Jeanne Ray – författare

The novel opens as Caroline, a local dance teacher, sits down to dinner with her husband, Tom, and the telephone rings twice in quick succession: first with the weeping of her daughter, Shaye, and secondly with the rather more ominous sound of her distraught sister, Taffy. It turns out that Shaye is weeping because she has just been proposed to (by a man of whom Caroline and Tom don't wholly approve), while Taffy is weeping because her husband has just left her. Divorce, marriage, love and fidelity are the themes of this heartwarming family romance. At its core is the solid foundation of Caroline's long marriage to Tom and her desire to see everyone around her happy. As is often the case, it takes several twists and turns to resolve the many repercussions of both announcements involving family gatherings, preparations for the wedding - and quite a lot of dance.

'For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.' Shakespeare might have seen his young star-cross'd lovers as a tragic pair, but 400 years later Jeanne Ray's Julie and Romeo are light-hearted, funny and sixty-something. Julie Roseman, a divorcee, and Romeo Cacciamani, a widower, own rival flower shops in Boston. They don't know what started the family feud generations before, but they have never questioned it. Until the fateful day when they meet at a business conference and inexplicably find themselves falling in love. But the path of true love never did run smooth, and with Romeo's feisty mother and a pack of fierce children coming between them, it looks like Julie and Romeo's tale will not end happily - or will it?

'A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don't each the whole cake. You don't eat a cake every day of your life. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what's served on the happiest days of your life. This is the story of how my life was saved by cake . . .' Feisty middle-aged housewife Ruth Hopson's life comes crashing down around her when her hospital administrator husband is made redundant. As the family's financial problems begin to mount, Ruth must also cope with her sulky teenage daughter and warring elderly parents. As she tries to keep the peace in this eccentric, disfunctional household, Ruth's only solace comes from baking cakes. But what begins as a distraction and grows into an obsession just might provide an ingenious solution to the family's dilemmas.