A follow-up to Margaret Forster's Hidden Lives (a family memoir of three generations of women), this account takes up the story of her gritty northern father. She looks back at his life and character, evoking incidents from her Cumbrian childhood, his working life and his stubborn old age.

Why do many women still get married? Why do others not? Why do couples still marry in church in an age of unbelief? Taking up where Hidden Lives left off, these are some of the questions the author addresses, through the stories of three women who have long fascinated her.

Traces the lives of eight women - Caroline Norton, Elizabeth Blackwell, Florence Nightingale, Emily Davies, Josephine Butler, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman - each of whom pioneered vital changes in the spheres of law, education, the professions, morals or politics. All fought to make lasting difference to women's lives.

Angela Bradbury has an appalling mother - self-effacing, self-sacrificing, expert at emotional blackmail. But in her relationship with her eldest daughter, Sadie, Angela realises that she is imposing the same resentments and guilt that her mother inflicted on her.

Stanley and Rose live in Rawlinson Road, Islington, surrounded by younger, smarter families like the Orams. Encroached on by age and affluence, the only answer to their problems, in spite of everything, lies in their fierce and prickly devotion to each other.

For Penelope, the family is everything. Her daughters, however, had different ideas. Rosemary rejected the ideal of motherhood and family life; Jess was destroyed by it; Celia found it eluded her. Only Emily pursued her mother's ideal, with bad results.

Rowena wants a baby. What she doesn't want is the baby's father. Yet, five years after the birth of Christabel, Rowena is dead, tragically killed in a climbing accident. The battle for Christabel has begun.

Once tough, witty and self-reliant, Grandma is now increasingly unable to look after herself. She has always put her menfolk first, always been the carer, but now her family must care for her. They are filled with love and good intention. But as Grandma gradually loses herself and the strain within the family soon begins to show, is love enough?

What do Mrs H, Rachel, Edwina, Ida, Sarah, Dot, Chrissie have in common? They're all women, but they're fat, thin, old, young, married or single. This title follows the ripples that go out into ordinary lives that changed by a shared experience, all connected by the same hospital clinic in a small Northern town.

Georgy is young, gregarious and fun - she is also large, self- confessedly ugly and desperate for love.