Jennie Rooney

Michael and Stevie might have married had it not been for the Second World War. Now they are both elderly: he is in hospital and can no longer talk. Stevie is recovering from the death of her husband and is living with her daughter. They reminisce about each other, neither knowing what has has happened to the other. Richard & Judy Bookclub

After being jilted by her fiancé, Ursula Bridgewater decides to go on one of the new Cook’s Tours of America. She takes a young orphan as her travelling companion and at Niagara Falls they meet Toby O’Hara who makes his living taking visitors on hot air balloon flights over the Falls.

Joan Stanley has a secret. She is a loving mother, a doting grandmother, and leads a quiet, unremarkable life in the suburbs. Then one morning there is a knock on the door, and suddenly the past she has been so keen to hide for the last fifty years threatens to overturn her comfortable world.