Victoria Routledge Livres

Kate Craig has many pet hates but top of the list is London. Dirty, smelly, unfriendly and unreasonably expensive beer. She's steered well clear for 21 years. But then her gorgeous Europhile boyfriend, Giles, invites her down to his palatial Chelsea house before he launches his international banking career: posh dinners out, cosy evenings in. It would be rude to say no. In fact, Kate's week of high-class indulgence is so idyllic that she's almost relieved when it turns horribly wrong. Giles's training course is in Chicago. It's four months long. And he wants her to wait in London for him. In a daze of anger, misery and deep subconscious disbelief, Kate suddenly finds herself cleaning her new cupboard in the first flat she sees. If it were just the filthy cupboards she had to contend with, she'd be OK. But there are flatmates: twins Dante and Cressida Grenfell have had a fairy-tale upbringing. Of the Grimm variety. He's a permanently hungover layabout, she's a control freak style queen. And the light relief is Harry, who gives upper crust blondes a bad name. All this and a bewildering new job, a sudden addiction to espressos, and the District Line - Kate's sixteen Mondays are looking like a lifetime.

Patrick, Robert, Greg and Barney Mulligan have little in common apart from their mother Rosetta's dark brown eyes, a certain bloody-mindedness, and the kind of mutual suspicion which only flourishes successfully in larger families. In fact, the sole thing they agree on is that mild-mannered Brian, logistics manager turned global tour co-ordinator, cannot possibly be their father. And that there is nothing glamorous about a tour-bus toilet. Rosetta was not a conventional mother - 'Mum' being a banned word, for a start - and for twenty years, she has resisted tempting offers to write about her life on the road. But with Barney, her adored last chick, about to be shoved from the nest, and newly remarried Brian on the verge of mid-life fatherhood with his Swiss masseuse wife, the time seems right to parcel up her past and move on. The trouble is, how much of it will be news to her boys?

Tamara, Ned, Angus and Jim all have their problems. Iona knows them all and she'd like to slap the lot of them! Iona's only problem is that she doesn't have a driver's licence. Perhaps learning to drive as a team effort will provide an "Elastoplast" for problems, but then again, maybe not.

Remember sitting on a melted Mars Bar on the way up to a hot summer wedding? The lyrics to songs by Fairground Attraction? Photocopying your face out of boredom on a holiday temp job? The friend who always took a photo of you on a bad hair day? Yes? So does Rachel, now out of University but doing one of those 'Look, no hands!' jobs in a PR firm. So when her best friend Alex persuades her to join in with a celebratory weekend in the Lake District with some old friends, it is with mixed feelings. For though Rachel, now happily involved with her photo-journalist boyfriend Finn, remembers the good old days; the fun, the laughs, the gossip; she also remembers the bad bits, not least the malice with which actressy Caroline behaved towards her. Not one for holding back, Rachel goes forth and heads North. After all, it could all be perfect...

Rosetta Mulligan, Paradiesvogel mit Hippie-Vergangenheit, konnte sich niemals mit der klassischen Mutterrolle abfinden. Auch ihre vier Söhne akzeptierten sie eigentlich nie als richtige »Mama« und haben so ihre Zweifel, wer in Wahrheit ihr Vater ist. Zwanzig Jahre sind vergangen, die Kinder sind zu Männern herangereift, und Rosetta spürt, dass die Zeit reif ist, zu neuen Ufern aufzubrechen ? doch zuvor möchte sie endlich ihre Memoiren schreiben. Dadurch würden ihre Söhne allerdings so manches pikante Detail über sie erfahren ...§

Es gibt nur wenige kostbare Stunden in der Woche, die die junge Malerin Iona mit ihrem geliebten Freund Angus verbringen kann. Den Rest ihrer Zeit leiht sie ihr Ohr, ihren Rat und ihr Mitgefühl ihrem grossen und sehr chaotischen Freundeskreis. Eines Tages verkünden Angus und der ewig von den Frauen verlassene, jungenhafte Jim, ein heruntergekommenes Pub übernehmen zu wollen. Das ist jedoch nur der erste Schritt auf dem Weg in ein noch grösseres Chaos - auf dem Iona und ihre Freunde einiges über sich, das Leben und die Liebe herausfinden...