Beauty is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having shocked her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Now she is forced onto the jobseekers' treadmill. Her fractious encounters with officialdom and passers-by in the city streets place her at the mercy of many unlikely helpers. But it's with honesty and compassion that Beauty moves ever closer towards resolving her dilemma of family duty...
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.