At twenty-two, he's the youngest of the family. His father, Russell, a theatrical agent, is rather hoping to get his wife back. And his sister, Rosa, is wrestling with debt and the end of a turbulent love affair. Meet the Boyd family and the empty nest, twenty-first-century style.

Joanna Trollope is the author of eagerly awaited and sparklingly readable novels often centred around the domestic nuaunces and dilemmas of life in present-day England. She has also written a number of historical novels and Britannia's Daughters, a study of women in the British Empire. In 1988 she wrote her first contemporary novel, The Choir, and this was followed by A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, The Men and the Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of Kin, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress, Girl from the South and, most recently, Brother & Sister.

Joanna Trollope was born in Gloucestershire and lives in London. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature.