AN UNSUITABLE MATCH - TROLLOPE JOANNA - Pan

From Joanna Trollope, one of the most insightful chroniclers of family life writing fiction today, comes a contemporary retelling of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen’s classic novel of love, money, and two very different sisters.

John Dashwood promised his dying father that he would take care of his half sisters. But his wife, Fanny, has no desire to share their newly inherited estate. When she descends upon Norland Park, the three Dashwood girls—Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret—are faced with the realities of a cold world and the cruelties of life without their father, their home, or their money.

With her sparkling wit, Joanna Trollope casts a clever, satirical eye on the tales of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood.

Reimagining Sense and Sensibility in a fresh, modern new light, she spins the novel’s romance, bonnets, and betrothals into a wonderfully witty coming-of-age story about the stuff that really makes the world go around. For when it comes to money, some things never change....

Gina and Laurence had been the best of friends ever since they were teenagers. They had never been in love—just friends.

Now, Gina is married to the exquisitely tasteful Fergus and lives in stylish perfection at High Place. Laurence is married to down-to-earth Hilary and they have spent their married life turning The Bee House into both home and hotel.

Then, with elegant disdain, Fergus announces he is leaving Gina and their teenage daughter. As Gina's misery ricochets through the two homes, she turns for emotional support to Laurence, her dearest friend. And as Laurence gives comfort, so his own marriage, and the stability of his children, edges towards destruction.

When a man and a woman get married, things can get complicated. When they have children from previous marriages, 'complicated' can become the understatement of the year. From the grown daughter who insinuates herself into her widowed father's romantic life, to the sullen teenager whose loyalties lie with her estranged mother; from the awkwardness of tense celebrations to the discovery of surprising sources of strength, Joanna Trollope reveals the laughter and tears, the tension and the tenderness, that live behind the statistics and stereotypes about stepfamilies.

When a man and a woman get married, things can get complicated. When they have children from previous marriages, "complicated" can become the understatement of the year. From the grown daughter who insinuates herself into her widowed father's romantic life, to the sullen teenager whose loyalties lie with her estranged mother; from the awkwardness of tense celebrations to the discovery of surprising sources of strength, Joanna Trollope reveals the laughter and tears, the tension and the tenderness, that live behind the statistics and stereotypes about stepfamilies.

Gina and Laurence had been the best of friends ever since they were teenagers. They had never been in love—just friends.

Now, Gina is married to the exquisitely tasteful Fergus and lives in stylish perfection at High Place. Laurence is married to down-to-earth Hilary and they have spent their married life turning The Bee House into both home and hotel.

Then, with elegant disdain, Fergus announces he is leaving Gina and their teenage daughter. As Gina's misery ricochets through the two homes, she turns for emotional support to Laurence, her dearest friend. And as Laurence gives comfort, so his own marriage, and the stability of his children, edges towards destruction.

Gillon—red-haired, intelligent, vulnerable—comes to London to escape from the demands of her wealthy, conventional, socially superior family in Charleston, South Carolina. An art historian, she has a chance meeting with Tilly, whose long-term boyfriend, Henry, is a wildlife photographer who is finding it hard to commit. Before long Gillon has moved into their flat, replacing Henry's old mate William, William's on-off-girlfriend Susie, and a lot of mess and disorganization.

Things are changing, and Tilly finds it difficult to accept that her dreams of settling down with Henry are receding further into the distance, especially when Henry announces that he is going to South Carolina to photograph the abundant wildlife of the area. There, Henry is wholly seduced by the charms of Charleston, by Gillon's family, and by the old patrician way of life which presents itself. The rules seem to be changing, the time passing by, and the future is becoming less and less certain.

Brought up by the same parents, but born to two different mothers, Nathalie and David have grown up as brother and sister, and share a fierce loyalty. Their decision as adults to try to find their birth mothers is no straightforward matter. It affects, acutely and often painfully, their spouses and children, the people they work with, and, most poignantly, the two women who gave them up for adoption all those years ago. Exploring her subject with inimitable imagination and humanity, the celebrated author of Marrying the Mistress and The Rector's Wife once again works her magic.

From Joanna Trollope, one of the most insightful chroniclers of family life writing fiction today, comes a contemporary retelling of Sense snd Sensibility, Jane Austen’s classic novel of love, money, and two very different sisters.

John Dashwood promised his dying father that he would take care of his half sisters. But his wife, Fanny, has no desire to share their newly inherited estate. When she descends upon Norland Park, the three Dashwood girls—Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret—are faced with the realities of a cold world and the cruelties of life without their father, their home, or their money.

With her sparkling wit, Joanna Trollope casts a clever, satirical eye on the tales of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood.

Reimagining Sense and Sensibility in a fresh, modern new light, she spins the novel’s romance, bonnets, and betrothals into a wonderfully witty coming-of-age story about the stuff that really makes the world go around. For when it comes to money, some things never change....

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LOVE AND DUTY COLLIDE?

DAN RILEY IS A MAJOR IN THE BRITISH ARMY. After a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, he is coming home to the wife and young daughters he adores. He's up for promotion and his ex-Army grandfather and father couldn't be prouder. The Rileys are united in support of Dan's passion for his career.

But are they really? His wife, Alexa, has been offered a good teaching job she can't take because the Army may move the family at any time. Her daughter Isabel hates her boarding school—the only good educational option for Army families—and starts running away. And Dan spends all his time on the base, unable to break the strong bonds forged with his friends in battle. Soon everyone who knows the Rileys is trying to help them save their marriage, but it's up to Alexa to decide if she can sacrifice her needs and those of her family to support Dan's commitment to his work.

With her trademark intelligence and grace, Joanna Trollope illuminates the complexities of modern life in this story of a family striving to balance duty and ambition.

All hell breaks loose in a well-heeled English family when the father, a respected judge, announces he is leaving a forty-year marriage to marry his mistress.

As Anthony and Rachel Brinkley welcome their third daughter-in-law to the family, they don't quite realize the profound shift that is about to take place. For different reasons, the Brinkleys' two previous daughters-in-law hadn't been able to resist Rachel's maternal control and Anthony's gentle charm and had settled into their husbands' family without rocking the boat. But Charlotte—very young, very beautiful, and spoiled—has no intention of falling into step with the Brinkleys and wants to establish her own household. Soon Rachel's sons begin to think of their own houses as home and of their mother's house as simply the place where their parents live—a necessary and inevitable shift of loyalties that threatens Rachel's sense of herself, breaks Anthony's heart, and causes unexpected consequences in all the marriages. Then a crisis brings these changes to the surface, and everyone has to learn what family love means all over again.