Historical Homes

It's January 1943 when Rita Vincenzo receives her first letter from Glory Whitehall. Glory is an effervescent young mother, impulsive and free as a bird. Rita is a sensible professor's wife with a love of gardening and a generous, old soul. Glory comes from New England society; Rita lives in Iowa, trying to make ends meet. They have nothing in common except one powerful bond: The men they love are fighting in a war a world away from home. Brought together by an unlikely twist of fate, Glory and Rita begin a remarkable correspondence.

Before the Civil War had even begun, these young men, Zach and Luke, had already crossed paths while fishing in eastern Tennessee. After they parted ways, they never expected to later be pitted against each other in war - but, when Zach joined the Northern cause and Luke joined the Southern, that's exactly what happened. On the battlefields, each boy learns invaluable lessons about himself, and both contribute to the outcome of battles and, ultimately, to the war.

After the Second World War, Ellen and her daughter Netta make the journey from Germany back to Scotland. Nestled in the hills of the Southern Uplands is the farm where Ellen grew up – the home she left to be with the only man she's ever loved. She is still haunted by her memories...and the secrets she dare not share with anyone. Having grown up in Freiburg, farm life is new and exciting to Netta. Determined to be useful, she offers to help new shepherd Andrew Cameron. But doing so might put her bruised heart at risk....

After her plans to elope with her married lover fall through, Rachel Kivell is brokenhearted and saddened that she must remain in her small Cornish mining town, with all of its dark secrets. But her brooding is put to an end when the loving but childlike Alice Bowden turns up on her doorstep. Poor orphaned Alice has nowhere to go, but Rachel cannot see herself taking on the responsibilities of a child. Can she put her worries aside, or will Alice never find a place to call home?

Tragedy leaves Lesley Morland to fill her father's shoes as the train-station master in Bountiful, Kansas. She is overwhelmed by unexpected circumstances and responsibilities, with the future of Bountiful itself hanging in the balance.

Almost overnight, they take over the Springerville. They snatch up the real estate. Turn old-fashioned stores into fancy boutiques. Transform the schools. And bring crime and corruption with them. Now one of these invaders—a predatory media mogul from New York—is running for mayor and plans to turn Springerville into a sprawling urban enclave . . . just like the ones the northerners left behind . . . Not if Gus Fuller can stop it. A former army sergeant and lifelong townie, Gus runs the old luncheonette his grandfather built—and plans to give the media mogul a run for his money.

Devastated by her father’s death days after her triumphant graduation from Oberlin College, Amanda Stewart is all alone in the world. Her father’s unscrupulous business partner offers her an indecent proposal to earn a living. Instead, to fulfill a promise she made to her father, she resolves to start a school to educate and uplift their race. Sorting through her father’s papers, she discovers he had carried on a mysterious correspondence with a plantation in Milford, Georgia. She determines to start her teaching work with the formerly enslaved.

Marcus has one brother in a youth offender centre and the other is working with their dad on plans for their next theft. Everyone assumes Marcus will follow in their footsteps, but he has other ideas, different hopes. When a mysterious accident lands a man in hospital, it confirms what everyone in their community expects and Marcus gets the blame. He feels trapped. Only new girl Emma - with her peace protest banners and political badges - questions this story. Can they work together to clear his name – and help Marcus become the person he really wants to be?

Lucien and Norman Parker are as close as twin brothers can be. Together with their father, they run a railway station in Warm Springs, OK, during the Depression. But they never expect a woman to come between them: both Lucien and Norman fall in love with the same girl. Lucien marries her, and soon World War II takes both men away from home, to the Pacific. It is there, as prisoners of war, that their bond breaks: one of them dies, and the other makes the agonizing decision that will change his life forever.

1944, Chicago. From desperate small-town teen to star of the burlesque circuit, Violet Ernte has survived tough choices and more than one reinvention. Now, framed for an underworld murder, she has one way out: agree to keep Marcie, a reckless USO showgirl and mobster's daughter, on the straight and narrow. Vi's new act: play innocent ingenue and join the all-American song-and-dance troupe bound for overseas to a war-torn Italy.

