Joanna Trollope Books in Order

Twenty‑five years after Monica and Gus left England to run a vineyard in southern Spain, Gus suffers a stroke that threatens everything they have built. Their three adult children descend from London with conflicting ideas about care, business and home, reigniting old rivalries under the Mediterranean sun.

Divorced grandmother Rose Woodrowe is surprised by the strength of her renewed love for Tyler Masson, an old acquaintance who asks her to marry him. Their grown‑up children, wary and possessive, react badly, leaving Rose and Tyler to work out whether they can build a future together without losing their families.

This pocket anthology gathers classic love poems from many centuries, framed by Joanna Trollope’s introduction. It offers a small, gift‑sized collection for readers who want to savour how writers have tried to capture passion, heartbreak and enduring devotion in verse.

In this standalone novel, relationships and expectations collide around the idea of what makes a ‘good match’. As family pressure, social class and private longings rub up against each other, the characters must decide whether security or emotional honesty matters more when choosing whom to build a life with.

This volume collects the shortlisted stories for the 2017 BBC National Short Story Award. Diverse in style and setting, the pieces showcase some of the most interesting contemporary short fiction voices in a single, compact anthology.

Four women who met as economics students have become high‑fliers in London’s financial world. When Stacey is abruptly sacked after asking for flexible hours to care for her mother, the fallout exposes workplace prejudice, hidden betrayals and the strain that success can place on long‑standing friendships.

Potter Susie Moran has built a successful Stoke‑on‑Trent ceramics business that now employs all three of her daughters. When her long‑estranged father reappears and ambitious in‑laws push for expansion, old wounds and new pressures threaten both the company and the fragile balance of the family running it.

In this modern take on Jane Austen’s classic, the Dashwood women are forced out of their comfortable home after their father’s death and a harsh change in finances. As sensible Ellie and romantic Maddie navigate cramped cottages, city life and unreliable men, they still wrestle with the pull between sense and passion.

After six months in Afghanistan, Major Dan Riley returns to his adored wife Alexa and their children, only to throw himself straight back into army duties. Isolated on the garrison and stretched by childcare and expectations, Alexa must decide how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for the regiment.

Rachel Brinkley has devoted herself to raising three sons on the Suffolk coast and struggles to accept that their homes, not hers, are now at the centre of their lives. As three very different daughters‑in‑law push for their own space, a family crisis forces everyone to redefine where they belong.

When aging singer Richie Rossiter dies suddenly, his long‑term partner Chrissie and their three daughters discover he has left key assets, including his treasured piano, to the first wife and son he abandoned years before. Two uneasy households must renegotiate grief, money and the meaning of loyalty.

Lonely, self‑contained Eleanor begins hosting Friday‑night suppers for a loose circle of younger women juggling work, children and partners. The group becomes a kind of chosen family, until the arrival of an attractive, disruptive man exposes jealousies and fears none of them wanted to admit.

Alice, a quiet wife and mother, hides a secret that shapes every corner of her life: she never learned to read. Saving tiny sums to pay a teenage neighbour to teach her, she discovers how books, a mobile library and a kindness she hadn’t expected can change her future.

When their youngest son leaves home, actress Edie Boyd is crushed by the emptiness that delights her husband Russell. Just as the couple tentatively begin to rediscover each other, their adult children start drifting back, bringing financial woes, romantic tangles and fresh complications into the house.

Adopted as babies into the same family, Nathalie and David have always been fiercely loyal to each other and to the parents who raised them. Their decision, in middle age, to track down their birth mothers sends shockwaves through marriages, children and careers on all sides of the adoption story.

Red‑haired, thoughtful Gillon Stokes escapes her wealthy Charleston family for a chaotic London flat and new friends. When a British photographer she has grown close to follows her home to the American South, both of them must decide where they belong and what compromises love will ask of them.

Sixty‑year‑old judge Guy Stockdale shocks his grown‑up family by leaving his dutiful wife of forty years to marry Merrion, the much younger barrister he loves. The decision detonates across three generations, exposing long‑buried resentments and forcing everyone to confront what marriage vows are really worth.

When Josie marries school deputy head Matthew, both bring children and ex‑spouses into the new household. As hostile teenagers, a volatile former wife and an anxious ex‑husband all stake claims, Josie discovers how sharp the tensions can be when loyalty is divided between your partner and other people’s children.

In 1938, Lila Cunningham’s dull life on the Suffolk coast ends when her feckless artist father accepts a house in Malta in exchange for his debts. On the besieged island, as bombing, shortages and three very different suitors reshape her world, Lila learns what real courage and love demand.

In this brief story, a young woman inherits her late mother’s small country bookshop in the American Northwest. Torn between the security of her old life and the risky pull of the shop, she has to decide what faith in a new beginning might look like.

Gina and Laurence have been inseparable since school, even after she married elegant Fergus and he settled with warm, practical Hilary. When Fergus coolly walks out on Gina, the comfort she finds with Laurence upends both families, forcing everyone to decide what they owe to friendship, marriage and themselves.

