Historical Romance Families

On 21 January 1804, Anne Sharpe arrives at Godmersham Park in Kent to take up the position of governess. At 31 years old, she has no previous experience of either teaching or fine country houses. Her mother has died, and she has nowhere else to go. Anne is left with no choice. For her new charge—12-year-old Fanny Austen—Anne's arrival is all novelty and excitement.

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.

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.

Cliffehaven, 1946. The war is over and those who have spent years fighting behind enemy lines are finally coming home. Peggy Reilly is over the moon that her husband Jim is safely back from Burma. But after the horrors he has endured, adjusting to life at Beach View will not be easy. Can he and Peggy find a way through? Meanwhile evacuee Ruby Clark has much to contend with when her estranged mother turns up, having completed a long prison sentence. There is huge heartache still to come for Ruby, and she will need her Beach View family more than ever.

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom - all because of a reckless bargain her father struck. And since birth, she has been training to kill him. Betrayed by her family yet bound to obey, Nyx rails against her fate. Still, on her 17th birthday, she abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, disarm him, and break the 900-year-old curse he put on her people. But Ignifex is not what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle - a shifting maze of magical rooms - enthralls her.

When Laura Powell and Henry Salter travel to Paris in 1938, neither considers the other very good company. Laura is a shallow, spoiled heir to a fortune, and Henry an opportunistic bore—or so they think. But as her father’s protégé, Henry is tasked with accompanying Laura for her safety, even as she continues to scorn him. Orphaned stowaway David forces the pair to see eye to eye. They can ignore their growing feelings, but they can’t deny the boy’s need for protection. Yet even with this tentative truce, their problems are far from over.

When Louisa Deasey receives a message from a Frenchwoman called Coralie, who has found a cache of letters in an attic, written about Louisa’s father, neither woman can imagine the events it will set in motion. The letters, dated 1949, detail a passionate affair between Louisa’s father, Denison, and Coralie’s grandmother, Michelle, in post-war London. They spark Louisa to find out more about her father, who died when she was six.

Nathan Hack expects his four sons to marry well and keep up the tradition of becoming barristers in the prestigious house of Hack. But Rubin, the youngest, feels that his legacy is a stranglehold. He's betrothed to a woman from a fine family when he falls in love with a beautiful, enigmatic stranger in Paris. Her name is Magda, and she will change Rubin’s life completely. Decades later, history will repeat itself when a woman is caught between two men during Hitler's regime.

It is 1860 in Bilsden, the Lancashire mill town, and Frederick Hallam is dying. But first he makes secret plans to smooth the future path for his beloved wife, Annie. Her sister, Joanie, is fed up with everything until a dashing new admirer crosses her path. But a spurned suitor is determined that Joanie will be his, whatever the cost. And he is not the only one who wants to harm the Gibson family. Meanwhile the Civil War in America cuts off cotton supplies so that times are hard in Bilsden and unemployment is rife.

The Ambhan Empire is crumbling. A terrible war of succession hovers on the horizon. The only hope for peace lies in the mysterious realm of ash, where mortals can find what they seek in the echoes of their ancestors' dreams. But to walk there requires a steep price. Arwa is determined to make the journey. Widowed by a brutal massacre, she's pledged service to the royal family and will see that pledge through to the end. She never expected to be joined by Zahir, the disgraced, illegitimate prince who has turned to forbidden magic in a desperate bid to save those he loves.

It’s London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding pattern: his mother is dead, his father is dying or remarrying or both, his siblings are fighting, his internship is pointless, and nobody will leave him alone. Everything is as it should be and yet nothing is right. Over the course of a year of partying, drinking, and flirting to dubious consequence, Hal is tested by brutal family legacies, Catholic guilt, and the terrifying possibility of being loved. The House of Lancaster will never be the same.

At 18, Alexandra Wickham is presented to King George V and Queen Mary in an exquisite white lace and satin dress her mother has ordered from Paris. With her delicate blond looks, she is a stunning beauty who seems destined for a privileged life. But fate, a world war, and her own quietly rebellious personality lead her down a different path. By 1939, Europe is on fire and England is at war. From her home in idyllic Hampshire, Alex makes her way to London as a volunteer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. But she has skills that draw the attention of another branch of the service.

In mid 17th-century England, the nation was in upheaval. In the Dorset countryside, one sunlit afternoon, a young girl, illicitly bathing in a stream, first fell in love with a passing stranger. Her parents called her Dorcas, but he called her Campion and that's what she longed to be, then and forever. She had one gift left for her by her unknown father - a pendant made of gold, banded by tiny glowing stones and at its base was a seal engraved with an axe and the words: St Matthew.

The end of the colonies' fight for independence ushers in a fresh and even more glorious struggle to build the new nation. It is an epoch ripe with the energy of a country in its springtime. Two young heirs to a family dynasty turn their eyes west - the frontier beckons. It took a special breed to give up the comfortable life along our eastern seaboard. Who knew what lay beyond? But when Abraham Kent fell in love with his beautiful stepsister, he knew that leaving was the only course open to him.

A daring WWII pilot who grew up among the clouds, Juliet Caron’s life was one of courage, adventure - and a love torn apart by war. Every nook of her Cornish cottage is alive with memories just waiting to be discovered. Katherine Henderson has escaped to Cornwall for Christmas, but she soon finds there is more to her holiday cottage than meets the eye. And on the eve of Juliet’s 100th birthday, Katherine is enlisted to make an old lady’s final Christmas wish come true....

Lily is the ultimate poor little rich girl, abandoned by her parents and sent to the best Swiss boarding school money could buy. Her parents have a society wedding in mind for her but then Lily meets Harry Kohle, an ambitious young writer.

Polly Hampton has long been groomed for the perfect marriage by her mother, the fearsome and ambitious Lady Montdore. But Polly, with her stunning good looks and impeccable connections, is bored by the monotony of her glittering debut season in London. Having just come from India, where her father served as viceroy, she claims to have hoped that society in a colder climate would be less obsessed with love affairs. The apparently aloof and indifferent Polly has a long-held secret, however, one that leads to the shattering of her mother's dreams and her own disinheritance.

Newton Hughes has long dreamed of pursuing a career in law, an acceptable choice for a gentleman of status and wealth. His parents, however, disapprove of his ambition, urging him instead to take his rightful place as a gentleman of leisure - with a suitable wife of their choosing, of course. Ellie Napper would like nothing more than for her parents to abandon their incessant efforts to marry her off to the greatest possible advantage. Her lack of matrimonial enthusiasm drives her family mad.

At 33 and with her future unclear, Ali Waller finds her way home again. A box of long-forgotten love letters written to her great-grandmother holds the unlikely key to Ali finding her new path. As she tracks down the letter writer and his descendants, Ali learns the magic of love, hope, and resilience. Told by three characters, and across a century and an ocean, Genealogy is an enchanting story about love and loss, taking chances, and embracing the surprises that life brings.

One minute, London banker Quinn Wentworth is facing execution. The next, he's declared the long-lost heir to a dukedom. Quinn has fought his way up from the worst slums, and now he's ready to use every dirty trick he knows to find the enemy who schemed against him. Jane Winston, widowed and pregnant, crosses paths with Quinn while her father is preaching to the prisoners. Believing his days are numbered, Quinn offers her marriage as a way to guarantee her independence and provide for her child. Neither thinks they'll actually have a future together.