Helen Duff

"Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was fifteen, the youngest of three. She was beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers. She and her boyfriend made a teenaged golden couple. She was days away from an idyllic post-exams summer vacation, with her whole life ahead of her. And then she was gone. Now, her mother Laurel Mack is trying to put her life back together. It's been ten years since her daughter disappeared, seven years since her marriage...

In its 300-year history, there has never once been a scandal at Mullings, ancestral home of the decent but dull Stodmarsh family. Until, that is, Edward Stodmarsh makes an ill-advised second marriage to the scheming Regina Stapleton, who insists on bringing her family's 'ornamental hermit' to live on the estate. Suddenly everyone wants to visit Mullings to glimpse this mysterious figure. Strange but harmless, thinks Florence Norris, the family's longstanding...

1990. Please write and tell me why you should live here. Toby Dobbs received a big Victorian house with too many bedrooms to count as a wedding present from his father, but his marriage is over within a month. Very alone, and very lonely, Toby posts an advertisement seeking the Unexpectedly Alone to become his roommates. Fifteen years later, the wayward souls he takes in are still living with him, with no intention of leaving. 2004. Please tell me...

"Lydia, Dean, and Robyn don't know one another. Yet. Each is facing difficult challenges. Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood. Wealthy and successful, she leads a lonely and disjointed existence. Dean is a young, unemployed, single dad whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is eighteen. Gorgeous, popular, and intelligent, she entered her first year of college confident of her dream to become a pediatrician. Now she's failing...

Brothers Tony, Sean, and Ned had the perfect upbringing, but now that they are grown-up, real life is starting to get in the way. Tony's dealing with divorce and a weight problem, novelist Sean is up against a serious case of writer's block and a shock announcement from his 'perfect' new girlfriend, and their parents have a new lodger, Gervase. Why is Bernie, their mother, so keen to give this unsavory waif a home? And what is the real reason for...

The story of two women--told 100 years apart--tell a story about tragic secrets, the chance for forgiveness, and the healing that can come from a new start. England, 1918: As war ends, across the world, people are trying to heal and recover. But Eleanor still feels broken. The loss of her beloved brother, killed just days before the Armistice was signed, feels impossibly unjust. Spending her time in the neglected gardens behind their house, she fears...