A SLIPPING-DOWN LIFE

THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE

Michael and Pauline seem like the perfect couple - he was smitten the first time he saw her in Baltimore. In the heat of the moment, in World War II, they were hastily wed. But perhaps they should never have married.

BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWN UPS

When Joe Davitch first saw Rebecca he wanted for himself some of the happiness that spilled from her. Once married she became the lynch pin of the Davitch family. After Joe's untimely death Rebecca realises that she feels like an imposter in her own life.

BREATHING LESSONS

Anne Tyler's novel covers the events of a day in the lives of Maggie and Ira. The basic incompatibility of their marriage and the love that binds them together nevertheless are both revealed.

CLOCK DANCE

One day, Willa Drake receives a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to look after a young woman she's never met. This impulsive decision will lead Willa into uncharted territory, and surrounded by eccentric neighbours who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places.

THE CLOCK WINDER

Newly-widowed Mrs Emerson sacks her handyman and replaces him with Elizabeth, a lanky, awkward girl. A bond develops between the two women, and against her will Elizabeth is drawn into the disorderly lives of the Emerson family.

DIGGING TO AMERICA

In August 1997 two Korean baby girls are flown to Baltimore to be adopted by two very different American families. Over the years the families' lives overlap, especially at the annual party to celebrate 'Arrival Day'. A gentle and funny story of pride, belonging and love.

DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT

Shared memories bind together all families and the Tulls of Baltimore are no exception. Abandoned by her husband, Pearl is left to bring up her three children alone and now, as she lies dying, the past and its secrets are unlocked.

FRENCH BRAID

A brilliantly perceptive, painfully true and funny journey deep into one family's foibles, from the 1950s right up to the changed world of today. When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone is determined not to notice. Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won't allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts' family life over the decades, whether that's a painstaking Easter lunch or giving a child a ride, a fateful train journey or an unexpected homecoming. And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake. It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations.

IF MORNING EVER COMES

Law student Ben Joe Hawkes desperately misses his family, so when he hears that his elder sister has returned home with her baby he decides to visit, but once there he has to confront his past.

LADDER OF YEARS

Cordelia Grinstead, on holiday with her husband and family, went for a walk along the beach and just kept walking - away from her family and her life!

NOAH'S COMPASS

Liam Pennywell has taken early retirement from his teaching job in a run-down private school and moved into a condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. A day later he wakes up in hospital with a sore and bandaged head and no memory of what has happened. This leads him to meet an unusual woman who also has secrets to hide.

A PATCHWORK PLANET

Barnaby Gailtin has less in life than he once had: His ex-wife left him and their native Baltimore several years ago, taking their baby daughter with her, and he has acquired an unalterably fixed position as the black sheep of the family in a family where black sheep aren't tolerated. Then the angelic Sophia enters his life and it seems as if all this is set to change. But can he shake off his past?

REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

Micah Mortimer isn't the most polished person you'll ever meet. His numerous sisters and in-laws regard him oddly but very fondly, but he has his ways and means of navigating the world. He measures out his days running errands for work - his TECH HERMIT sign cheerily displayed on the roof of his car - maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is content with the steady balance of his life. But then the order of things starts to tilt. His woman friend Cassia (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a 'girlfriend') tells him she's facing eviction because of a cat. And when a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son, Micah is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.

A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD

'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon". This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer's day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. From Red's father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red's grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century - four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home.

VINEGAR GIRL

This modern retelling of Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew' asks whether a thoroughly modern, independent woman would ever sacrifice herself for a man. The answer is as individual, off-beat and funny as Kate, the woman in question, herself.