Fiction: special features

Ally and her dad, Geoff, run the family business, a creative retreat, from their home Hollyhock Cottage in picturesque Kittiwake Cove. They give their guests their dream break, but Ally hankers after glamourous city living, fancy restaurants and art galleries. Ally's survival strategy is to escap...

65-year-old Al Ward is several years into an isolated stint living on old mining land in Nevada left to him by his great uncle. One morning, the horse arrives outside his home, seemingly unable to feed itself or stay safe from coyote attacks. 6000 feet up, 30 miles from the nearest town and broke...

Penny Baker is winning at life. Sort of. Her work is demanding, her kids are demanding and her husband seems to be undergoing some weird midlife crisis but she is juggling it all - with the added delights of the menopause. But when the charity she works for is thrown into crisis and her mother's ...

When Ben was seven, his mother was murdered in the woods while he waited for her in their car. The case made the front pages, but her killer was never found. Thirty years later, Ben has a safe, grown-up life: a job, a ramshackle cottage and, most importantly, a happy marriage to Rebecca. His moth...

Yousef is the golden child to his strict Pakistani parents, overshadowing his younger sister, Rehana. As he finishes his medical degree in London, Yousef's life appears to be mapped out for him - become a doctor, marry a suitable girl of his parents' choosing and, above all, make his family proud...

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 d...

It's a blazing summer when two men arrive in the village. They're coming for gold. What they bring is trouble. Cal Hooper was a Chicago detective, till he moved to the West of Ireland looking for peace. He's found it, more or less - in his relationship with local woman Lena, and the bond he's for...

Meet Jolene. She's socially awkward, depressed and hates her work colleagues. Due to a serious IT error, she's also just been granted access to all of their emails and private messages. She knows she should tell HR, but finds it hard to resist knowing what they all really think of her.When her ac...

The Langfords are a perfectly happy family. Louisa and Kip, happily married for nearly 40 years, have raised their children and are now just settling into a new phase of life where they'll have more time for themselves. Everything seems perfect. But then, one Boxing Day after a lovely family Chri...

What does it mean to remember? Joined at birth, then pulled apart, Selina and Zora's relationship is marked by a pattern of closeness and separation. Growing up in 50s' and 60s' London under the shadow of Enoch Powell, they are instinctively dependent on each other, and yet Zora yearns for her ow...