Historical Family Saga

Dover 1940 As firebombs fall on Dover, Edie Castle's life is thrown into turmoil when the garage where she lives and works is damaged and her beloved boss is arrested. With no job and nowhere else to go, Edie returns to Castle's Café and her formidable mother, Nellie. Living with her mother is never easy, but tensions reach boiling point when an old friend of Nellie's arrives looking for a place to stay. Meanwhile, desperate to clear her boss's name, Edie turns to his nephew for help.

When sixteen-year-old Sally is evacuated to the English south coast, she is terrified by what lies ahead of her. All she knows are the sights and sounds of London's East End – but Sally swallows her tears as they leave the familiar landmarks behind, knowing that she has to be a Grown-Up Girl and play mother to her six-year-old brother Ernie. Playing mother is nothing new for Sally – their real mother Florrie, a good-time girl, hasn't even come to the station to wave them off and Ernie, crippled at an early age by polio, is used to depending on his older sister.

In the American Wild West the law is young, and men and women must make their own justice. Casey Stratton has left behind an unbearable situation at home and set off on her own, relying on her courage and inventiveness to survive where most women could not. Damien Rutledge III is a society man from New York, thrusting aside his life of refinement and sophistication in favor of a more basic need - revenge.

Germany 1939 – To save her baby, Trudi Beck must hand her over to strangers who will take her across the sea to a foreign country. Trudi has already lost her husband to the Nazis, her stepsons are taking the train too. Walking away from the train station with empty arms is the hardest thing she's ever done. London 1939 – Newly married, Sally Matthews, is alone again. Her husband is away training for war, leaving her days and home empty. She volunteers to help with the children from the Kindertransport, becoming captivated by five-year-old Tom and his baby sister, Liesel.

On the banks of the River Seine in 1899, a young woman takes her final breath before plunging into the icy water. Although she does not know it, her decision will set in motion an astonishing chain of events. It will lead to 1950s Norway, where a grieving toy-maker is on the cusp of a transformative invention, all the way to present-day Ottawa Valley in Canada, where a journalist, battling a terrible disease, risks everything for one last chance to live.

Trinidad in the 1940s, nearing the end of American occupation and British colonialism. On a hill overlooking Bell Village sits the Changoor farm, where Dalton and Marlee Changoor live in luxury unrecognizable to those who reside in the farm’s shadow. Down below is the Barrack, a ramshackle building of wood and tin, divided into rooms occupied by whole families. Among these families are the Saroops—Hans, Shweta, and their son, Krishna, all three born of the barracks.

July, 1914: In their sunlit Hampshire workshop, Alice Dalton mixes paints for the stained-glass artwork she and Edmund are working on, pausing only to joyfully cradle the soft swell of her stomach. But the looming war threatens her hard-won happiness. A knock at the door announces the arrival of Victor, her estranged brother, returning after six long years in America. But her elation at being reunited is short-lived as she realizes he still hasn’t forgiven her for her part in the heartbreak that sent him abroad.

In the aftermath of a tumultuous year, Fiona Winslow finds solace in the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, the rambling family estate on the east coast of Australia she once called home. Intent on restoring it, she discovers the keys to more than just the dilapidated mansion—beneath the crumbling plaster and dust are secrets that have been buried for a generation. When a misshelved book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention in her late uncle's library, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own—a story of love, loss and betrayal.

In this multi-biographical history of a family in India, Shantaben enters an arranged marriage at age 14. Before she can join her husband in Africa, she must serve his family for several years. Arriving in Kenya, Shantaben dreams of having her own family. But she finds no community, no support, and no medical resources. Their first year together claims the life of their child and nearly ends Shantaben’s. Sustained by her culture and faith, she survives.

In the summer of 1986 in a small Chinese village, 10-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: Her father promises to return home and collect her by her 12th birthday. But Junie’s growing determination to stay put in the idyllic countryside with her beloved grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future.

This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons, one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of 2,000 years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across 50 countries to a life among the stars, their destinies remain the same....

Evelyn Barton was destined to die in 1825, but a stranger from the future traveled back in time, arriving at Barton Place, an estate that had been in the Barton family since 1743, and then changed everything for Evelyn Barton and her family. Evelyn is the only daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Barton of Barton Place, Thomas’s inheritance, following a family lineage since 1743, when King George II bestowed the earldom of Barclay on his great grandfather, with land nestled between Cambridge, Brighton and Brookline, overlooking the Charles River on the outskirts of Boston.

Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat and beauty of twentieth-century coastal Singapore in the waning years of British rule. He is a gentle boy who is not much interested in fishing, preferring to spend his days playing with the neighbor girl, Siok Mei. But when he discovers he has the unique ability to locate bountiful, movable islands that no one else can find, he feels a new sense of obligation and possibility—something to offer the community and impress the spirited girl he has come to love.

The Road Home lies in the shadows of Manifest Destiny and Wounded Knee; it is etched into the landscape of an old man’s memory and into the stubborn dreams of a young man’s heart. In one of Jim Harrison’s greatest works, five members of the Northridge family narrate the tangled epic of their history on the expanses of the Nebraska plains. They strive to understand their fates, to reconcile with demons of the past, to live in accordance with the land, and to die with grace.

The year is 1794, and Fritz - passionate, idealistic and brilliant - is seeking his father's permission to announce his engagement to his heart's desire: 12-year-old Sophie. His astounded family and friends are amused and disturbed by his betrothal. What can he be thinking? Tracing the dramatic early years of the young German who was to become the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis, The Blue Flower is a masterpiece of invention, evoking the past with a reality that we can almost feel.

Long before Hank Crawford arrived in the waters of Ketchikan, his partners and compatriots were already in love with its shores. Following the final, crushing moments of World War II, Japanese officer Kiyoshi Tsurifune, Sergeant Jones Henry, and Resistance fighter Swede Scorden struggle to regain normalcy and any contact with the shimmering, fish-filled sea. Lost honor, fallen friends, their cultural identities gone in the wake of a nuclear blast - these fishermen-turned-soldiers have a long way to go till they regain the waters in which they feel most at home.

Against the chaotic backdrop of World War II, Grace Murphy is working as a midwife in Doncaster Royal Infirmary with her two friends, Clodagh and Patsy. In between delivering babies and tending wounded airmen, the girls endure bombing raids, rationing and the hardships and heartbreak that war brings. But in the faces of the new babies she welcomes to the world, Grace always looks for hope, as she dreams of a time when the war will end.

Naomi Wyatt has finally given up on the man who once promised to love her for the rest of his life—then disappeared after a business trip, never responding to her letters. She’s now alone with a beautiful baby to provide for, a daughter whose red hair reminds her daily of the man she gave her heart to. She has to move on, though, and she did, going west with her sister. When Jonah Coulter asks for her hand in marriage, she knows she would be hard-pressed to find a better father for her sweet child. He’s a Coulter, after all, and he’s proven to be a good friend during her darkest hours.

America is in a state of turbulence, engulfed in civil unrest and uncertainty. Yet for Whitney Dane - spending the summer of her twenty-second year on Martha's Vineyard - life could not be safer, nor the future more certain.

It's 1978, and Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She’s also the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the Rescue Squad, and the director of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the town’s long-running Outdoor Drama.