Top 5 books about family

Fabulously wealthy, internationally adored, the aristocratic Massot family owns one of the last great jewelry firms in Paris.

But seven years have passed since the disappearance of the patriarch, Pierre Massot.

With hope of his return all but extinguished, his beautiful young widow, Sophie, reluctantly declares her husband dead and takes control of the family business. But even as Sophie begins to look to the future, forces are conspiring to destroy the Massots — by unearthing the devastating secret from their past that Pierre may have died trying to protect.

Bagshawe’s sweeping story takes readers from the murky diamond mines of Soviet Russia to the cultural whirl of modern-day Paris, unraveling the mystery of Pierre Massot’s fate and the scandal and deceit that lies behind the Massot family fortune.

To the outside world, Siena McMahon has a fairytale life.

Born into a great Hollywood dynasty — granddaughter of forties movie legend Duke McMahon, daughter of billionaire producer Pete McMahon — she is blessed with beauty, brains and wealth, a proverbial princess. But behind the wrought iron gates of the McMahon’s sprawling Hollywood mansion, life is far from happy.

The McMahons are bound together not by love, but by ambition, greed and intrigue. When a gold-digging English aristocrat worms her way into their lives and their home, the fault lines in the feuding family are blown right open.

In an effort to protect Siena from the fall-out, her parents pack her off to an English boarding school. But Siena has a burning ambition — she is determined to become a Hollywood star, just as her grandfather said she would be.

One way or another, Siena McMahon is going to return to LA and take the City of Dreams by storm. And woe betide anyone who gets in her way…

What if America had a royal family?

When America won the Revolutionary War, its people offered General George Washington a crown. Two and a half centuries later, the House of Washington still sits on the throne.

As Princess Beatrice gets closer to becoming America’s first queen regnant, the duty she has embraced her entire life suddenly feels stifling.

Nobody cares about the spare except when she’s breaking the rules, so Princess Samantha doesn’t care much about anything, either… except the one boy who is distinctly off-limits to her.

And then there’s Samantha’s twin, Prince Jefferson. If he’d been born a generation earlier, he would have stood first in line for the throne, but the new laws of succession make him third. Most of America adores their devastatingly handsome prince… but two very different girls are vying to capture his heart.

“And what’s this about you and your friends driving around Bondi Junction last week?”

“Who told you that?”

“Signora Formosa saw you. She said you and your friends almost ran her over. She rang Zia Patrizia’s next-door neighbour and it got back to Nonna.”

Telecom would go broke if it weren’t for the Italians.

For as long as Josephine can remember, it’s just been her, her mom, and her grandmother. Now it’s her final year at a wealthy Catholic high school. The nuns couldn’t be any stricter — but that doesn’t seem to stop all kinds of men from coming into her life.

Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen and illegitimate. This is the year her father comes back into her life, the year she falls in love, the year she discovers the secrets of her family’s past and the year she sets herself free.