Twenty-one-year-old Rebecca Hardin is determined to help provide for her family, living a hardscrabble life in 1910 in the Southern Kentucky hills. Her brother, Andy, died when he became lost in a cave five years earlier, and Rebecca feels responsible for his death because she'd told him to "go, get lost". The best wages at Mammoth Cave are earned by the guides, who receive a salary plus tips from the guests. But only men are allowed to be guides, so Rebecca cuts her hair, dons some of Andy's clothes, and introduces herself as Reb to the estate manager.

There are some things which even the closest friendship cannot survive.... Neighbours Edie Kelsey and Lil Horton have been friends for more than twenty years, sharing the joys and sorrows of tough lives as the wives of fishermen in Grimsby. So it was no surprise that their children were close and that Edie's son, Frank, and Lil's daughter, Irene, would fall in love and marry at a young age. But the declaration of war in 1939 changes everything.

The line between finding and losing yourself is often a slippery slope. One misstep and you find yourself sliding into places you never intended to go. Jesse found that in what he thought was only him putting himself up for the winter. It evolved into something much more; a journey into his past. And that's somewhere the boy definitely didn't want to go. Would it cost him his life? It just might have. Only time - and those willing to talk - will tell. Getting lost is easy. Finding your way back home's the tricky part.

For nine months in Auschwitz, eighteen-year-old Eva Fleiss clung to sanity by playing piano on imaginary keyboards. After liberation, Eva and the five remaining Jews of Laszlo, Hungary, journey home, seeking to restart their lives. Yet the town that deported them is not ready to embrace their return. Their former neighbors and friends resist relinquishing their newfound status and property, and they struggle with their roles as perpetrators, enablers, and bystanders during the Holocaust.

Growing up without the care of a loving family made Anna Golding fiercely independent. So when war breaks out, determined to do her duty, she joins the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Her fellow trainees are like the sisters she never had. However, as they all talk of fond memories of home, Anna's heart breaks. Her past is too painful to share. Then she meets her friend's brother, Royal Air Force navigator Jimmy Armstrong, whose gentle care makes her feel safe for the first time in her life. Anna and Jimmy must snatch moments together as their duties pull them to opposite ends of the country.

A sleepy town in 1960s South Georgia, where to some residents, segregation is more important than catching a killer. An ex-homicide detective from Chicago called to honour an old promise. With a rising body count and a community guarding their secrets more fiercely than their children, asking questions could prove deadly for the outsider….

Isabelle Wardrop’s well-to-do life has completely unraveled. Within months, she’s lost both her parents, her fortune, and her home. With nowhere else to turn, she and her younger sister move in with a trusted former servant in an impoverished

Harriet (Harry) Ferguson is engaged to be married...unhappily so. All she truly wants is a forever home, something she has never had. On a visit to her fiance’s mother in southeastern Arizona, she stops by a museum on historic Fort Huachuca, an army post dating to the late 1800s, where the wax figure of a handsome cavalry soldier captures her imagination - so much so that she can’t resist touching the figure.

It's the 1940s. World War II. A New England farm boy is growing up during wartime. That's what Home Front: A Memoir from WWII is about. You'll share his experience - the blackouts, the rationing, the fears, the patriotism, and the unity everyone felt. As the men go off to war, you follow Douglas, our young narrator, as he grows to an obliged maturity, sharing with others, enduring the scarcity of the depression, the fear and patriotism during World War II and then the exuberance in that brief, post-war period when America felt safe and when the middle class was born.

It is 1914 and The Great War is underway. When the call to arms comes, Nicholas Southwell won't be found hanging back. It's a pity he can't be so decisive when it comes to letting his estate manager Paul Haskell know what he feels before he has to leave for the front line. In the trenches Nicholas meets a fellow officer, Phillip Taylor, who takes him into the unclaimed territory of physical love. Which one will he choose, if he's allowed the choice?