Judy Astley: 17 books

If you like Carole Matthews and Milly Johnson, you'll love this delightful, light-hearted read from ever-popular Judy Astley Alice has a scrupulously organised, comfortable life in West London with Noel - her second husband whose main ambition in life is to sharpen his golf handicap in time...

If you like Milly Johnson and Carole Matthews, you'll love this funny and touching novel from Judy Astley about life after marriage . . . Melanie finds herself single again after years of being one half of a couple. Her friends predict loneliness, frustration, disaster. Her parents are convinced...

Have you ever wondered what your ex is up to? When Nell was a student, she and Patrick were a serious item. They were inseparable, and she really thought he was The One. But then Alex came along...the safer, more restful option, and thanks to her over-controlling mother she opted for him instead. Now...

Stella works as an agony aunt for a teenage magazine. She lives on Pansy Island, a self-consciously arty community on the Thames, where her husband Adrian writes erotic novels in a summerhouse by the river, while her two teenage children prepare themselves for adult life in various ways not necessarily...

Every July, the lucky owners of Cornish holiday homes set off for their annual break. They close up their desirable semis in smartish London suburbs - having turned off the Aga and turned on the burglar alarm - and look forward to a carefree, restful, somehow more fulfilling summer. Clare is...

Funerals are strange things. Kitty hadn't really wanted to go to this one - a old school friend she hadn't seen for years - and she hadn't bargained for the way it made her think of the past. In particular, it made her think of the baby she had given birth to when she was eighteen, the baby her parents...

Sorrel is about to go off on her Gap Year. She sooo wants a home to come home to. Ilex, her brother, is trying to upgrade his flat and marry his smart girlfriend Manda. He'd like some immediate equity. Clover, the elder sister, has plans that involve a bijou second home in France. And...

Jess has just waved goodbye to her darling son, off backpacking to Oz. She's left with two teenage daughters and husband Matt - all of whom find themselves regularly featured in her popular and lighthearted newspaper column in which she conveys to her readers an enviably cheery muddle of family life. Things...

Bella has given up on men. Her latest boyfriend 'forgot' to tell her about his current wife, so she's single again. Now, her ex-husband has turned up, wanting to sell the family home in which she and their two teenage children are happily living their lives. Then Bella sees a...

A Proper Family Holiday was the last thing Lucy was expecting to have. But as a penniless and partnerless house-painter with an expired lease on her flat and a twelve-year-old daughter, she could hardly turn down her parents' offer to take them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Caribbean. She'd...

Sara's mother told her that she shouldn't marry Conrad - that the twenty-five-year age gap between them would tell in the end. The end is now (apparently) approaching fast. Conrad, a famous painter, has decided that it would be good to die before he gets seriously old and so spends his time...

The residents of the Close were much concerned with crime - preventing it, that is. With all those out-of-work teenagers on the nearby council estate hanging around, stealing, joy-riding and goodness knows what else, it was just as well that Paul Mathieson was setting up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme. Not...

After twenty years of marriage, Nina had offloaded serial philanderer Joe and was happy enough, thank you, coping alone with their two demanding daughters and her own hectic life. It felt like freedom, not having to wonder constantly where Joe was, who with and up to what. But into Nina's new,...

Do the friendships you make on holiday have anything to do with real life? It might be sensible to hope that they don't. For the last few years, Beth and Ned have gone to the same Caribbean island to the same luxury spa hotel. There they meet the same crowd, and take up where they left...