Historical Homes

1916. As thousands of Brits are fighting on the Front Line, a new breed of women emerges to hold the Home Front together. Fiercely independent and fiery-spirited, the munitionettes, or ‘canaries’, are easily recognisable with their chemically-stained yellow faces. Among the raucous group of women is Florrie Duncan, who plans to celebrate her birthday in style at the Golden Goose pub. But the celebrations are cut short when all but one are killed in a brutal explosion.

Clinton has died and May is left to fend for herself in a city where she knows almost no one and has no way of earning a living. Not knowing where Oba had wound up and realizing she can't return to her uncle's home after all he'd put her through, she decides to journey to the Amish community where she spent her first years, before her parents' died. Perhaps the relatives who once turned her away had had a change of heart and would be willing to take her in or help her get settled on her own.

Cover Image: HMS Hood off the coast of Adelaide 1924 - Public Domain. Colorized by Vorst 17735, 2020, used with permission. As German bombs fall over London and England is drawn into war, members of the Carlyle family are forced to make choices that will deeply affect their lives — and the lives of thousands of others. Family patriarch Philip, a member of the House of Lords and a confidant of Winston Churchill, has been struggling for the esteem of his peers since joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As he slowly gains acceptance, little does Philip realize there is ...

In 1914, Britain faces a new kind of war. For Edward and Beatrice Hunter, their children, servants and neighbours, life will never be the same again. For David, the eldest, war means a chance to do something noble; but enlisting will break his mother's heart. His sister Diana, nineteen and beautiful, longs for marriage. She has her heart set on Charles Wroughton, son of Earl Wroughton, but Charles will never be allowed to marry a banker's daughter.

1917. The Lotus Hotel offers sanctuary for its exclusively female clientele, attracting the cream of London's society. But a dead body found in one of its rooms is hardly good for business, and when it is discovered that the woman was neither a guest nor a member of staff, the Lotus' reputation as a safe haven is cast in doubt. Inspector Marmion and Sergeant Keedy are dispatched to look into the events at the hotel and soon suspect foul play.

1918. In the last week of the First World War, a uniformed soldier is arrested in Durham Cathedral. When questioned, it becomes clear that he has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The soldier is given the name Adam and transferred to a rehabilitation home. His doctor, James, is determined to recover who this man once was. But Adam doesn’t want to remember. Unwilling to relive the trauma of war, Adam has locked his memory away, seemingly for good.

1944, Chicago. From desperate small-town teen to star of the burlesque circuit, Violet Ernte has survived tough choices and more than one reinvention. Now, framed for an underworld murder, she has one way out: agree to keep Marcie, a reckless USO showgirl and mobster's daughter, on the straight and narrow. Vi's new act: play innocent ingenue and join the all-American song-and-dance troupe bound for overseas to a war-torn Italy.

Milly Crenshaw does it again when she succeeds at finding a groom for a destitute social butterfly from Fairfax, Virginia. She sends Miss Garner west to marry an Oregon farmer, Sterling Adams, widowed with four children who desperately need a mother while he tries to prove up his claim. Charity Garner, suffering from the shock of an accident leaving her injured and bereft of her parents and their wealth, has two choices. She can rely upon distant relations she's never met before by relocating to England, or follow the tug on her heart to become a missionary wife to Sterling and a mother to ...

Washed up on a foreign shore, Tristan is lucky to be alive. As before, it seems to be a miracle - the Holy Grail the young Templar squire is protecting has saved his life yet again. But now he is lost in a strange land, and he doesn’t know if his friends, the fiery archer Robard Hode and the Saracen assassin maid Maryam, still survive. Tristan’s knack for getting into trouble is alive and well, though, and he quickly finds himself drawn into a conflict between a heretical band of Cathars and the oppressive King of France.

The Big Guy loves his family, money and country. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, begins to realize that her favorite subject—history—is not exactly what her father taught her.

