Historical Homes

It began in Ireland in the mid 1700s. The water in Ireland, indeed throughout Europe, was famously undrinkable, and the gin and whiskey that took its place devastated civil society. It was a disease ridden, starvation-plagued, alcoholic age, and Christians like Arthur Guinness—as well as monks and even evangelical churches—brewed beer that provided a healthier alternative to the poisonous waters and liquors of the times. This is where the Guinness tale began.

No Ordinary Time describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world.

Clara Newton is the new Housemother of Shilling Grange Orphanage. Many of the children have been bombed out of their homes and left without families, their lives torn apart by the war, just like Clara’s. Devastated by the loss of her fiancé, a brave American pilot, she is just looking for a place to start again. But the orphans are in desperate need of her help.

MISS MICHELLE ELLINGTON despises the founder of a competing school for young ladies. Already, he has lured away two teachers and seems intent on wreaking havoc upon her school, all while the headmistress is away. She’s never met the man, but the few missives they’ve exchanged have told her exactly the sort of person he is—an underhanded cad.

In Berkeley, California, in 1944, Homicide Detective Al Sullivan has just left the swanky Claremont Hotel after a drink in the bar when a presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among the anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan’s investigation brings up the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco.

In July 1944, Arielle von Auspeck arrives at the glamorous Hotel Ritz in occupied Paris. Half-French, half-German, she is happy to be back in France, where she her husband, Gregor, a retired colonel, will join her soon from Germany. Arielle and Gregor have thus far been able to hide their private opposition to Hitler. Then her world falls apart. She receives word that Gregor was part of Operation Valkyrie and a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in Poland, and has been shot as a traitor.

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.)

"There's Always a Trail": When a stranger named Handy offered to track down Cass Bailey's stolen money for a stake in the CB range, Bailey has nothing more to lose. "Home in the Valley": Steve Mehan had done the impossible when he drove a herd of cattle from the Nevada range to California in the dead of winter. But Mehan had little time to rest before tragedy struck. "Monument Rock": It had been many years since Lona Markham's father sent her from the rigors of ranch life to a convent school. Now she's returned to a wary, careworn man who hardly seems like the father she remembers.

May 1915. As zeppelin bombs fall on London and with the sinking of the Lusitania, anti-German hysteria reaches fever pitch and attacks on German immigrants surge. Not even the West End of London is immune. Jacob Stein's bespoke tailoring business comes under brutal attack, leaving his safe ransacked, his daughter, Ruth, raped and Jacob dead.

Virginia, 1933: Lauren Greenwood was born to look pretty and land a rich husband. For her and her high-society family, it’s easy to forget that America is in the devastating grip of the Great Depression, where children run wild in the streets, endless queues for soup kitchens line sidewalks, and desperation hangs in the air. But when a young servant comes to Lauren, pregnant and begging for help, her world crumbles. Someone she loves is responsible, and when she finds out the shocking truth she must decide: Protect the Greenwood name or be cast out?

Can this mail-order bride convince her husband he needs a ready-made family? With the help of the Westward Home and Hearts Matrimonial Agency, Piper Paulson finds herself on a train to meet and marry her future husband, a kind-hearted teacher in Montgomery, Colorado. Together, they make the perfect pair until, suddenly, Piper finds herself at odds with her husband. She doesn’t know how to get what she wants and save their marriage at the same time. August Harrison falls in love with his mail-order bride right from the start. He believes he and the quiet woman who grew up in an orphanage ...

With the country on the brink of war, single mother Jean embraces her ten-year-old daughter, Valerie, before she puts her on a train to Somerset alongside hundreds of other evacuees. Jean’s heart breaks as she vows they’ll be together again soon, knowing it’s a promise she might not be able to keep. Wrenched away from her mother and everything familiar, Valerie arrives in Somerset and nervously waits in the village hall to find a host family.

Thomas Johnson and Charles Spurgeon lived worlds apart: Johnson, an American slave, born into captivity and longing for freedom and Spurgeon, an Englishman born into relative ease and comfort but, longing, too, for a freedom of his own. Their respective journeys led to an unlikely meeting and an even more unlikely friendship, forged by fate and mutual love for the mission of Christ. Steal Away Home tells a previously untold story set in the 1800s of the relationship between an African-American missionary and one of the greatest preachers to ever live.

Katie Macauley gave up her lifelong dream of returning to Ireland in order to make a home for herself in Hope Springs, Wyoming, but her future has never been so uncertain. Katie's heart still remains sharply divided between playful Tavish and steady Joseph, though she feels ill prepared to make a decision. Furthermore, the town is more divided than ever, with both the Irish and the Reds stealing property, burning buildings, and endangering lives.

1940. It's been a month since rector's daughter Billie Harkness left her rural village to make a fresh start in the northern city of Hull. Now she has a new home and an exciting new job as one of only two female police constables in the whole city. But Hull still feels like a foreign country, and some people are less than impressed by the idea of a woman doing a "man's job". But determined to do her bit for the war effort, Billie throws herself into her work. The chance to prove her worth comes during a search for a missing air raid shelter inspector, when Billie makes a shocking discovery.

Hazel Mae Hollingsworth is devastated following the unexpected death of her father, and she can’t shake a sense of foreboding when the family solicitor arrives at the estate. Her intuition turns out to be well founded, for her father’s will reveals a long-held family secret - Hazel’s entire life has been a lie. Within hours of receiving the news, she is turned out by the man she once called her brother, dispossessed with little more than her mother’s instruction to seek refuge with her father’s sister.

Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong.

The African sun beats down on Salisbury as Livy Johnston, an up-and-coming artist, steps into a world of colonial propriety and unspoken rules. After a shipboard romance with wealthy widower Crispin Dane, she is forced to face the reality of her hastily arranged future with Jeremy Crookshank, a struggling farm assistant with dreams of his own tobacco fields.

While learning the art of ancient warfare in an exotic location, Amy and Dan uncover a devastating secret about their family that changes everything in this high-stakes adventure.

After President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961, he retired to a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Living next door was his teenage grandson, David; they would be neighbors for the rest of the decade. Based on personal stories, letters, diaries, and the reminiscences of Eisenhower’s closest friends, Going Home to Glory is both an intimate chronicle of the elder statesman’s final years and a coming of age story.