Historical Family Saga

In 1895, a Northumbrian island welcomes two new residents. Clara and Jimmy are born on the same night, to families poles apart. Clara is an islander through and through; content to live among the rhythms and barren beauty of Holy Island. Jimmy's future is set in stone; fishing with the father he despises on the family boat. When tragedy forces them from their island and each other, they join the herring season in a bid to survive. Jimmy strikes out for Seahouses, where he joins a Scots herring crew.

After the heartbreak of World War Two, newlywed midwife Cathy hoped Liverpool life would offer some joy. But a terrible miscarriage and the escape of her abusive stepfather Jack from prison make happiness hard to find. Meanwhile, Cathy’s beloved granny is ailing. Whilst at the hospital, Cathy sees her midwifery friends, who are planning to open a home for unmarried mothers. After losing a baby of her own, Cathy would love to help, but for now, she must take care of her grandmother.

1915. May and Naomi are extended family, their grandmothers’ lives inseparably entwined on a Virginia plantation in the volatile time leading up to the Civil War. For both women, the twentieth century promises social transformation and equal opportunity. May, a young white woman, is on the brink of achieving the independent life she’s dreamed of since childhood. Naomi, a nurse, mother, and leader of the NAACP, has fulfilled her own dearest desire: buying a home for her family. But they both are about to learn that dreams can be destroyed in an instant.

Lenore Lester was perfectly content with her quiet country life, caring for her father, and having no desire for marriage. She took steps to remain inconspicuous and tried her best to show indifference--but to no avail! The irresistible Duke of Eversleigh had found her out and was quite persistent in his affections....

Ismay Deagan has one wish in the world - to leave Ireland and join her brother, Bram, in Australia. However, her father has other ideas and orders her to marry their vicious neighbour Rory Flynn, even though she loathes him. But after Rory brutally attacks her Ismay realises she has to escape. So, disguising herself as an impoverished young widow, she sets sail for Australia, hoping to be reunited with her brother. When she meets Adam Treagar on the ship, she finally starts to believe her dreams of future happiness may come true....

1870 - Emma Grady has spent seven years of servitude as a convict in Australia. Now, having earned her ticket of leave, she is still bound by chains of honour and friendship. Yet she lives for the day when she will return to England, to face those who cheated and betrayed her. And to Marlow Tanner, the man she loves and whose tragic child she bore and then lost.

'I'm not working on a factory floor or digging for victory, but in my own small way I do what I can for those I love.' It's 1943, and Peggy Reilly is at her best when the troubles of war come knocking at the door of Beach View Boarding House - especially when it concerns her younger sister, Doreen. Doreen is divorced from Eddie, but his letters have taken on a more threatening tone of late.

Fifteen-year-old Maisy Mitcham and her twin brother, Duncan, lose their mother to an insane asylum one night in 1960. The twins are sent to their grandmother's country house, Nightingales. Cold and distant, she leaves them to their own devices, to explore and to grow. That is until the day Duncan doesn't come home from the woods. With their grandmother seeming to have little interest in her grandson's disappearance and the police soon giving up hope, it is left to Maisy to discover the truth.

February 1941. Julie Harris is working in London’s East End as a midwife when a bombing raid destroys her family and the house she grew up in. All she has left is her motherless baby nephew William. Determined to uphold her promise to her sister to keep William safe until his father, Bill, returns from the war, she accepts a post as a midwife in Cliffehaven on the south-coast of England.

For Meridian Wallace - and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s - being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him.

Charleston, South Carolina, 1859. After earning his medical degree in Paris, David returns home to discover that the impish girl he remembers has blossomed into a beautiful young woman. A young woman who proposes marriage. David longs to have Clare by his side and in his bed—but if he lets her that close, she'll discover his secrets. Then David's greatest secret returns from the dead. Thoroughly Cheyenne in spite of his blond hair, Esh has come east seeking answers. He finds not only the brother who abandoned him as a baby but also the woman he's seen in visions.

Simon Watson, a young librarian on the verge of losing his job, lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home - a house, perched on the edge of a bluff, that is slowly crumbling toward the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a traveling carnival reading tarot cards and seldom calls.

Germany 1937: Fear and betrayal stalk the streets. People disappear. Persecution of the Jews has become a national pastime. When Ruth Friedman's husband is arrested by the SS, she is left to fend for herself and her four children. She alone stands as their shield against the Nazis. But where can she go? Where will her family be safe? Ruth must overcome the indifference, hatred, and cruelty that surrounds her as she and her family race to escape the advancing Nazi army's final solution.

Fiction to coincide with a three-part historical Emmerdale spin-off show airing on ITV this autumn. The show is billed as a captivating 8 p.m. series in which cast members mark 100 years since the end of the Great War by uncovering the hidden stories of their WW1 counterparts, embarking on an immersive journey to experience a Yorkshire village at war and creating a special Armistice celebration.

It's 1848, and preparations are underway for Annie Gibson's wedding to Bilsden's wealthy millowner, Frederick Hallam. But not everyone is as pleased as they are. Frederick's daughter, Beatrice, is horrified at the prospect of a new attractive stepmother arriving at the house on Ridge Hill. Even Annie's own family feels threatened. The only person who seems pleased is Tom, Annie's brother. Soon, however, real troubles begin to pile up for the Gibsons.

Scotland, 1940: War rages across Europe, but Invermoray House is at peace - until the night of Constance’s 21st birthday, when she’s the only person to see a Spitfire crash into the loch. Rescuing the pilot and vowing to keep him hidden, Constance finds herself torn between duty to her family and keeping a promise that could cost her everything. 2020: Kate arrives in the Highlands to turn Invermoray into a luxury B&B, only to find that the estate is more troubled than she’d imagined.

When Ruby and Verity met as girls, they came from different worlds. Verity was privately educated, living in a beautiful Hampstead home, while Ruby was being raised in extreme poverty. Nevertheless, they became firm friends. However, fortunes are not set in stone, and soon the girls find their situations reversed. As Ruby goes up in the world, Verity encounters more and more tragedy, but still the girls remain large parts of each other's lives.

When Jephtha Kent leaves his family to go north, the Kents come under the influence of Louis, the most opportunistic son. While the nation splits on secession and slavery, the Kents nearly fall to greed and self-interest. The Civil War divided families and friends and left wounds some of which are still not healed. That the Kents survived was a miracle: that they came through with vigor intact held great promise for the rich decades that lay ahead. The Titans is the fifth volume in the Kent Family Chronicles preceded by The Furies.

Septembre 1939. La Pologne est envahie et la famille Cazalet apprend l'entrée en guerre de l'Angleterre. A Home Place, la routine est régulièrement bousculée par les raids allemands. Louise rêve toujours de jouer Hamlet mais doit d'abord passer par une école de cuisine. Au grand dam de sa famille, elle fume, porte des pantalons, découvre la sexualité et fait ses débuts en tant qu'actrice dans un sinistre théâtre de province. Clary, dont le père, Rupert, est porté disparu sur les côtes françaises, renseigne scrupuleusement chaque parcelle de sa vie dans des carnets.

Poised, calculating, and ruthlessly charming, Prince Rolfe of Ruthenia takes beautiful Angeline Fortin captive, mistaking her for her cousin and compromising her beyond redemption. Escape from the prince is impossible, and Rolfe begins to torment her senses at every turn. At last, captured and captivated, Angeline can't resist Rolfe's masterful seduction, and the prince discovers the only woman he's ever encountered who can meet him passion for passion. But Rolfe is on a mission to find his brother's killer, and in a critical moment of mortal danger, it's Angeline herself who holds his life - and heart - in her delicate hands.