In ‘The Mother’ Jane Caro has written a story about the difficult and sensitive area of coercive control, how a relationship can become toxic and what a mother will do to protect the family she loves..Toni Jordan highlights the humour and pathos of a man struggling to cope with his altered circumstances after going bankrupt and the challenges of facing a contemporary world of digital influencers and new age jargon in ‘Dinner with the Schnabels’.