Historical Trees

Summer 1935. Best friends Kate Shelton, Ella Tetley and Daphne St. Maur are on the cusp of a new life, having graduated with classics degrees. Kate is desperate to start work on an archaeological dig straightaway, and she is thrilled to be given a position at the famous Knossos palace site in Crete. However, she doesn't bargain for working with gruff site director Lewis Sinclair - nor for her own complex feelings towards him. In Yorkshire, Ella's family expect her to marry Sam, her steady friend who is training to be a doctor....

1699. The salons of Paris are bursting with the creative energy of fierce, independent-minded women. But outside those doors, the patriarchal forces of Louis XIV and the Catholic Church are moving to curb their freedoms. In this battle for equality, Baroness Marie Catherine D’Aulnoy invents a powerful weapon: ‘fairy tales’. When Marie Catherine’s daughter, Angelina, arrives in Paris she is swept up in the glamour and sensuality of the city, where a woman may live outside the confines of the church or marriage.

Frances Irvine, left destitute in the wake of her father’s sudden death, has been forced to abandon her life of wealth and privilege in London and emigrate to the Southern Cape of Africa. 1880 South Africa is a country torn apart by greed. In this remote and inhospitable land she becomes entangled with two very different men - one driven by ambition, the other by his ideals. Only then the rumor of a smallpox epidemic takes her into the dark heart of the diamond mines does she see her path to happiness.

Their lives were forever changed when a widow with seven children, married a widower with seven children. Three step sibling marriages are arranged to benefit from a dowry that was doubled by their filial unions. The way in which their lives intertwine is the grist for Twisted Trees. It is a story of one man's ambition to rise above the oppressive class system, where men were judged by their heritage and not their ability; where women often endured loveless marriages rather than face the stigma of divorce.

If the preacher's wife's petticoat showed, the ladies would make the talk last a week. But on July 5, 1906, things took a scandalous turn. That was the day E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, eloped with Miss Love Simpson - a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee! On that day, 14-year-old Will Tweedy's adventures began, and an unimpeachably pious, deliciously irreverent town came to life.

In The Wishing Trees, Ian and his 10-year-old daughter Mattie are struggling with the passing of Kate—wife and mother—after her long battle with cancer. When Ian finally opens a letter Kate handed him before her death, he is surprised at the request inside: that he and Mattie travel across Asia while opening a series of letters from Kate, one at a time. As they complete each stage of the trip, they tie paper wishes to trees, which helps them come to terms with their loss.

London, the 1720s. Welcome to Romeville, the underworld of that great city. The financial crash caused by the South Sea Bubble sees the rise of Jonathan Wild, self-styled Thief-taker General who purports to keep the peace while brutally controlling organised crime. Only two people truly defy him: Jack Sheppard, apprentice turned house-breaker, and his lover, the notorious whore and pickpocket Edgworth Bess.

Far and near. Lost and found. Four girls. Four generations. Georgia cannot figure out what's going on in her family. Her mother, Francie, is extremely overprotective. Her grandmother, Dana, and her great-grandmother, Abby, don't speak to each other. And Georgia's great-great-grandmother also had some secrets that nobody else knows about. Georgia knows this because she's found her great-great grandmother's diary hidden in a wall in the family's house in Maine.

Goaded by her mother’s nagging, Ruth declares that she will only marry a man who can beat her in a horse race. As she is an expert horsewoman, her challenge seems unlikely to be met. But family friend Robert Holloway has always loved Ruth, and if it takes a horse race to win her, then an equestrian he will be, even though he is a poor rider. Out of friendship, Ruth agrees to teach him how to ride with skill, never realizing that his goal is to win the race and win her hand in marriage.

In the golden age of the Phoenicians, only the western reaches of the Great Sea remain uncharted. Kaly, a restless teenager from the ancient port of Tyre, escapes the clutches of her fiendish grandmother, high priestess of the Goddess. She flees west with her father, a famed helmsman and explorer. Together, they discover the fabled Pine Tree Island, where they build a new home with a motley crew of fellow adventurers.

Set in the present day, with flashes back to the 17th Century, Trace is a story of seemingly unrelated people from around the world who take part in DNA testing for a variety of reasons with unexpected results. Finding family where it isn’t expected and demonstrating just how small of a world we live in, this fictional tale demonstrates the power of genetic genealogy in bringing people together, while also guiding aspiring genealogists to make the most of their ethnicity testing results.

When a body is found on the new electric railway line, Owen has to discover whether this is just another of Egypt's revenge killings or whether the murdered man had got caught up with the power groups jostling for position around the new railway.

Based on a little-known true story from award-winning author Siobhan Daiko comes a tale of love and survival against all the odds. Set in Hong Kong at the start of the Pacific War. In the spring of 1939, dashing young William Burton and the beautiful Constance Han set sail from London on the same ocean liner to Hong Kong.

. She is content there until, suddenly, she must make decisions that will change everything. Fraser Kyle, the owner of the florist’s, proposes marriage. Should she accept, or renew her childish love for Mark Lindsay the doctor from the orphanage who first showed Shona the Handkerchief Tree that inspired her?

When her favourite beech tree is felled in a storm, Ann feels as if someone has died. But when long-hidden seed packets are found inside the trunk, Ann realizes there are more memories than her own lurking within the ancient tree. A century earlier, head gardener William Hatherwick and Hester Mordaunt, mistress of Beechgrave, share a love for the mighty estate - and an undeclared love for each other. But when war breaks out, William is sent to the battlefields of France, and as the conflict rages on, Hester grieves beneath the tree.

Anna thought her marriage to Max would last forever. Having raised two happy children together, she looked forward to growing old with the man she loved. But when a revelation from her husband just before their wedding anniversary shakes her entire world, she's left uncertain of what the future holds. Needing time to herself, Anna takes up an offer from her widowed father to spend the summer on the small Aegean island of his birth, unaware that a chance discovery of letters in her aunt's house will unleash a host of family secrets.

1914: Sixteen-year-old Etterly, running from something, hides inside the trunk of a tree and disappears. The police search but find no trace. Her family and friends wrack their brains but come up with nothing. And so slowly life returns to normal. The hole in the tree is boarded up, and the village of Sackwater moves on. Only Etterly's best friend, Betty, clings to hope, insisting she can hear her friend calling for help. 1940: A skeleton is discovered buried in the woods....

A story about the hunger for food, life, and opportunity. After stealing a loaf of bread, Edward was running to escape when he slammed into Dorothy. In that moment, fate intervened, and a love began that would span the years. Desperate to make a better life for himself and be a man worthy of Dorothy, Edward takes a job in the mines. When catastrophe strikes, he finds his world in a state of upheaval once more.

It is London 1915, and Great Britain is at war with Germany. Feelings are running high as the liner the Lusitania has just been sunk off the Irish coast and zeppelin raids have begun on London. Stylish lady detective Miss Isabel Hewitt is approached by a young convalescing soldier Captain Alex Fraser. He is anxious to trace his natural mother, as he was given away at birth. Isabel agrees to take on the case even though she suspects the mother may be a friend of hers.

Sir Lars Harding is now a diligent and well-respected gentleman. His factories and shipping company work around the clock to help England win the war. Then, Loris, his brother, returns to London and distracts him with the unsolved Harding Hall murders. Lars and Loris soon learn that the mystery is far more convoluted and bizarre than they had ever imagined.