Margot Livesey

A decent, harried young banker, already on the verge of distraction, hurries north to Scotland and his mysteriously troubled sister . . . A “foreign” mother struggles to make a home for her family in a society she only vaguely comprehends . . . A baby girl is abandoned in a bus-station rest room . . . And thus five lives and more are caught up in a binding net of affection and responsibility, of sibling loyalty, romantic longing, and

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"One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy's life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim's brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford,...

Fate has not been kind to Gemma Hardy. Orphaned by the age of ten, neglected by a bitter and cruel aunt, sent to a boarding school where she was both servant and student, young Gemma seemed destined for a life of hardship and loneliness. Yet her bright spirit burns strong. Fiercely intelligent, singularly determined, Gemma overcomes each challenge and setback, growing stronger and more certain of her path. Now an independent young woman with dreams

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