The Meredith family has farmed land sloping down to the River Dean for generations, but American‑born Caro never quite belonged. After her mysterious death, her grieving husband, brother‑in‑law and adopted daughter are jolted by the arrival of Judy’s outspoken London friend, whose presence exposes long‑hidden tensions and desires.

Edited and introduced by Joanna Trollope, this anthology gathers voices from across the centuries to celebrate and interrogate English country life. Extracts from letters, diaries and classic writers evoke harvest fields, rectory gardens, village rituals and the everyday work that lies behind the rural dream.

Twins Lizzie and Frances have always been a unit, with outwardly perfect Lizzie quietly worrying about her solitary sister. A business trip sends Frances to southern Spain, where new love and business success blossom just as financial disaster and jealousy begin to unravel Lizzie’s seemingly enviable life.

In 1960s London, self‑doubting Alexia Bewick turns a decaying Scottish castle into a hotel while raising her daughter alone. Twenty years later, adventurous Carly follows family legend back to Afghanistan with a film crew, confronting modern war zones, refugee camps and the weight of her ancestors’ choices.

At the turn of the twentieth century, an English girl in Florence grows up among artists, expatriates and crumbling palazzi. Marriage to a charming fortune‑hunter soon traps her, and she must find the courage to reclaim both her independence and the Italian castle that has come to shape her fate.

Julia and Kate are apparently content with partners old enough to be their fathers, and Hugh and James feel blessed by their much younger lovers. After an accident brings an independent older woman into their circle, simmering frustrations about age, work and commitment surface in every relationship.

For twenty years, Anna Bouverie has dutifully baked, visited and smiled as a priest’s wife, despite money worries and her husband’s bitterness. When church politics, bullying at school and sheer exhaustion push her too far, taking a job at the local supermarket becomes an act of quiet rebellion.

Country doctor Archie Logan and his wife Liza seem happily settled with their children in a small town. The arrival of Archie’s widowed father with a glamorous new companion exposes old hurts and new desires, threatening both the marriage and the fragile peace of the village.

Alice Jordan moves her family into the Grey House, the final piece of her carefully planned village life. When an intense friendship with charismatic Clodagh Unwin becomes love, Alice’s marriage and the village’s comfortable assumptions are shaken to the core.

In the close‑knit world of Aldminster Cathedral, the Dean’s plan to close the boys’ choir to fund urgent repairs sparks uproar. As clergy, schoolmasters, parents and choristers take sides, private grievances and unexpected loyalties turn a financial crisis into a battle over faith, tradition and community.

The Tavener family has farmed the mellow acres around Buscombe, their Wiltshire manor, for generations. Beginning in the 1870s, devoted heir Tom and his intelligent sister Catherine watch agricultural depression, social change and war batter the estate, forcing them to rethink what inheritance, class and responsibility should mean.

On the eve of the Boer War, idealistic officer Will Marriott and his rebellious cousin Matthew Paget head to South Africa seeking honour and adventure. Amid brutal campaigns and divided loyalties, both men fall in love and are forced to question what patriotism and courage really demand.

Spanning three generations, this saga follows Charlotte, who flees Victorian respectability for love and danger in Afghanistan, and the granddaughters who inherit her legend. From a Scottish castle to the Second World War home front, each woman must choose between safety and the fierce freedom Charlotte claimed.

This vivid history tracks the often‑ignored women who helped build and sustain the British Empire: settlers, missionaries, nurses, wives and adventurers. Using letters and diaries, it shows how they sought opportunity overseas while facing hardship, loneliness and the contradictions of imperial life.

Maria Beresford, a selfish but captivating tea‑planter’s daughter, swaps a carefree life in India for Mandalay, the fabled Burmese ‘City of Gems’. Entangled with a volatile queen and an ambitious young Englishman, she discovers how dangerous beauty, politics and romance can be.

At twenty‑six, plain Caroline Harding expects to spend life quietly in her father’s country rectory. Tragedy forces her to accept an arranged match with a man she has not seen for eight years, sending her to colonial India to build a future with a stranger.

In Georgian Dorset, shy Caroline Harding believes her one admirer has forgotten her in distant India. A sudden proposal pulls her into a marriage she mistrusts and a perilous voyage east, where grief, ambition and desire collide far from the safety of home.

When Captain Edgar Drummond takes his sisters to the Crimea, pretty Blanche dreams of flirtations while thoughtful Sarah is shaken by the misery of war. Her friendship with a radical reporter draws her into nursing and relief work, and into choices that challenge Victorian ideas of duty.

At a Regency house party, outspoken companion Eliza watches her cousin’s engagement to worthy but dull Richard Beaumont with scorn. When his war‑scarred brother Francis and a charming fellow officer arrive, her ideas about love, class and duty are tested in unexpected ways.