Historical Family Saga

These are letters from the private correspondence of the Roxton family, spanning 1743-1777, with extracts from the diaries of Antonia, fifth duchess of Roxton and seventh duchess of Kinross. They include Roxton's last letter to Antonia. This volume complements the first three books of the award-winning Roxton Family Saga: Noble Satyr, Midnight Marriage, and Autumn Duchess, with a foreword by a late-Victorian descendant, Alice-Victoria, 10th duchess of Roxton.

It's 1978 and the whole country, exhausted from the twin traumas of Vietnam and Watergate, is suffering from a massive hangover. Chucky O'Malley knows how the country feels; approaching fifty, he finds himself in the grip of a debilitating midlife crisis. As he travels the world, from the Vatican, where a new pope is to be selected, to Jimmy Carter's White House, where an overwhelmed president struggles to find a cure for his nation's malaise, Chucky searches for a way to renew his weary spirit.

Life in a Liverpool tenement block is a grim struggle for Martha Connelly and her poverty-stricken family, as every day renews the threat of homelessness, hunger and disease. Family warmth remains constant however, despite the misery and disquiet of the slum surroundings, and the indomitable neighbourhood puts up a relentless fight for survival. Helen Forrester’s poignant novel relays bleakness and hardships, but celebrates also the spirit of unified hope and the restorative values of the close-knit community.

The East End of London has been devastated by the Blitz and the people are struggling to come to terms with their ravaged city. Rationing bites ever deeper, and and everything that makes life better is in short supply. For the district nurses, the challenges are tougher than ever. Gladys loves her work in the Civil Nursing Reserve, but just when she needs to rely on her sister at home to help out with the chores, she turns into a handful of trouble. Edith is learning to cope with her boyfriend's injuries after Dunkirk but will she have to choose between her love for him and her career?

Charleston, South Carolina, 1860. For nine long years, Clare Stratford has struggled to understand her mother's final choice. The truth comes at a devastating price. Clare's lifelong love, Dr. David Lazare, risks everything to heal her wounded body. But only the medicine of David's Cheyenne brother, Ésh, can mend Clare's shattered soul.

On the eve of his father's death, Tobias does the unthinkable and flees to the military with his gang. With very little training, they are delivered to Vietnam and the Morrow brothers for punishment. The first of which is detox from drugs. Back in Des Moines, Natalia Morrow's world has been shattered and things have become darker.

All he wanted was enough whiskey to forget. Ravaged by grief after a car crash killed his cherished wife and unborn child, Chase Tyler has abandoned his family business. He'd hit the rodeo circuit and the bars with equal disregard for his life, unwilling to face his pain and move on - until a bad-tempered bull and a lady from the past forced him to.... All she wanted was his love. Marcie Johns had known Chase all her life, and had been driving the car when it crashed.

Hamburg 1888: After thirty prosperous years, coffee importer Peter Hansen & Sons faces hard times - and certain bankruptcy - unless three brothers can make savvy moves to save the faltering business after their father’s untimely death. For Robert Hansen, that means meeting changing demands by following the future from Vienna to Africa. He relocates his family to the German colony of Cameroon and takes ownership of a cocoa plantation. With a spirit as adventurous as her father’s, Robert’s fifteen-year-old daughter Luise discovers an exciting new world.

Andrew Gross delivers a stirring story of a Jewish family brought together in the dawn of the women's garment business and torn apart by the birth of organized crime in New York City in the 1930s. Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabishevsky grew up poor and rough in a tiny flat on the Lower East Side, until the death of their father thrust them into having to fend for themselves. Morris, the youngest, dropped out of school at 12 and apprenticed himself to a garment cutter in a clothing factory; Sol headed to accounting school; but Harry, scarred by a family tragedy, fell in with a gang of thugs as a teenager.

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.

Jack Lester has to find a bride...But where can he find the perfect woman? She has to be attractive, kind, a good conversationalist...and most important, she has to accept him as he is: devilishly handsome, charming and, as far as anyone knows, poor as a church mouse! If London society discovers his hidden wealth, he'll never find the right wife.

Historical fiction based in the 1950s. Follows one family through the turbulent 50s as rivalries are born and the political and social environment changes.

The moment Anthony Marino sets his eyes on Vera Coulson he wants her as his lover. The only problem is that she’s the wife of a powerful and wealthy man. Vera Coulson, the reigning princess of the Coulson dynasty, has her own private demons. Not only do they interfere with her ability to be a good mother and wife, but they may also ultimately destroy the Coulson empire.

Autumn Hope knows for a fact that the man she’s to marry cuts timber in the Sulphur River bottoms. She’s seen him in her dreams—and exactly where he’s working. Of course, she convinces her father she must travel the 150 miles to meet the man of her dreams. If he isn’t to be her husband, why would she kiss him in her vision? The lady’s sudden appearance baffles Sean. Craziness needs a keeper, but how did she ever find him? Wounded by lost love, he cannot believe the tall tale the pretty lady is spinning. It has to be a scam, right? God doesn’t work that way...or does He?

Alice, Kate and Naomi want to keep the magic of Christmas alive in their village of Churchwood but a thief in the area and a new family that shuns the local community are only the first of the problems they face.

1926: The murderer Gerald Ponsonby has been caught, thanks to Boots, and is facing trial. He hates Boots and the whole Adams clan and is hungry for revenge. When a dapper, quiet, but rather odd lodger turns up at Doreen Paterson's house, nobody thinks anything is amiss. Certainly not Doreen - who works for Boots in Adams Enterprises and thinks him just wonderful. Could the strange lodger be plotting the downfall of the irrepressible, outrageous, and larger-than-life Adams clan?

London, 1854: 20-year-old Essie Chapman lives with her father in poverty-stricken Limehouse, working on the river as a boatman. Her life seems set before her, never to leave this part of London and forever at her father's beck and call. Then, one night, she must transport a mysterious man from a foreign ship to the banks of the Thames, a man who ends up renting a room in Essie's house, identifying himself only as 'Raven'.

Lancashire, 1895. When her controlling stepfather suddenly dies, it seems that Elinor Pendleton finally has a chance of freedom. But her hopes are soon dashed when she learns that the thuggish Jason Stafford has inherited every penny, and is determined to have Elinor too. Forced to flee with her maid, Maude, Elinor finds shelter with Maude's distant cousin in the remote village on the shore of Jubilee Lake. But Walter Crossley has troubles of his own. Having lost his closest family in a tragic accident, he needs one of his grandsons to return from America to inherit his farm.

Proper, respectable Lucas Holman, Viscount Grimslee, has always done what was expected of him, and that included letting go of the woman to whom he was betrothed. Now, filled with regrets, Lucas is living quite contentedly and scandalously...for himself. He’s enjoying his new, roguish, carefree existence, until the holidays arrive and he’s summoned home. 

This second volume of previously unpublished letters from the private correspondence of the Roxton family spans a 20-year period, from the 1760s to the late 1780s, and includes extracts from the diaries of Antonia, Duchess of Kinross, and her younger son Lord Henri-Antoine Hesham. Also included are letters by the fifth Duke of Roxton, written in the final stages of his illness, and addressed to his youngest son, Lord Henri-Antoine. The volume concludes with a letter by the latter’s wife, Lady Henri-Antoine Hesham, to her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Kinross.