Historical Homes

After her husband dies in the Civil War, Fanny Ryan is well cared for by his extensive family in Boston. However, they would see her alone and mourning her late husband rather than finding her own happiness once more. After answering an ad from a man in the Wyoming territory seeking a bride, Fanny is finally certain that a new life will be hers.

I don't want to remember the truck, or the night I was taken, or the family I left behind. I am not a sad Polish girl. I am a good and happy German girl. I am. I am. I am. It's the Second World War and Himmler's Lebensborn Program is in full flight when eight-year-old Zofia Ulinski is kidnapped by the Germans. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, just like the other Polish children taken from their families and robbed of their names, their language, their heritage.

Heartbreaking and wise, Rush Home Road tells the life story of Adelaide Shadd, who finds redemption in old age, and Sharla, a five-year-old mixed race girl abandoned to Addy’s care by her white mother. Born in the first decade of the 20th century in Rusholme (inspired by the real town of Buxton), in southwestern Ontario, an all-black community settled by fugitive slaves, Addy Shadd is raped as a teenager and forced to flee the family home. She makes her way on foot to Detroit.

In August 1943, Sergeant Craddock leads his battle-weary platoon down Via Garibaldi in Catania, Sicily. Struck by the oppressive heat and the alien new surroundings, the men soon settle into this lull in their combat experience. The next few weeks take on a dreamlike quality as newfound relationships flourish and the war itself - let alone homelife in Britain - recedes into the distance. Against this backdrop, the second book of Alexander Baron's War Trilogy meditates upon friendship, loyalty and love.

It is 1914 and The Great War is underway. When the call to arms comes, Nicholas Southwell won't be found hanging back. It's a pity he can't be so decisive when it comes to letting his estate manager Paul Haskell know what he feels before he has to leave for the front line. In the trenches Nicholas meets a fellow officer, Phillip Taylor, who takes him into the unclaimed territory of physical love. Which one will he choose, if he's allowed the choice?

Ireland, 1912. Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For 17-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with the sweetheart she left behind. Chicago, 1982. Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her Great Nana Maggie shares the painful secret she harboured for almost a lifetime about the Titanic, the revelation gives Grace new direction.

Townsville, 1942. Young women aged sixteen and over are obliged by law to join the war effort, and Emma Hatton's world is at last about to change. Longing to escape the humdrum poverty of oceanside Blueholm Bay and the demands of her domineering mother, Emma reaches the bustling wartime mayhem of Townsville where the city streets are filled with glamorous GIs and red lipstick is the colour of the day. Befriending charismatic Cassie O'Byrne, Emma believes her adult life has finally begun.

When her life is shattered by the War Between the States, Olivia Harrington scrambles to rebuild a lost family fortune by running the Federal blockade out of Wilmington, North Carolina. Her daring and bravery has allowed her to keep Bliss, the home she hasn’t seen in months... the place where she is now headed. Yet waiting at home for Livie is a houseful of trouble… her dying brother, and the man who risked everything to honor a friend’s final wish… the very man who broke Livie’s heart long ago, and whom she thought never to see again…. The Long Road Home is a novella that is ...

The sisters of Street Child tell their story… A companion novel to the best-selling story of Victorian orphan Jim Jarvis, based on the founding of Dr. Barnardo's homes for children. When Jim Jarvis is separated from his sisters, Lizzie and Emily, he thinks he will never see them again. Now for the first time, the best-selling author of Street Child reveals what happened to his orphaned sisters.

Detective Rudyard Bloodstone’s career is moving along well as Holborn Station’s lead investigator. His year had gotten even better when he met London’s celebrated music-hall star Honeysuckle Flowers. As he and his lady embark on celebrating the holidays, Rudyard grows homesick for Wales and his family there. He makes plans to see his parents and thinks it is the perfect time to introduce Honeysuckle to them. To his unhappy surprise, his mother paints her with a trollop’s brush.

Ann Scarlet is no thief, but when the Yankee sheriff catches her she might just steal his heart. Ann has a single goal when journeying from her home in Savannah to Red River Rock Falls, Nebraska in 1875: find Whitaker and get back the land deed he stole from her brother. It seems simple enough, until Sheriff Crambert finds her with her hands full of money as she rifles through a pile of land deeds.

We're in Bacchus Marsh in the 1950s, with car salesmen, an early aviator, and the lives of Irene Bobs and Willy Bachhuber. The striking Irene is ahead of her time, a fearless, big-hearted, independently minded woman. Her next door neighbour Willy seems to be constantly in flight from his own life. He lacks social confidence but is extremely well read, so much so that he's a radio quiz champ. And he has a particular fondness for maps.

The wonderfully nostalgic and heartwarming new novel from the Sunday Times top-ten best-selling author of The Beggar Maid. Born out of wedlock when her mother was only fourteen, Lucy Pocket has spent all her life in the care of her disreputable but charming grandmother, Eva. They dodge from one poor lodging house to another, always in debt and resorting to theft in order to exist. Until her wealthy paternal grandfather buys her from Eva, determined to bring Lucy up to be a lady.

After her plans to elope with her married lover fall through, Rachel Kivell is brokenhearted and saddened that she must remain in her small Cornish mining town, with all of its dark secrets. But her brooding is put to an end when the loving but childlike Alice Bowden turns up on her doorstep. Poor orphaned Alice has nowhere to go, but Rachel cannot see herself taking on the responsibilities of a child. Can she put her worries aside, or will Alice never find a place to call home?

When journalist Jessie Daly loses everything she holds dear, she travels home to Ireland's west coast and helps an old friend researching life during the famine. Jessie becomes drawn into the heartbreaking story of a brave young mother, Bridget Moloney, and her daughter, Norah.

Ghosts are real…. They come out and play after dark at the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa, the most haunted hotel in America. Nicole and her traveling companions check into room 419 at the resort, where all is not as it seems. They soon learn the historic vacation destination has long been the source of eerie tales and unusual paranormal activity. A late-night guided tour of the historical hotel reveals guests repeatedly report sightings of ghostly figures prowling the halls and haunting the rooms on every floor.

That elusive dream: the mate who makes your heart skip a beat each time you see them, children you can impart wisdom to and learn from, a comfortable home worth coming home to, and no concern for money. We all want that. What if you got it - every bit - and snapped? Jesse McKlintock did. He received the love of his life, the children, a working ranch, a gold, silver, and copper mine, and a bank.

It's 1941, and Kate is living in Rangoon, Burma. A world away from her traditional English upbringing, she is bewitched by the country and the kindness of the Burmese people. When Edwin, a young teacher from London, starts working in the government office with her, a friendship develops between them. But Kate can sense that Edwin has secrets and is looking for a place to call home - something she shares. As their bond grows, Kate begins to understand Edwin's past and the tragic events that brought them both to Burma.

Anne Wakefield travels halfway around the world for love. But when she arrives in Canada from England at the end of World War II, she discovers the handsome Canadian pilot she'd fallen in love with has married someone else. Heartbroken, she prepares to return to London, though she has nothing left there to return to. Her former fiance's mother makes a suggestion: marriage to her other son.

1940, Great Paxford, Cheshire: When a spitfire crashes in the village, the lives of an extraordinary community of women will change forever: Frances Barden's greatest challenge is only just beginning; Pat Simms received a respite when her abusive husband went to war, but now he's home Pat doesn't know who to turn to; and for newlyweds Teresa and Nick, the plane crash on their wedding day may just be the start of their troubles.