Maggie Terry

England, 1926. After a wealthy industrialist is found dead on a treasure hunt with the Bright Young People of London, the renowned detective, Lord Edgington, and his loyal grandson, Christopher, suspect foul play and sign up for the next speedy chase across the city. When a second body is found, shot through the heart in the centre of Westminster, the mismatched duo set off on the trail of a killer.

When Anneke flits into town between high fashion shoots to help her best friend open his new jazz club, the last thing she's looking for is a reason to stay. She'll explore the city, make her appearances, and then she's off to the next adventure. Until she realizes that her massive online crush is the proprietor of a dusty old record shop in town . . .

Twenty-six-year-old New Orleans native Elle Jones used to be the internet's most famous meme for rejection thanks to an embarrassing teenage TV appearance. But she's finally put that past behind her, and now she's killing it as a commercial real estate agent in the coolest neighborhoods in the city. When Miles Crowe—the former pop star who made her notorious—insists on hiring her to find a property for his jazz club, she'll do everything she can to get herself fired before he realizes who she is.

Aspiring author Bryony Page attends her first writers conference bursting with optimism and ready to sell her manuscript with long-shot dreams of raising awareness for The Bridge, her grandmother’s financially struggling organization where she teaches ESL full-time. But after a disastrous pitch session, she stumbles into correcting another author’s work in a last-ditch attempt to make a good impression with the agent. And she, as it turns out, is spot on.

At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.

Harp Devereaux is torn. Part of her desperately wants to return to Ireland to finish what she and her family and friends started, and to witness the departure of the British forces from Ireland after eight hundred long years. But the other part finds life in America during the Roaring Twenties too exciting to trade for the sleepy streets of County Cork.

In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal. Nearly 30 years later, Hugo's estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father's funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.

As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong 21-year-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage. When he is sent back to the front, Emily volunteers as a “land girl,” tending to the neglected grounds of a large Devonshire estate. It’s here that Emily discovers the long-forgotten journals of a medicine woman who devoted her life to her herbal garden.

Ali Morris is a professional organizer whose own life is a mess. Her mom died two years ago, then her husband left, and she hasn’t worn pants with a zipper in longer than she cares to remember. No one is more surprised than Ali when the first time she takes off her wedding ring and puts on pants with hardware—overalls count, right?—she meets someone. Or rather, her dog claims a man for her, in the same way he claimed his favorite of her three children: by peeing on him. Ethan smiles at Ali like her pants are just right—like he likes what he sees.

At eighteen, your life is full of of what-ifs and why-nots. You have everything to look forward to – unless you’ve got the plague. From a young Elizabeth Tudor, the orphan facing deadly intrigue at court, to a teenage Richard Burton, the rugby-obsessed son of a Welsh miner, historian Alice Loxton explores Britain’s past through the lives of eighteen figures at this crucial age.