Jenny Colgan

Rosie Hopkins is looking forward to Christmas in the little Derbyshire village of Lipton, buried under a thick blanket of snow. Her sweetshop is festooned with striped candy canes, large tempting piles of Turkish Delight, crinkling selection boxes and happy, sticky children. She's going to be spending it with her boyfriend, Stephen, and her family, flying in from Australia. She can't wait.

But when a tragedy strikes at the heart of their little community, all of Rosie's plans for the future seem to be blown apart. Can she build a life in Lipton? And is what's best for the sweetshop also what's best for Rosie?

As dawn breaks over the Pont Neuf, and the cobbled alleyways of Paris come to life, Anna Trent is already awake and at work; mixing and stirring the finest, smoothest, richest chocolate; made entirely by hand, it is sold to the grandes dames of Paris.

It's a huge shift from the chocolate factory she worked in at home in the north of England. But when an accident changed everything, Anna was thrown back in touch with her French teacher, Claire, who offered her the chance of a lifetime - to work in Paris with her former sweetheart, Thierry, a master chocolatier. With old wounds about to be uncovered and healed, Anna is set to discover more about real chocolate - and herself - than she ever dreamed.

Issy Randall, proud owner of The Cupcake Cafe, is in love and couldn't be happier. Her new business is thriving and she is surrounded by close friends, even if her cupcake colleagues Pearl and Caroline don't seem quite as upbeat about the upcoming season of snow and merriment. But when her boyfriend Austin is scouted for a possible move to New York, Issy is forced to face up to the prospect of a long-distance romance. And when the Christmas rush at the cafe - with its increased demand for her delectable creations - begins to take its toll, Issy has to decide what she holds most dear. This December, Issy will have to rely on all her reserves of courage, good nature and cinnamon, to make sure everyone has a merry Christmas, one way or another . . .

Rosie Hopkins is about to face major upheaval. Her elderly aunt Lilian - feisty, independent Aunt Lily who never talked about her past - needs her help, so Rosie is moving to the depths of the countryside for a few months to look after her. Plus Rosie will be away from Gerard, the man she hopes to settle down with soon, and they'll miss each other dreadfully... won't they? Lilian Hopkins has spent her life running Lipton's village sweetshop, through wartime and family feuds. As she struggles with the idea that it might finally be time to sell up, she also wrestles with the secret history hidden behind the jars of beautifully coloured sweets. And the longer Rosie and Lilian spend together, the more they realise they can learn from each other...

Now, you obviously, would never, ever look up your exes on Facebook. Nooo. And even if you did, you most certainly wouldn't run off trying to track them down, risking your job, family and happiness in the process. Posy Fairweather, on the other hand . . . Posy is delighted when Matt proposes - on top of a mountain, in a gale, in full-on romantic mode. But a few days later disaster strikes: he backs out of the engagement. Crushed and humiliated, Posy starts thinking. Why has her love life always ended in total disaster? Determined to discover how she got to this point, Posy resolves to get online and track down her exes. Can she learn from past mistakes? And what if she has let Mr Right slip through her fingers on the way?

What does an It girl do if she loses all her money? Sophie Chesterton is a girl about town - she knows all the right people, goes to all the right parties, and wears all the right clothes. But deep down she suspects that her best friends are actually rather nasty, and that her lifestyle doesn't really amount to much. Her father wants her to make her own way in the world, to make him proud. But after one shocking evening her life is changed for ever.

Scraping a living as an assistant to a 'glamour' photographer; living in a hovel on the Old Kent Road with four smelly boys; eating baked beans from the can - this is one spectacular fall from grace. Sophie is desperate to get her life back - but does a girl really need diamonds to be happy?

Evie needs a good holiday. Not just because she's been working all hours in her job as a receptionist for two high-powered plastic surgeons - but also because every holiday she has ever been on in her life has involved sunburn, arguments and projectile vomiting - and sometimes all three at once. Why can't she have a normal holiday, like other people seem to have - some sun, sand, sea and (hopefully) sex? So when Evie's employers invite her to attend a conference with them in the south of France, she can't believe her luck. At last, the chance to hob nob with the rich and glamorous, to party under the stars, to live the life she's dreamed about. It's certainly the holiday of a lifetime - but not quite in the way Evie imagines!

The streets of London are paved with gold . . . allegedly. They may be twin sisters, but Lizzie and Penny Berry are complete opposites - Penny is blonde, thin and outrageous; Lizzie quiet, thoughtful and, well, definitely not thin. The one trait they do share is a desire to DO something with their lives, and as far as they're concerned, the place to get noticed is London. Out of the blue they discover they have a grandmother living in Chelsea - and when she has to go into hospital, they find themselves flat-sitting on the King's Road. But, as they discover, it's not as easy to become It Girls as they'd imagined, and west end boys aren't at all like Hugh Grant . . .

