Books by Louise Douglas

A FAMILY TRAGEDYWhen a tragedy forces the family Amy works for as a nanny to retreat to a small lakeside cottage, she realises she cannot leave them now. A SISTER'S SECRETBut Amy finds something unsettling about the cottage by the lake.

Annie Howarth is living a restless life in a restless town. It's 1984 and for a mining community in South Yorkshire, the strikes mean tensions are running high. Then a murdered girl is found on the moors and the anxiety levels are pushed to a dangerous breaking point.

Hannah Brown never thought she'd have a best friend like Ellen Brecht. Ellen is everything she isn't - beautiful, daring, glamorous and fierce. Growing up together in rural Cornwall, life seems perfect. But their idyllic childhood is shattered by obsession, betrayal and, ultimately, tragedy.

A Richard and Judy recommendation for the 2012 Summer Book Club, this is a brilliant Gothic novel in the vein of Daphne du Maurier. A chance encounter: When Sarah meets dark, brooding Alex, she grasps his offer of a new life miles away from her own.

Fen works in a bookshop and is devoted to her young son, Connor, but she keeps herself to herself. Haunted by guilt and a terrible secret, Fen lives a compromised life, isolated from her family, far from home and too afraid of the past to risk becoming close to anyone. She is constantly looking over her shoulder, knowing that one day the truth will catch up with her. Sean, on the other hand, is enjoying a seemingly perfect life. He has a successful career, lives in his dream home and adores his beautiful wife, Belle, and their six-year-old daughter, Amy. That is until the day Belle announces she has found someone else and wants Sean to move out. Circumstance throws Fen and Sean together. Slowly their quiet friendship turns into something much deeper and the joy they find in one another eventually gives them the confidence to trust and love again. But will the past tear them apart just as they find happiness?Missing You is a beautifully written tale of family and love, from Louise Douglas, author of The Love of My Life.

'I miss him with every breath and heartbeat. He should have been my happy ending. Instead, he is the sad beginning to my story.' Olivia and Luca Felicone had known each other nearly all their lives, but when they fell in love as teenagers and eloped to London, they broke the hearts of those closest to them. Luca's parents run Marinella's restaurant, the colourful hub of life in the otherwise bleak north-eastern seaside town of Watersford, and his mother, Angela, has never forgiven Olivia for causing such a rift in her beloved family. On a freezing January night Olivia's life is shattered when she learns that Luca has been killed in a car accident on the M1. She is left with nothing, and after suffering from weeks of overwhelming grief, she abandons her job and returns North to where Luca has been buried in Watersford, just to be close to him - even though she knows she will not be welcome at Marinella's. Olivia's chance meeting with Luca's married twin brother, Marc, leads to the realization that he is experiencing a loss almost as painful as her own. Their desolation draws them into an affair which both know has no future, but fills the space where Luca should be. It is a course of action that can only spiral out of control, and when it does, the consequences are both explosive and cruel.The Love of My Life by Louise Douglas is a beautiful novel that portrays both the innocence of childhood, and the dynamics of love and loss with deftness and sensitivity. It is, above all, a stunning debut from an author with a unique and natural narrative voice.