Historical Family Saga

Victoria Wild is only four years old but already knows about heartbreak, having been abandoned by her unwed mother when she was only a baby. Luckily her aunt Eliza was there to take her in, but times are still hard on Pit Lane, and while Eliza does her best to make sure there is always food on the table, Victoria bears the stigma of her illegitimacy. Her aunt also fears the day when Victoria will start to ask about her father....

Tragedy strikes a small Yorkshire mining town when Sarah Wild’s husband dies in a terrible accident. Widowed and destitute, Sarah is forced to remarry to save her daughters, Mary-Anne and Eliza, from the workhouse. But her new husband is a violent drunk, and when Sarah tragically dies too, Mary-Anne and Eliza are orphaned. Unable to rely on their drunken stepfather, Mary-Anne and Eliza are left to fend for themselves. They are determined to stick together, but life becomes complicated when Mary-Anne, the eldest, falls pregnant with the child of a married mine owner.

Kilteegan Bridge, Ireland 1974. Eli’s need to do his best by his patients is a cause for a bitter divide in the community. Emmet seems hell bent on going down a path in life his parents dread but they’re unable to stop him. Jack’s life and liberty are in grave peril as his secret faces exposure, while Emily’s troubles are, it seems only just beginning with the return of someone she would much rather had disappeared forever. And Maria must decide, is blood really thicker than water, and should family always come first, no matter the cost?

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.

Tearaway Viv’s fragile truce with her grandmother is threatened when her flighty mother suddenly shows up from America and expects to pick up where she left off. It’s what Viv’s always dreamed of - but is she ready for the drama Pauline brings with her? Helen finds herself playing surrogate mother to her French niece Katrine, while keeping their family relationship a secret from the rest of the Nightingale staff. However, independent Kat is determined to do things her way. But underneath it all, she is lost. She is in a foreign country, still mourning the loss of her mother.

Berlin, 1943: Ava Müller is a proud supporter of the German war effort, working for Joseph Goebbels alongside her father, a high-ranking official in the Reich. With her sister Hanna, a nurse, braving bombing raids to save lives, they are a model Nazi family. Until Ava discovers her parents and Hanna are secretly working for the resistance… Returning to their country home, Ava is shocked to find her childhood friend Eliana Goldman and her family hidden in the attic.

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.

Inspired by the true story of the Quality Street factory and its loyal workers, this is a nostalgic and compelling novel and the perfect Christmas treat. At 16 years old, Irene ‘Reenie’ Calder is leaving school with little in the way of qualifications. She is delighted to land a seasonal job at Mackintosh’s Quality Street factory. Reenie feels like a kid let loose in a sweet shop, but trouble seems to follow her around, and it isn’t long before she falls foul of the strict rules.

Occupied France, 1940. When the staff at a field hospital draw straws to find out who will join the evacuation from Dunkirk, Nurse Cate is left behind. But when the Nazis arrive to claim prisoners of war, she takes her chance and flees into the night, taking one patient with her. Fifty miles away, the surrendering soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment are shot dead by the advancing Germans. Beneath the pile of bodies two men survive, crawling to the safety of a nearby farmhouse, where sisters Elise and Adelaide risk their lives to take them in.

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.

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.

1946, Liverpool. Bella Harrison cannot believe the devastating war that stole the lives of her father and sister is truly over at last. She wonders how they will ever rebuild Victory Street with the city in ruins, and half their neighbors gone. But for now, she and her childhood sweetheart, Bobby, are happy newlyweds, doting on Bella’s little son, her child with Black American pilot Earl Franklin Junior.

It is 1898, and groups of starving Puerto Ricans, los hambrientos, roam the parched countryside and dusty towns begging for food. Under the yoke of Spanish oppression, the Caribbean island is forced to prepare to wage war with the United States. Up in the mountainous coffee region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their small farm from the creditors. When the Spanish-American War and the great San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899 bring devastating upheaval, the young couple is lured, along with thousands of others, to the sugar plantations of Hawaii.

Sivakami was married at 10, widowed at 18, and left with two children. According to the dictates of her caste, her head is shaved and she puts on widow's whites. From dawn to dusk, she is not allowed to contaminate herself with human touch, not even to comfort her small children. Sivakami dutifully follows custom, except for one defiant act: She moves back to her dead husband's house to raise her children. There, her servant Muchami, a closeted gay man who is bound by a different caste's rules, becomes her public face.

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.

It is 1940 and Staff Nurse Polly Brown has been granted a posting at Cliffehaven Memorial Hospital to be near her badly injured husband, Adam. But her decision has meant that she has had to part with their five-year-old daughter, Alice, who is travelling to safety in Canada. Polly's heart is torn in two as she says goodbye to Alice and heads to the Beach View boarding house, where she throws herself into her work. But as she confronts the fact that Adam may not survive his injuries, a shocking telegram arrives at Beach View.

Bristol 1938. A shadowy presence overshadows Coronation Close, watching and waiting. Jenny Crawford is the first to notice the stranger and wonders why his attention is fixed on Thelma Dawson’s house. When challenged he makes a hasty retreat. Meanwhile Thelma is having trouble with her precocious daughter Mary who is about to leave school and start work. Mary considers herself an adult but to Thelma she’s still a little girl; an attitude resented by her daughter.

A life of poverty in a cramped pit cottage is all that 17-year-old Ruby Dinsdale has known. Even with her father and younger brother working at the coal mine, money is tight. Her mother, Mary, is skilled at stretching what little they have, but the small contribution Ruby makes from her job at the local pub makes all the difference. So when Ruby is sacked, and Mary becomes pregnant again, the family's challenges are greater than ever. When charming Miner Gordon begins to court Ruby, it seems as though happiness is on the horizon.

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.

Bristol 1936. Jenny Crawford has resigned herself to a loveless marriage living hand to mouth with their two children. Like many others, husband Roy struggles to find work at the docks but a chance encounter turns the family's fortunes around. Not only does he get regular work but they are also allocated a council house on Coronation Close on the outskirts of the city. Jenny and the children are overjoyed, this is the fresh start she could only ever dream of. But trouble feels never too far away.