Rachel Billington: 11 books

Poppy's dad is still in prison. Her mum has rushed back to Poland to look after her seriously ill mother, and Poppy is sent to stay with her friend Jude. But Poppy feels stifled. At times like this she needs Angel, the joker among her friends - dodgy, wild, can't read or write much, yet bursting with...

The disappearance of a teenage boy tears a family apart in this poignant, highly topical and searching story. Thirteen-year-old Dan hasn't returned home and his parents don't know whether he's run away, been kidnapped - or something worse. For one family the world as they know it is about to...

" ... the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union." Thus the last line of Jane Austen's Emma. A year later, Emma and Knightley are still living at Hartfield,...

An intense, moving novel about obsessive love. K, a middle-aged painter, has returned from a hermit-like existence in Chile to attend the wedding of a girl he once loved to the point of obsession. He arrives at the English country church to find it empty and silent. The wedding has been postponed....

When Poppy discovers that her father Frank is in prison, she is angry and bewildered. Seeing her wonderful, heroic father in a London prison looking pale, subdued and in prison clothes, she suddenly has a brilliant idea: to free her father. She and her friend Will invent all kinds of escape ideas...

From the critically acclaimed author, a stylish and compelling novel about a woman making a new life for herself. Alice Lightfoot is far too young to be a widow and a grandmother. Perhaps she'd been too young to be a wife, although she was happy enough at the time. Now, nearly three years after...

A sweeping historical drama, based on the true and enduring love of Thomas Cochrane and Maria Graham. Chile*, June 1822.* Maria Graham, a young British widow, watches as her compatriot Admiral Lord Cochrane sails triumphantly into the Valparaiso Bay, fresh from leading the Chilean fleet to...

Three women, born at the outbreak of World War II, who've grown up in widely differing circumstances, form an improbable friendship that sustains them through forty years. Connie is the youngest member of a large Irish family and Ireland's too small to contain her. She is beautiful and impulsive....

An emotional, gritty family drama exploring the power of frustrated love and intense sibling rivalry - from the acclaimed author of ONE SUMMER and A WOMAN'S LIFE One cool March morning in London, MP Leo Barr is told that his brother, Charlie, is dead. He has hanged himself from a chestnut tree...

When Poppy discovers that her father Frank is in prison, she is angry and bewildered. Seeing her wonderful, heroic father in a London prison looking pale, subdued and in prison clothes, she suddenly has a brilliant idea: to free her father. She and her friend Will invent all kinds of escape ideas...

Elizabeth Longford proves the truth of the old saying that "Mother knows best," a theory that is being treated with renewed respect by many of today’s experts in child-rearing. She cites from her own experience as the mother of a large family, and quotes from letters which she received...