Historical Romance Families

When Arkady Petrovich returns home from college, his father finds his eager, naïve son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought home with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father with his determination to overthrow the traditional values of society. Vividly capturing the hopes and fears of a changing Russia in the 19th century, Fathers and Sons is Ivan Turgenev's masterpiece. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

Lydia was never the most upstanding of the Bennet sisters, but who ever said that moral rectitude was fun? At least she bested her elder sisters and was the first to get married. She never could understand what all the fuss was about after she left Brighton with her gallant. It is a shame, though, that Mr. Wickham turned out to be a disappointing husband in so many aspects, the most notable being his early demise on the battlefields of Waterloo. And so Lydia, still not yet twenty and full of enterprising spirit, is in urgent need of a wealthy replacement.

In her captivating new novel, best-selling author Lynn Kurland paints a magnificent portrait of 13th-century England with the passionate tale of a woman crippled by the past and a man destined to future greatness....

After being driven from home by their brutal father, the Willett sisters find themselves facing greater heartache in the wider world. Nell, the middle daughter, has left home to be with her lover, Cliff, fearing what reprisals might come from marrying against her father’s wishes. The couple head for Lancashire, but Nell’s happiness is short-lived.

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.

The Batleys and the Caldwells owned neighbouring farms on the beautiful, wild Northumbrian coast. But there all similarity ended, and enmity began. For between the two families raged a violent and bitter feud. Into this stormy atmosphere came Linda Metcalfe, an agricultural student, who became involved in the tensions between the two households on her arrival. Employed by Ralph Batley, Linda soon found herself unwittingly a part of the feud, and began to feel a strange admiration for Ralph, who made it painfully clear that he didn't need her on the farm or in his life.

In 1937, seventeen-year-old Ella’s life changes forever when she is sent to spend the summer on the beautiful Île de Ré and meets the charismatic, creative Christophe. They spend the summer together, exploring the island’s sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, and, for the first time in her life, Ella feels truly free. But the outbreak of war casts everything in a new light. Ella is forced to return to Scotland, where she volunteers for the war effort alongside the dashing Angus. In this new world, Ella feels herself drifting further and further from who she was on the Île de Ré.

Lady Marie O’Shea lives life by her own rules...but her days of running free end when her brother, Lord Fergus O’Shea, returns from England, intent on marrying his sisters off to keep them from being the scourge of the county. And when Marie lands herself in a scandalous amount of trouble, she ends up as the first sister doomed to whatever marriage of convenience her brother can arrange. Bad boy Christian Darrow is having too much fun to be tied down, and as the younger son of an earl, he isn’t expected to amount to much.

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.

In Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway have taken Austen's original novella and transformed it into a vivid and richly developed novel of love lost and found and the complex relationships between women, men, and money in Regency England.

Feisty Julia Faircloth is used to managing the lives of her eccentric relatives, so when darkly dangerous Lord Sebastian Trevarre arrives in Bath and proposes to her shy sister Sarah, she switches places with the bride to save her from a shockingly carnal wedding night. Against his better judgment, Sebastian consummates a marriage to the most provoking, appealing woman he's ever known, and then is forced to live with her in his neglected yet enchanting estate on the coast of Cornwall.

During the turbulent months following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, 21-year-old Emi Kato, the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, is locked behind barbed wire in a Texas internment camp. She feels hopeless until she meets handsome young Christian Lange, whose German-born parents were wrongfully arrested for un-American activities. Together they live as prisoners with thousands of other German and Japanese families but discover that love can bloom in even the bleakest circumstances.

Queenie is only 14 and has been deserted by her mother. Set in Liverpool and Wales at the outbreak of World War II, this story explores themes of female friendship and betrayal from the perspective of a group of women of widely different ages.

As the Japanese begin their assault on Singapore, Sarah Fuller is forced to leave her parents and fiancé, Philip, behind. The long journey to England is fraught with danger, and Sarah and her sister Jane don’t even know if their great-aunt is alive, let alone waiting for them. They arrive in Cliffehaven, on the south coast of England, and here Sarah must find work to support them both. When the Women's Timber Corps takes over the local estate, Sarah enlists as a lumberjill.

It’s 1953 and the nation’s favourite street is preparing to celebrate Elizabeth II’s coronation. As the street swoons over the beautiful young queen and her handsome Prince, tensions simmer beneath the surface. Can the street put their troubles behind them and make Coronation Day a celebration to remember?

It’s the summer of 1935, and 11-year-old Stella Walker is preparing to leave her home forever. Forced to evacuate to make way for a new reservoir, the village of Brackendale Green will soon be lost. But before the water has even reached them, a dreadful event threatens to tear Stella’s family apart. Present day, and a fierce summer has dried up the lake and revealed the remnants of the deserted village. Now an old woman, Stella begs her granddaughter Laura to make the journey she can’t.

How does an innocent lady find herself forced to wed a royal spy who seduced her – by mistake? For Lady Rebecca Marshall, a whirlwind of passion and excitement begins when, to her mother’s great delight, she becomes a maid of honor at the court of Queen Victoria. Rebecca’s mother sees this appointment as a golden opportunity for Rebecca to make a good match. At court, Rebecca innocently steps into the rivalry between the queen’s spymaster and the noblewoman in charge of the maids.

It’s spring 1919, and the Great War has ended. New life flourishes on the red cliffs of the Northern Isles of Scotland—sea pinks and primrose, puffins and guillemots. But this windswept corner of the world harbors a dark secret. Rose Van Etten has always reveled in danger and defiance. When the war started, she went from racing cars to driving ambulances and learned of an insidious spy ring from a dying soldier. Now that the war is over, she ventures to Scotland in search of the truth.

After the bloody French Revolution, Emperor Napoleon’s power is absolute. When Marie-Louise, the 18-year-old daughter of the King of Austria, is told that the Emperor has demanded her hand in marriage, her father presents her with a terrible choice: marry the cruel, capricious Napoleon, leaving the man she loves and her home forever, or say no, and plunge her country into war. Marie-Louise knows what she must do, and she travels to France, determined to be a good wife despite Napoleon’s reputation. But lavish parties greet her in Paris, and at the extravagant French court, she finds many rivals for her husband’s affection....

It's 1939, and Canada is on the cusp of entering World War II. Seventeen-year-old farm girl Cornelia is heartbroken when she learns that her beloved soldier, Henry, has been killed in a train wreck. Alone and carrying a heavy secret, she makes the desperate choice that will haunt her for years to come. Never telling a soul, Cornelia pours out the painful events of the war in her diary.