While Katie's glad it's not a man's world any more, she'd be quite pleased if there were more men in it – or at least single ones, anyway. More likely to get murdered than married, according to gleeful media reports, Katie resigns herself to the fact there's no sex in the city and heads for the hills – or the Scottish highlands, to be precise. Despite the fact she's never been a girl for wellies – and Fairlish is in the middle of nowhere – the tiny town does have one major draw: men. Lots of them. But while Katie relishes the chance to do battle with armies of admirers, she's not reckoned on going head to head with her grumpy new boss, Harry, shadowy developers intent on destroying the beautiful countryside and Mrs McClockerty, the least suitable hotelier since Norman Bates. At least there's the local eye-candy to distract her, including gorgeous newshound Iain. But he is at loggerheads with Harry, and Harry despises her. Life in the country might not be one big roll in the hay but can Katie ever turn her back on the delights of Fairlish and return to city life?

Life doesn’t have a rewind button. Ever wished it did? As her best friend Tashy cuts into her wedding cake, 32-year-old Flora realises she is disillusioned with life. Suddenly, her well-paid job, cosy flat and stable relationship with sensible Olly don't amount to a whole lot. Flora wants to be 16 again. She closes her eyes and wishes. Her wish has come true. Waking up the next morning is a shock. But now Flora has the chance to right some wrongs. Trading crows feet for pimples, love handles for a torso Britney Spears would kill for and dull dinner parties for house parties where White Lightning and snogging are the order of the day, Flora revels in a life where things are far less complicated and just much more… FUN. It's not all laughs though. Will what she does change the future? How can she get back to the present and her ordinary life? And does she even want to?

Faint heart never won fair lady… Who knows how Arthur Pendleton ended up as a town planner? While his girlfriend is planning babies he can't even plan lunch. His kingdom is a small cubicle and a team of shambolic colleagues, including a dog called Sandwiches. Until Gwyneth Morgan sweeps into his world. Ice-cool and gorgeous, she offers Arthur's office the chance to escape the humdrum and win Coventry a place on the world stage: as European City of Culture. But Gwyneth secretly has her doubts about Arthur. Yes, he has deep brown eyes and a lovely smile, but can he really compete with his arch-enemy Ross, and the dashing Rafe, to seize the prize for his city – and to win her heart? As a series of strange and wonderful things start to happen, a magic is woven around Arthur's world. Office life is never going to be the same again…
Nothing is quite as it seems – and that includes Arthur. In the course of a short day he defenestrates a photocopier, wrestles his Lynx-scented boss Ross for his job, faces up to Fay – that is he evades her questions once too often – and is given a secret mission that will change the life of himself and his motley team (which includes a smelly dog called Sandwiches). England (well, Coventry at least) needs Arthur – but who or what does Arthur need?

The story opens with the modern-day heroine Holly trapped in the flatshare from hell with members of "Scary Clean Freaks Incorporated", ruled by the obnoxious Carol who "dispensed ... Robert de Niro-to-doomed gangster stares". Even when Holly escapes the suburban inquisition, life still isn't a bed of roses: she's an unemployed florist, in love with a recluse and she's being bullied. She's in good company though when she moves in with a bunch of equally maladjusted misfits: Josh, a terminally nice boy, has issues; Kate, the high-flying and no-nonsense career girl, wilts every time a married man comes along and then there's Addison--the drop-dead-gorgeous lodger ("Johnny Depp in geek form")--who never leaves his room, already has a girlfriend (albeit over the Internet) and is a certified Trekkie fan.

'I'm wearing a beautiful pink dress, and I'm in a big pink room with billowing curtains…and I'm dancing to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark…and my handsome partner leans over and whispers… 'Yes, 80s child Ellie really thought life was going to be like Pretty in Pink, St Elmo's Fire and all those other movies – where everyone was astoundingly glamorous, popular, successful, had huge apartments and lived happily ever after. But now that she and her gang are thirty, she has to admit that things haven't quite turned out that way. When did horrible flats, difficult relationships and menaningless jobs take over?And, more importantly, what happened to the coolest, wisest, most inspirational Brat Packer of them all? Where is Andrew McCarthy now? Did life fulfil its promise for him? Is he happy on Channel 5? Surely he, of all people, can tell Ellie what to do about her thirty-angst? Determined to get her idol to unravel some of life's great mysteries, Ellie sets out, unwillingly accompanied by her best friend Julia, on a quest across the USA, from LA to New York to find him. It's an unlikely epic, by turns hilarious, romantic and downright uncomfortable – but, helped by a cast of thousands, of whom Frosty the Giant Pig is probably the least improbable, they do find some answers, although not the ones they expected

90s girl-about-town Mel is adjusting to life without posh-boy Alex, whose attempts to make it big in the music biz have propelled him to the land of the free and Bruce Springsteen. Having omitted to mention his grand tour to Mel however, he has left our heroine a tad disturbed--grounds indeed for taking comfort in the arms of smelly, over-sized accountants with juvenile tendencies. Alex's emotional return coincides with the news that Mel's old "friend" Amanda, social-climber pas excellent (sic), has succeeded in getting herself hitched to Scottish laird Fraser for whom Mel has long harboured feelings of an X-rated nature. Before long, Fraser's brother Angus and Mel's friend Fran--an evil-mouthed, scary, man-hater--join forces in an attempt to rescue the scruffy Scot from the talons of the wannabe "It" girl, whose only interests lie in a double-barrelled aristo title and an ancestral pile.