and Austine found themselves, money, property and all, in the hands of a complete stranger. It did not seem as if Merlin Ravenscourt ('Only someone like Anabel could find a name like that!' commented Julie-Anne) meant to take his guardianship very seriously, but nevertheless, a little daunted by the sudden removal of so much protective affection, the two girls travelled from America to England to discuss their future. Their father's friends placed them on the plane with fond solicitude - and at the other end their guardian waited to receive them. But something went wrong, and they found that they had flown from a world where they were loved and sheltered into one which more closely resembled a nightmare. A tense and exciting novel, utterly convincing.

Cheryl loved Oliver, Oliver loved Cheryl. Jonathan loved Cheryl too, and Joanna loved Oliver. Cheryl's parents distrusted Oliver, and wanted her to marry Jonathan, Oliver's whole family appeared to despise Cheryl and would have preferred him to marry Joanna. Maeve wanted Cheryl's job, and Oliver resisted the idea of a job at all, unless it was something of which everyone else disapproved. Four-year-old Candy only wanted to be a bridesmaid - anybody's bridesmaid. The gypsy at the fair said You choose - oh, and watch your step as you do it! Lightheartedly as it all began, with so many different agendas, the sun wouldn't shine on everyone. Nor did it.

Chel and Oliver flee westward to Cornwall to escape unacceptable interference and some challenging problems, each the result of Oliver's crippling encounter with a gang of thugs in his home town of Embridge. They have no idea of where they are heading, or what they will do when they get there. Their impulsive flight has only made what was bad get even worse - for what can you do with a permanently disabled adventurer whose past included sailing single-handed round the world, delivering yachts and diving to the uttermost depths of the sea, when you are parked in a mobile home in an almost deserted caravan park, with no friends to hand, no resources, and let's face it, no visible hope for the future? Oliver's stepsister, Susan has suggested, "Buy him a paintbox - Oliver was always rather good at painting at school," but, as Chel knows, there is no hope that he will do anything that he might owe to his artistic mother, who fled from both marriage and child to follow her own dreams when Oliver was barely two. Chel, tired and stressed, afraid of the consequences of her own impulsive action, and feeling alone as she has never felt before, is ready to break down and howl to the wind... and that is when Judy, daughter of the caravan park's owner, delivers a box of new-laid eggs from her mother, and from that moment on, things begin to change... Jane Hatton spins a fascinating story with her usual deft touch.

Kim and Tamsin met each other in Things that go Bump in the Night, each of them unaware at the time that they had ever had a twin, and by doing so inadvertently solved the mystery of who had killed their birth mother more than twenty years before. But the story didn't stop there: the consequences of their separation, of what had led to it in the first place and of what had subsequently come out of it, would have to be addressed, and this would involve new friends, new partners, and the start of new lives for them both, and the reunion of a disrupted family, the rescue of a near-derelict listed building and its adjacent farmland, and the restoration of a man's whole life. A West Country saga, and a delight to read.

You should never pick up hitch-hikers, her father had told her, but the storm was so wild, the night so dark and the hour so late, that Keri stopped at the side of the empty dual carriageway and took on board a whole load of worry, grief and trouble. The Easter break in Cornwall with her friend Gillian, that should have been so relaxing and ordinary, changed from that moment, and her quiet, rather dull and respectable life was to glow with colour and ring with music and laughter over the next few days in spite of disturbing undertones – for things were not at all what they seemed. And after all the excitement there came the reckoning, and Keri had to come to terms with a bitter lesson; always listen to your dad, because he’s often right… This is a book about relationships, about understanding, and about knowing your own strengths and recognising not just your own weaknesses but other people’s too, but much more than that, about courage.

In the previous book in the series, A Different View, Dot speculates to her friend Sally that when Oliver, in his wilder, footloose days, was out in the Mediterranean, he had an affair that turned sour on him, and that his famous round-the-world trip was a way to forget and to put it behind him. Was she right? And if she was, who was the woman, and why didn't he marry her? Of course, Dot may have been quite wrong, it wouldn't have been the first time. On the other hand, she might have been right on the money... Read this book to find out.

Dot's social position in Embridge, a small seaside town in Dorset, defines her lifetime's achievement, so that when her openly despised son-in-law becomes a celebrity overnight, making her a laughing stock among those she has always considered her friends, her humiliation is complete. Shrewd enough to realise that she can't expect much help from her alienated daughters, her ex-husband, or her stepson, she prepares to face it out alone, and is therefore very much shaken when she finds that she isn't alone at all, and that help will come from some very unexpected places. Further west, the granddaughter of Dot's late first husband - best-selling novelist Elizabeth Ballantyne, whom due to a family feud Dot hasn't seen since she was two - is trying dump her arrogant, conceited boyfriend, Paul, who is proving difficult to dislodge, and the already complicated Nankervis family tree is due for a high wind through its branches when their interests, and those of the family in general, converge at a family christening in Cornwall ...

