Historical Romance Families

Richard Peck is a master of stories about people in transition, but perhaps never before has he told a tale of such dramatic change as this one, set during the first year of the Civil War. The whole country is changing in 1861, even the folks from a muddy little Illinois settlement on the banks of the Mississippi. Here, 15-year-old Tilly Pruitt frets over the fact that her brother is dreaming of being a soldier and that her sister is prone to supernatural visions.

It is the dawn of the 18th century, when girls stay home and sew while men sail the high seas finding adventure, danger, and gold. But two unusually adventurous girls (a rich merchant's daughter, Nancy Kington, and her former plantation slave, Minerva Sharpe) take to the high seas from Jamaica on a ship the crew renames Deliverance.

Joan of Kent, renowned beauty and cousin to King Edward III, is destined for a politically strategic marriage. As the king begins a long dynastic struggle to claim the crown of France, plunging England into the Hundred Years' War, he negotiates her betrothal to a potential ally and heir of a powerful lordship. But Joan, haunted by nightmares of her father's execution at the hands of her treacherous royal kin, fears the king's selection and is not resigned to her fate. She secretly pledges herself to one of the king's own knights, one who has become a trusted friend...

Against a vivid backdrop of war and thrilling innovation, Danielle Steel breathes life into history, weaving an intensely human story that spans three decades, of two tremendously different people, who in spite of themselves, are irrevocably woven into the fabric of each other's lives. More Steel.

War rages, but the women and children of Liverpool’s Dr Barnardo’s Home cannot give up hope.... Liverpool, 1943. Yorkshire is the place Lana has always called home, but it’s now filled with painful memories of her fiancé, Dickie, who was killed at sea. When she accepts the challenging position of headmistress at a school in Liverpool, she hopes a new beginning will help to mend her broken heart.

A spurned son plots his revenge. Julian Fellowes's Belgravia is a story in 11 episodes published week-by-week in the tradition of Charles Dickens. Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode. The story behind the secret will be revealed in weekly bite-sized installments complete with twists and turns and cliff-hanger endings. Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is peopled by a rich cast of characters.

Addy and Prue Fairweather live with their widowed mother Nell, in a flat above her shop. Addy is plain and always in trouble whereas Prue is as angelic as her looks imply. To make matters worse, Nell makes no secret of her preference for the younger girl, increasing Addy's jealousy. On the other side of the coin, Giles Frobisher and his twin sister, Gillian, live in a crumbling mansion in Devon. The family have lost most of their money in the Depression, so Giles joins the Fleet Air Arm.

Millie Cameron is furious when she finds herself obliged to sort through the belongings of her aunt Flo, who has died recently. She hardly knew her aunt, and besides, she has her own career to think of.

Young, pretty, full of confidence - or so she likes to pretend - she wants nothing to do with a dull spinster aunt whom her family refuses to talk about. But when she arrives at Flo’s basement flat, Millie’s interest is awakened.

Abandoned as a baby on the steps of a remote inn, Ruby Blake has been raised by the innkeeper’s wife, Martha Metcalfe, unknowing of the family searching for her. One wild stormy night, Ruby is reunited with her long-lost father, who wants to whisk her away to Banksgill Farm for a happy life with her true family. Feeling betrayed by Martha, Ruby follows her father for the chance of a new life. However, Ruby is quickly outcast from her real family for being born of Romani blood by everyone but the charming stable hand, Tom Adams.

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.

Her father’s prodigal ways have forced the extremely lovely Alexandra Ashmore into an engagement with a strange man in a strange land: a man blind to the effect her unearthly beauty has on other men, and which has earned her the title "the English Witch"! So when she’s kidnapped by another love-struck suitor, Alexandra assumes she’s truly doomed to a loveless marriage with her captor.

A French pirate of smoldering passions, Justin St. Briac will never marry. However, when his manipulative mother beckons him to her deathbed in Cornwall, he succumbs to her plea that he take a bride. Mouette Raveneau, once the toast of the London ton, has been ruined by her dead husband's crimes. With two adolescent sons and no means of support, she reluctantly takes refuge in Cornwall. To grant his mother's dying wish, Justin devises an elaborate charade.

Elizabeth anxiously anticipates her new duties as mistress of Pemberley. Darcy is confident of her success, but she cannot bring herself to share his optimism. Unexpected guests unsettle all her plans and offer her the perfect Christmastide gift, shattered confidence. Can she and Darcy overcome their misunderstandings and salvage their first Christmastide together?

1527: At seventeen, Thomasin Marwood is plunged into court society when a husband is found for her elder sister, Cecilia. But the mood at court is tense. It is split between the conservative Catholics, loyal to Queen Catherine of Aragon, and the fashionable Francophiles, enthralled by King Henry's mistress, Anne Boleyn. While her parents sympathize with the old queen and her faith, Thomasin cannot help but be drawn to the glamour and vitality Anne represents. And her head is soon turned by the tall, dark and handsome Rafe Danvers who seems equally entranced with her.

Maggie Bailey has not had an easy childhood. Her father, Michael, always too easy with his fists after spending the family’s rent money down the pub. Just sixteen, in love and blinded by promises, Maggie sees marriage to handsome Jack as her great escape. However, she soon finds herself abandoned with a beautiful baby when Jack disappears. Maggie is forced to seek a new life away from the East End of London and finds herself a job at a hotel in Yarmouth.

Durraghglass is a beautiful mansion in Southern Ireland, now crumbling in neglect. The time is the present - a present that churns with the bizarre passions of its owners' past. The Swifts - three sisters of marked eccentricity, defiantly christened April, May and Baby June, and their only brother, one-eyed Jasper - have little in common, save vivid memories of darling Mummy, and a long lost youth peculiarly prone to acts of treachery.

With a beautiful and clever wife, a growing investigative business, and a baby due any day, former Bow Street Runner John Pickett finally has a respectable life far removed from his beginnings as a juvenile pickpocket in the rookeries of St. Giles.

Renegade sea captain Ryan Coleraine is persuaded to accompany the adventurous Raveneau family to Regency London to spy for America during the War of 1812. The sardonic Coleraine must take the place of their son, who is in the West Indies, and pretend to be a fop. Lindsay Raveneau, a beautiful and independent bluestocking, finds herself with a "brother" who challenges and arouses her in the most unsettling ways...

When Lady Isabella Trevarre first laid eyes on Gabriel St. Briac, she announced to her best friend: "That is the man I will marry!" Now a woman grown, Izzie has traded her girlish dreams for the independent life of an artist, but she never quite forgot the dazzling Frenchman who captivated her young heart. When he appears again in Cornwall, the seeds of desire grow between them.

Newport heiress Catherine Beasley Parrish has been groomed all her life to marry an English duke. However, when she meets Adam Raveneau, the latest in a long line of Raveneau rakes and a newly created viscount, Cathy awakens to a destiny worth fighting for. Although Raveneau insists that he is not marriage material, he is in desperate need of funds to restore Tempest Hall, his crumbling family estate on Barbados. And when Cathy begs him to save her from the toad-like duke her mother intends her to marry, Adam realizes that they may be able help each other.