Historical Trees

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....

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.

In 1947, American historian and World War II veteran Martin Mitchell wins a Fulbright Fellowship to document the end of British rule in India. His wife, Evie, convinces him to take her and their young son along, hoping a shared adventure will mend their marriage, which has been strained by war. But other places, other wars. Martin and Evie find themselves stranded in a colonial bungalow in the Himalayas due to violence surrounding the partition of India between Hindus and Muslims.

A story of slaves. Based on fact, embellished in empathy. Main character Nicholas. Born on a plantation in 1767. Taken from his mother aged seven, by his Masters’ worker Barn, who heads up the boys for the Moloch cult. Nicholas is initiated. Seeds are sown for Nicholas to become a deranged psychotic. He has a penchant for white females.

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.

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the men running the city declare a state of emergency and hire musicians to play the Devil out of the mob.

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.

We are warriors! Jack and Annie have met knights, pirates, ninjas, and Vikings, but they have never met the most fearsome warriors of all: Roman soldiers. When the magic tree house whisks them back to the early AD 100s, Jack and Annie find themselves in a Roman camp. Their mission: Be like a warrior. That is easier said than done! The Roman soldiers are much scarier in person - and suspicious of strangers. Then, a mysterious man riding a black horse gives Jack and Annie some advice to help them on their mission.

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.

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.

In the spring of 1949, Stella O'Riain flees her home - a sheep property on the barren edge of the Strzelecki Desert. She leaves behind the graves of her husband Joe and her baby daughter. With no money and limited options, Stella accepts her brother-in-law Harry's offer to live at the O'Riain cane farm in the Richmond Valley. There she hopes to get answers to the questions that plague her about her marriage. However Harry refuses to discuss Joe or the family's secrets, even forbidding her to speak to the owner of the neighbouring property.

When Pearl’s grandmother Nell dies unexpectedly, she and her family - mother Diana, sister Lucy - return to Kangaroo Island to mourn and say farewell to her. Each of them knew Nell intimately but differently, and each woman must reckon with Nell’s passing in her own way. But Nell had secrets, too; and as Pearl, Diana and Lucy reflect on their feelings about the island, Pearl starts to pull together the scraps Nell left behind - her stories, poems, paintings - and unearths a connection to the island’s early history.

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.

Harris County, Georgia, 1912. A White man, the beloved nephew of the county sheriff, is shot dead on the porch of a Black woman. Days later, the sheriff sanctions the lynching of a Black woman and three Black men, all of them innocent. For Karen Branan, the great-granddaughter of that sheriff, this isn't just history; this is family history.

Consie is home for a funeral when she stumbles upon a family letter sent from Germany in 1945, which contains staggering news: Consie's great-uncle Hermann, who was transported to Auschwitz with his wife and three daughters, might have escaped. This seems improbable to Consie. Did people escape from Auschwitz? Could her great-uncle have been among them? What happened to Hermann? Did anyone know? These questions are at the root of Consie's excavation of her family's history as she seeks, 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, to discover what happened to Hermann.

While great battles for independence were being fought in the East, the Western frontier was in the middle of its own dangerous conflicts. One of these encounters began innocently as three friends searched the forest for medicinal herbs. On their way home, they discovered a party of ghostlike figures doing a strange dance among the trees. When word got back to Larkinboro, scouts were sent out to identify what threats these white warriors might pose to the safety of the settlers. But the more that is discovered, the more ominous the danger becomes.

For generations, the Barthélemy family tended to the olive trees of Restanques, a sprawling property in Cotignac whose olive oil and almonds were as incredible as the countryside that produced them. But all that changed when war came to France. Robert Barthélemy never returned from the trenches, and without him the farm is beginning to die. His widow has lost the will to live, and only the fierce efforts of their daughter, Jeanne, have kept the creditors at bay.

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.