It began as a murder mystery, more than twenty years old and remaining unsolved, and it held a special fascination for Kim and Diana because Kim had inadvertently rented the scene of the crime - but as they were to discover, once you start digging in such circumstances, you're almost bound to disinter things that other people wish to keep hidden. You can place yourself in grave danger, and in extreme instances, you could lose your own life. The phrase "where the bodies are buried" takes on a new and sinister significance. And if you're clever enough to find the murderer, it doesn't end there. How can it? When someone has killed, when someone has moved heaven and earth to cover up the deed and succeeded for so long a time there are going to be all kinds of smaller crimes that have arisen out of the original deception. Lies may be the least of them. Even when you think you have found the truth, is it the whole truth? Because the fact of murder has a beginning somewhere, and that beginning may be far back beyond the actual motive...

Everybody, from time to time, will experience an annus horribilis, but this is the year that none of the family is going to forget in a hurry. Susan is locked in a custody struggle with her soon-to-be-ex husband Tom, who is perfectly prepared to play dirty if he has to. Because of her husband's sudden celebrity Debbie is faced with lifestyle changes for which she is unprepared. Oliver and Chel are on a terminal downward slide due to a pact that Oliver had thought he made with his wife years ago, and Dot's complacent life is disintegrating before her eyes. Only Jerry's path seems edged with primroses. Susan needs to find the courage to defend her children conclusively. Debbie must accept that two people make a marriage, and both have a right to a say as to what happens within it. Oliver will need to look beyond himself and his wrecked ambitions if he wishes to save his marriage. Dot seems to have blundered down a blind alley and must find her way out. Finally, answers must come from within, and finding definitive answers has never been a Nankervis talent. But family life has never been quite like this before either, so can any of them, even if not all of them, weather the threatening storms simply by behaving like a proper family?

Susan has grown up with the knowledge that her natural father died before she was born, and that Jerry Nankervis adopted her on his marriage to her mother. She has never asked questions, has wanted to be part of the Nankervis family so much that she has never felt the need. But stepbrother Oliver and his wife have gone to live in Cornwall, half-sister Debbie has married a Cornishman, Jerry's marriage to her mother has foundered and he shows all the signs of returning to his first wife, Helen. Stranded in Embridge with her own marriage in seriously shoal water and her mother steadfastly unsympathetic, Susan feels desperate and rejected. A chance meeting at Debbie's wedding has put an idea into her head, on an impulse she acts upon it: she will trace her father, Henry, and in learning about him she maybe can find herself ... but where the quest will lead her is not where she expected, and the search itself has such far-reaching effects that it seems likely to make things infinitely worse ... Susan's actions have been, in one way, definitive, but can this be the final word on the subject? To find out, watch for the seventh in the series, STORMCLOUDS.

First in the Cornish chronicle of the Nankervis family. Nonie first met Matthew Sutton when he came as a teacher to the art college where she was a student. It wasn't his ideal career choice, it was that or starvation, and maybe the sedate south-coast town of Embridge wasn't ready for him, but however that might be, his impact on the college turned out to be unforgettable. A disillusioned ex-bomber pilot from World War II and a twenty-year-old of the sixties is hardly a match made in heaven, and things were further complicated by the turbulent love-life of Nonie's best friend Helen, and her whirlwind romance with conventional solicitor Jerry Nankervis. And then there was Peachey, third in this close triangle of friends, whose twisted thinking and misdirected suspicions were to change everything, irrevocably, for them all ... but the real spanner in the works in the end was probably Dot. The Dreaded Dot. It had all the ingredients of a simple love story at the outset. But then, so did Romeo & Juliet.

The Nankervises are planning a wedding. As one might expect from such a dysfunctional family, chaos and confusion reign - the bride's mother has disowned her, her father is about to release an entire cattery of cats among the pigeons, her sister is fighting to save her marriage she isn't sure she wants any more, and to top everything off nicely, the groom is heading for a breakdown. Amidst the chaos, Oliver and Chel, in unusual roles for them as the family's one stable element, try to maintain at least the illusion of order. In Oliver's case, this simply means he disappears into his studio and paints while the storm rages past him, but Chel finds herself running a pub. As with the others in the series, although each stands on its own, there are threads throughout this book that lead towards the next. To find out what happens next, LOOKING for HENRY will take the story on for you.