My Books

Shattered Lives

Orphaned as children, sisters Hannah and Julie were alternately ill-treated or left to their own devices. Hannah was always the more sensible of the two and, now, happily married with a steady job, her determination to succeed has paid off. The same cannot be said for Julie. Easily led by the wrong crowd, she drifted apart from Hannah when she fell pregnant at fifteen and the sisters eventually lost contact. Now, with three children from three different men and surviving on benefits, Julie is living a life of misery and drug addiction. She needs help and it's up to her sister to step in, but in doing so Hannah discovers to her horror, that her own life might not be so perfect after all… In her compelling new novel, Bernardine Kennedy tells a harrowing tale of divided loyalty, despair and betrayal sure to appeal to fans of misery memoirs.

Past Chances

Eleanor Rivington has always felt like an outsider. Abandoned by her mother and brought up in fear of her father, she's desperate to leave home and live like other girls in London in the seventies. When a barman from work invites her to share a flat with him and two of his friends, it is her chance to break free. But when Eleanor confronts her father the terrible tragedy that follows haunts her forever. And, despite the support of her new friends, Eleanor's life seems destined for further disappointment...

Old Scores

Maria Harman finds it hard to keep her intense and mixed up emotions in check when it comes to her family. For things are anything but loving and harmonious in the Harman household. Her bullying and spiteful older brothers, Patrick and Joe, make her life as miserable as possible, encouraged by their mother, Finola, who believes her ‘golden boys' can do no wrong. Maria is hardened to Finola's scorn and indifference but deep down craves her mother's love and can't understand why her mother chose to adopt her in the first place. Her only solace comes from her warm-hearted, slow-witted brother, Eddie, and browbeaten father Sam. But when the layers of deception that conceal Maria's true parentage are slowly broken away, the already dysfunctional family is thrown into chaos...

Taken

At 36, Jessica Patterson thinks her life is happy and settled and that all is well in her marriage. She had met American Sheldon Patterson seven years previously when she was on holiday in the Caribbean and fallen for him instantly. Good looking and easy going as well as being financially secure, he was everything Jessie wanted in a husband.

For about eighteen months they lived in California where they had a son - Cameron James, nicknamed CJ - and it was the icing on the cake for them. They then moved back to the UK for Sheldon to try and expand the business.

Jessie is besotted with her son and her life revolves around him, while Sheldon's work takes him overseas a lot. So when Sheldon announces one day that he is going to take CJ away for a few days to Disneyland in Paris - just the two of them, to ‘bond' with his son - Jessie is persuaded to let them go. Her nightmare starts when they don't come back...

Chain of Deception

Lucy Cooper seems to have it all - a smart, attractive PR consultant from a wealthy family, she thinks she has met her perfect match in Donovan, a fitness trainer with a body to die for. After a whirlwind romance, she and Donovan marry but it isn't long before Lucy realises that her new husband is nothing more than a self-obsessed fitness freak. Worse than that, beneath his tanned veneer there lies an ugly and increasingly violent temper.

Marriage to Donovan is turning Lucy into a nervous wreck, eating away at her confidence and putting her career, her health, even her sanity in jeopardy. Lucy knows that she has to make a break before he destroys her - and her loved ones - completely. Hope comes in the form of Fergus Pearson, an Irish/Jamaican motorbike courier and aspiring actor. He's gentle, laid-back and kind - everything her husband isn't. They embark on an affair but a freak accident forces Lucy to make a discovery that will turn her whole world upside down...

My Sister's Keeper

In 1975, Vietnamese orphan Cathy Carter arrives in England to begin a new life. Her childhood in the New Forest is idyllic, but when she is fifteen tragedy strikes. Her adoptive parents are killed in a fire, and she is left with her strange, uncommunicative adoptive twin sisters. Sad and lonely, Cathy joins a local theatre group, where she becomes besotted with one of the directors. Nico is forty, and very good-looking, but he preys on vulnerable young girls, and has set his sights on Cathy. She is petite and pretty, and she is due to inherit a fortune.

On her sixteenth birthday, Nico blackmails the twins into allowing Cathy to marry him. Their marriage soon turns sour, and after their daughter, Sammy-Jo, is born Cathy escapes with the child to Spain. But one day, Nico finds them...

Everything is Not Enough

When Louise Jermaine's father leaves, she grows up fast with little help from her selfish mother. Her best friend's home is a sanctuary - until her step-father hurts her so deeply she vows to escape from her past. She reinvents herself as Angie Kavanagh and discovers a talent for journalism, becoming a top celebrity interviewer. Years later, she writes about spoilt supermodel and It-girl Rebekah Alari. Angie sees that, despite all her advantages, Rebekah's life is not as glamorous as she pretends. She, too, hides a secret about her past. Angie herself seems at last to have found happiness, but her life is littered with emotional obstacles and she finds it impossible to leave the past behind...