Jojo shot to fame with the magnificent Sheltering Rain, she won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award with her second book, Foreign Fruit, and this is her third.  It’s terrific.  They all have a dual time setting, family secrets and romantic undertones and they are all utterly enchanting.  This is the 60s and the present and I urge you to wallow in it.

Comparisons: Rosamunde Pilcher, Penny Vincenzi.
Similar this month: Julian Fellowes, Jenny Pitman.

Synopsis

In the Sixties, Athene Forster is the most glamorous girl of her generation. Nicknamed the Last Deb, she is also beautiful, spoilt and out of control. When she agrees to marry dashing young heir Douglas Fairley-Hulme her parents breathe a sigh of relief. But within two years rumours have begun to circulate about Athene's affair with a young salesman. Thirty five years on, Suzanna Peacock is struggling with her glamorous mother's legacy. The only place she finds comfort is in her shop, The Peacock Emporium, a coffee shop-cum-curio store, decorated in her own image, which provides a haven for other misfits in the town. There she makes perhaps the first real friends of her life, including Alejandro, a male midwife, escaping his own ghosts in Argentina. But the spectre of Athene and the shop itself combine to set in place a chain of tragic events, forcing Suzanna to confront the feelings she has disguised for so long - and her family, in their varying ways, finally to deal with the events of the past. And Suzanna discovers the key to her history, and her happiness, may have been in front of her all along.

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About the Author

Jojo Moyes was born in 1969 and was brought up in London. A journalist and writer, she worked for the Independent newspaper until 2001. She lives in East Anglia with her husband and two children. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation