Item category 1: Family Saga

'The Gathering' is a family epic, condensed and clarified through Anne Enright's unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations - starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman - showing how memories warp and family secrets fester.

'The Gathering' is a family epic, condensed and clarified through Anne Enright's unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations - starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman - showing how memories warp and family secrets fester.

1944, London. A young man is killed in an air-raid, leaving a wife and two children and a secret. Ailsa, Margaret and Luke are persuaded by Jaime's brother Cal to return to the North East, to the town he came from. Despite their grief and bitterness, they find a new life there.

Lally Fraser, widowed at 20, seeks comfort with dashing young millowner Roly Sinclair. When she finds she is expecting his baby, she turns to his dour brother Harry. Secretly in love with her, Harry offers her marriage.

Mary Trimble works as an usherette at the Marlborough cinema in the Holloway Road, but her dream is to escape the horrors of London and take her family on a long charabanc trip to some faraway place: the famous Blue Coach from Victoria Coach Station to Devon. But little does she know her dream wi...

When jeweller Edwin Jardine gives a job to Hilda Thorpe, his daughter Jane suspects that he's been blinded by the widow's good looks. Jane knows her father deserves happiness again after the death of her mother, but must it be with Hilda? With the help of her fiance, Nick, Jane unravels the shock...

'The Carpenter's Children' follows the lives, loves and adventures of Tom Munday's three children. In 1914, Tom's son, Ernest, a serious-minded and sensitive young man, struggles to subdue his pacifist beliefs when called upon to sign up in the army. He leaves his family home in order to fight.

'The Cazalet Chronicle' draws to an end as 'Casting Off', the final volume in the quartet, marks the end of an era. The first three titles in the Cazalet Chronicle are 'The Light Years', 'Marking Time' and 'Confusion'.

This is a tale of love and intrigue that centres on the lives of Rosalind and Charles, both born on the same day into very different backgrounds. Rosalind's family live modestly in Brighton, whereas Charles's father is a Lord, owner of the magnificent ancestral seat, Hathaway House.

Angela is six when her parents hand her over to an aunt and uncle. She's well cared for until she's 16 when her uncle takes too much of an interest in her. Moving to Liverpool in the 60s, she becomes a success in the world of fashion design. The pain of a disastrous love affair sends her home to ...