Fiction: special features

43-year-old Dolores O'Shea is logical, organised, and prepared to handle whatever comes her way. She keeps up with her job and housework, takes care of her mentally declining mother, and remains close with her old friends and her younger sister who's moved to New York. Though her marriage with Da...

Ramadan, 2017. Yusuf wakes up in the middle of the night to pray. His routine is always the same, but something tells him that tonight is different. Yellow flames blur Yusuf's vision, and the laughter of a small child echoes in his ears. But this time, the red, smoke-filled skies aren't just in h...

Acacia Pines, USA. Sheriff Cohen's life is falling apart - his father accidentally burned down the retirement home, his wife has moved out, and his son is bullying other kids at school. When high-school student, Lucas Connor, is abducted, Cohen sees a chance to get his life back on track - to win...

Ally and her dad, Geoff, run the family business, a creative retreat, from their home Hollyhock Cottage in picturesque Kittiwake Cove. They give their guests their dream break, but Ally hankers after glamourous city living, fancy restaurants and art galleries. Ally's survival strategy is to escap...

Penny Baker is winning at life. Sort of. Her work is demanding, her kids are demanding and her husband seems to be undergoing some weird midlife crisis but she is juggling it all - with the added delights of the menopause. But when the charity she works for is thrown into crisis and her mother's ...

When Ben was seven, his mother was murdered in the woods while he waited for her in their car. The case made the front pages, but her killer was never found. Thirty years later, Ben has a safe, grown-up life: a job, a ramshackle cottage and, most importantly, a happy marriage to Rebecca. His moth...

Daphne knows that age is just a number. She also knows that society no longer pays her any attention - something she's happy to exploit to help her hide a somewhat chequered past. But finding herself alone on her 70th birthday, with only her plants to talk to and neighbours to stalk online, she d...

Meet Jolene. She's socially awkward, depressed and hates her work colleagues. Due to a serious IT error, she's also just been granted access to all of their emails and private messages. She knows she should tell HR, but finds it hard to resist knowing what they all really think of her.When her ac...

The Langfords are a perfectly happy family. Louisa and Kip, happily married for nearly 40 years, have raised their children and are now just settling into a new phase of life where they'll have more time for themselves. Everything seems perfect. But then, one Boxing Day after a lovely family Chri...

What does it mean to remember? Joined at birth, then pulled apart, Selina and Zora's relationship is marked by a pattern of closeness and separation. Growing up in 50s' and 60s' London under the shadow of Enoch Powell, they are instinctively dependent on each other, and yet Zora yearns for her ow...