‘The trouble is, we don’t recognise every danger when we see it. And that’s how Mr Man manages to creep into our lives.’ It is 1966, and things are changing in the close-knit Napier Road. Stephanie is 9 years old, and she has plans: 1. Get Jesus to heal her wonky foot 2. Escape her spiteful friend Dawn 3. Persuade her mum to love her But everything changes when Stephanie strikes up a relationship with Mr Man, who always seems pleased to see her. When Dawn goes missing in the woods during the World Cup final, no one appears to know what happened to her – but more than one of them is lying. May 1997, and Stephanie has spent her life trying to bury the events of that terrible summer. When a man starts following her on the train home from London, she realises the dark truth of what happened may have finally caught up with her.

When Kitty Green returns to the Gloucestershire school where she was once a child evacuee during World World II, she discovers that it is to be rehoused on the premises of the old boys' home Heaven House. At the time Kitty had been inseparable from one of its inmates, Tommy Glover, and so she begins to reminisce...In 1944 eight-year-old Kitty is placed in Sheepcote village with a cold, unhappy couple Joyce and Jack Shepherd, who find her Cockney chirpiness repugnant. They also have problems of their own: 'Aunty' Joyce nurses a phobia against germs while 'Uncle' Jack seeks solace from his frigid wife in the pages of the Bible. Neither Joyce nor Jack approve of Kitty's friendship with Tommy, and even seem to nurse a mysterious hatred of him. Starved of affection herself, Kitty soon befriends all outsiders in the village she sees as missing home or longing for love: American airmen, gypsies, German POWs, orphans, and above all, her beloved Tommy. In the end, it is her relentless...

They want to move on—but one terrible truth could shatter it all. As a widowed mother of three, new love seems impossible for Freya—until she meets Duncan, and suddenly she feels alive again. But there are secrets afflicting Freya’s family, some more sinister than others, that could destroy their relationship before it has a chance to flourish. While Freya’s older children are less than welcoming, six-year-old Sophie helps Duncan find his place in the family—but even Sophie harbours fears that threaten to overshadow any chance of a new start. The past is hard to leave behind when pictures of Freya’s idolised late husband hang in every room, and the more Duncan tries to find the source of Sophie’s anxiety, the more he is convinced that Reuben was not the perfect husband and father Freya remembers. Tormented by concern and his own insecurity, Duncan begins an obsessive investigation into the dead man’s past. But when his good intentions lead him in too deep, he risks destroying everything he has built with Freya—and the whole family’s second chance at happiness.

In the beginning a small girl runs into a wood, and two years later walks out of it and into the nearest house. Gracie, the childless spinster who finds her curled up on her armchair, takes her on as her own, seeing her as a feral gift of fate. Known as Joy in the Cotswold village that adopts her, there is endless speculation about her wild past and comical ways. In this moving and passionate tale, Joy grows into a young woman at the advent of World War II, and when she becomes romantically involved with a fighter pilot the extraordinary mystery of her past slowly unravels.