An enthralling new novel from the highly acclaimed author of Becoming Jane Eyre. Sheila Kohler's memoir Once We Were Sisters is now available. The compelling story of a forbidden marriage, a baby lost, and a love triangle gone horribly wrong, Love Child centers on Bill, a South African woman whose life has been defined by the apartheid-era, class-riven society in which she lives. Under pressure to make her will, Bill is forced to think about the momentous events and decisions that have made her an extremely wealthy if somewhat disillusioned woman. To whom should she leave her fortune? As Bill relives her past, we learn that this is a simple question with a complicated answer. In elegant, sensual, and nuanced prose, Kohler skillfully explores the space between our dreams and our reality, between our hopes and our disappointments.

Tommy Hulette never asked to be born. Everyone wants to make him regret it even so. Tommy Hulette hates his ghetto Brooklyn neighborhood. He's content living with his beautiful mother, his loyal caring father, his little sister Greta. He enjoys playing stickball with neighborhood friends then really perks up when he meets beautiful and interesting Stephanie from Starrett City. But Tommy's world is shattered forever. His mother becomes terribly unhappy and commits suicide. Things go downhill completely when his father decides he needs time to cope with the tragedy, sending Tommy and his sister to live with a brother Tommy never heard about. He promises that it will be for a short spell until he can come back for them. He doesn't and it doesn't take long for Tommy to discover how this brother hates him and has since birth. He wants to punish Tommy for events occurred long before Tommy's birth...Then it gets worse as he wants Tommy to end his life just like his mother...and to this Tommy is pushed and pushed and pushed... Pushed to the limit, and with no one to turn to, Tommy takes solace in his sister's company and letters he receives from Stephanie. Will he be able to cling to life, and not succumb like his mother?

NANNY WANTED Prominent author, Pearce Tyrone, seeks nanny to care for adorable baby girl. Must be experienced and discreet. Must also be utterly trustworthy and have no connections with the press…. Unfortunately Cathy Fielding didn't comply with any of the required criteria—but she wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop her! An enthusiastic reporter, Cathy was determined to uncover, once and for all, whether baby Poppy was really Pearce Tyrone's love-child. But what Cathy didn't reckon on was her growing and unprofessional interest in the man himself….

Adoption is one of the great, untold stories of our recent past. It is a truly epic tale of loss, guilt, identity, family feuds, reunion and redemption. It is a subject, until very recently, surrounded by secrecy and taboos. This is the heart-warming true story of a little girl's adoption in the 1950s and her search, nearly forty years later, for her birth mother. When mother and daughter meet, Sue thinks she has finally reached the end of her journey. Then Sue discovers she wasn't the only baby her mother gave away ... Weaved throughout is the vivid, emotional history of adoption in the UK. Drawing on a wide range of intimate personal experiences, it outlines the forces that shaped 20th century adoption practice, from baby-farming, the stigma of illegitimacy, incest and the bastardy laws, to children taken by force, the Magdalene laundries, mass emigration schemes without parental consent, to modern day adoption practices, buying babies from abroad, sperm donor fathers and tearful reunions on Trisha.

Brilliantly evoking the changing attitudes of the time, The Love Child is a novel about love, family, separation, despair, and hope, full of tenderness and deep feeling. A young mother’s sacrifice. A child’s desperate search for the truth... London, 1917 When nineteen-year-old Alice Copeman becomes pregnant, she is forced by her father and stepmother to give up the baby. She simply cannot be allowed to bring shame upon her family. But all Alice can think about is the small, kitten-like child she gave away, and she mourns the father, a young soldier, so beloved, who will never have the chance to know his daughter. Edith and Philip Burns, a childless couple, yearn for a child of their own. When they secretly adopt a baby girl, Irene, their life together must surely be complete. Irene grows up knowing that she is different from other children, but no one will tell her the full truth. Putting hopes of marriage and children behind her, Alice embarks upon a pioneering medical career, striving to make her way in a male-dominated world. Meanwhile, Irene struggles to define her own life, eventually leaving her Suffolk home to find work in London. As two extraordinary stories intertwine across two decades, will secrets long-buried at last come to light?

Shy and awkward, ruthlessly ridiculed by other children and carelessly treated by adults, Claudia Fryar flees her hometown of Philadelphia after her father’s death. But years of shame and silent suffering as the love child of the respected—and married—Louis Harrison finally come to a raging boil when Harrison’s jealous widow cheats Claudia out of her inheritance. Twice-scorned, Claudia transforms herself into Peach Harrison: bold, beautiful…and sinister. Now a successful newscaster, Peach makes a triumphant return to Philadelphia, to the welcoming arms of those who once cast her aside. But as Peach puts her “big payback” scheme into action, she realizes that revenge comes with some serious costs of its own.