Luke Valenti has never fit into his swaggering family of overbearing loudmouths. Even worse, the world is at war again and Uncle Sam has stamped his draft notice “4-F” - the ultimate rejection - because of a rare eye condition that has left Luke unable to see colors. So instead, he dreams of escaping Brooklyn for the beaches of Montauk. That is, until a stolen prop from "The Maltese Falcon" pitches him down a reluctant path to Hollywood. Luke is tasked with returning it to Warner Brothers.

Alone and pregnant, she was following in the footsteps of more than a century’s worth of lost souls. Shunned by society for her sins and offered no comfort for her pain, Bridget gave birth to a boy, John, who died at the home in a horrendous state of neglect less than two years later. Her second child was once again delivered into the care of the nuns and was taken from her, never to be seen or heard from again.

The fourth book in the War at Home series by the author of The Morland Dynasty novels. Set against the evocative backdrop of World War I, this is an epic family drama featuring the Hunters and their servants.

Shelby Lenoir Maynard, nicknamed Turtle, has never much trusted girls her own age, spending her days instead with her brother and his pack of friends. But when a mysterious Sri Lankan girl of Moorish descent moves to town, Turtle invites her to their secret haven: the Blue Hole. Turtle could not have imagined how much that simple gesture would alter the rest of her life, or the lives of those she loves. As tensions rise, it becomes clear there are those in Pisgah Ridge who reject the presence of anyone different - and those who would welcome the new refugee family.

March, 1918. British newspapers carry the dreadful news that the German Spring Offensive has begun, with thousands of British lives lost. Detective Sargeant Joe Keedy is awaiting release from hospital in London and is anxious to resume the fight against crime on the Home Front. Late one night, a bank is raided by a gang and the villains escape by car with a sizeable haul. Detective Inspector Harvey Marmion is put in charge of the case, but without Keedy at his side he faces an uphill battle to solve this perplexing case.

“The first fully original series from Austen pastiche author Jeffers is a knockout.” - Publishers Weekly “Jeffers’s close look at the dark secrets of Regency society instills a sense of realism.” - Publishers Weekly After years away from England, members of the Realm return home to claim the titles and the lives they had previously abandoned. Each man holds onto the fleeting dream of finally know love and home. For now, all any of them can hope is the resolution of his earlier difficulties before Shaheed Mir, their old enemy, finds them and exacts his revenge. Mir seeks a ...

At eight years old, Raeford "Junebug" Hurley has known more than his share of hard lessons. After the sudden death of his parents, he goes to live with his grandparents on a farm surrounded by tobacco fields and lonesome woods. There he meets Fancy Stroud and her twin brother, Lightning, the children of black sharecroppers on a neighboring farm. As years pass, the friendship between Junebug and bright, compassionate Fancy takes on a deeper intensity.

When Charlie’s longed-for brother is born with a serious heart condition, Charlie’s world is turned upside down. Upset and afraid, Charlie flees the hospital and makes for the ancient forest on the edge of town. There Charlie finds a boy floating face-down in the stream, injured, but alive. But when Charlie sets off back to the hospital to fetch help, it seems the forest has changed. It’s become a place as strange and wild as the boy dressed in deerskins.

Continuing the story of the captured Trojan women as they set sail for Mycenae with the victorious Greeks, this novel centres on the fate of Cassandra -- daughter of King Priam, priestess of Apollo, and a prophet condemned never to be heeded. (When she refuses to have sex with Apollo, after he has kissed her, granting her the gift of true prophecy, he spits in her mouth to make sure she will never be believed.)

At the heart of Dover's Market Square lies the Castle's Café. A bustling, homely place run by the formidable Nellie Castle and her six children. Since the scandalous birth of her beloved son 10 years before, Marianne, Nellie's eldest daughter, has preferred to stay in the kitchen, hidden away from the town gossips. Overcome with shame, Marianne has never revealed the name of Donny's father - not even to her own mother. But with World War II just around the corner, Marianne's past catches up with her. And suddenly the lives of the Castle family become a lot more complicated.