The Holiday

Torn between struggling to live up to the expectations of being a modern woman and ridding herself of the effect of a repressed upbringing, Izzy Jordan would be the first to admit that it's time to take stock of her life and shake things up a bit. She's thirty-one with a teaching career on the skids, not surprisingly really, given that she harbours a strong desire to lock her pupils in the art room cupboard and throw away the key.

She also has a manipulative mother and an ex-boyfriend whose helpful parting shot - "I'm only telling you this for your own good, Izzy" - was to inform her that she was boring in bed! So when she's invited to spend the summer on the island of Corfu and is offered the chance of a no-strings-attached holiday romance with the irresistible Theo Vlamakis, a self-confessed serial romantic, what should she do? Be brave and go with the flow, or listen to the voice of modern woman and tell him to sling his hook.

Then, just as she thinks she's made up her mind, along comes Theo's oldest and closest friend, Mark St James, a crime writer whose turbulent past sets in motion a series of events that will ensure nobody goes home feeling quite the way they did on arrival.