The Women Behind the DoorAt 66, Paula Spencer mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man Joe with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside. That is until Paula's eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep.

there's an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn't more prevalent in the animal kingdom

stand up to bullies

Liska makes an unsettling discovery: she is not the first person to strike this bargain and all of her predecessors have mysteriously vanished

including Herbology

An enthralling book celebrating the benefits of hedgerows in our countryside and a way of living that has all but disappeared in recent decades

Their correspondence ended only with Virginia's tragic death in 1941

And how did we tell the progress of our lives in the past

an aristocrat neighbour

The result is an account of growing old that is at once funny and charming

he rekindles a friendship with Queenie who takes in Jamaican lodgers

Matekoni becomes involved in the agency's work when he investigates an errant husband

Meanwhile Alice