MARGARETS FAMILY Margarets girlfriends swore that her son had rushed into a marriage like a bull at a county fair. Hed just come back from the...
The summer sun was blazing, and the heat made the pavement sizzle. Simon Clarke trudged away from the bus stop, a hefty gym bag slung over...
Emily, love, are you free this Saturday? her motherinlaws voice chimed over the handset, warm and familiar, the exact intonation Emily had learned to pick out...
“Warm the souls, dear,” barked Victor Roman, tugging at the collar of his crisp white shirt. He snatched the tie from his wife’s hand and stared...
Nobody will ever take him, they used to say. There were no separate rooms in the old Birmingham animal refuge; everything lay in one vast, noisy...
Emily lies beside her husbands hospital bed, tears streaming down her face. A sixyearold girl whispers, Im sorry, Auntie as soon as you leave he throws...
I loathe him! He isnt my father! Let him go. Well manage without him, Lucy snarled at her stepdad, her voice raw with fury. I never...
We used to call her the Fairy among ourselves. She was short and round, always strolling with a white poodle on a leash, pulling treats out...
Ive known Emily Harper for as long as I can remember, ever since she arrived at Willow Grove Orphanage a month ago. She came here after...
Let me go, please, the woman whispered, her voice trembling like a cracked mirror. Im not going anywhere This is my home, and I wont abandon...
Ill never forget the night I brought my wife, Eleanor, home from St.Marys Hospital in Devon. Shed given birth to...
The Hawthorne manor sits quiet almost every dayspotless, chilled, and costly. Jonathan Hawthorne, a millionaire always in a sharp suit...
Ellie had always lived, as the saying goes, by the book, trudging along a dull, overused lane with her head...
Enough! Im done carrying the whole lot of you on my back! No more penniesgo feed yourselves however you wish!...
The street was bustling today, as it always is in spring when the city finally feels the warm sun after...
Her boss Sally was hurrying to the office, dreadfully lateshe imagined the nightmare of standing before the editorinchief without having...
Youre a burden, not a wife, my motherinlaw announced, her voice cutting through the chatter as I was refilling the...
The old matriarch, Margaret Whitcombe, tended to her potted ferns on the sill, each leaf glistening like tiny lanterns. Suddenly...
Go on and trash your mum all you like, but if you utter another word about my mother that I...
Im Thomas Miller, a farmhand from the little village of Somerby in North Yorkshire, and Ill tell you how Valerie...