Nick Turnhouse is a Dorset farmhand, a third son with nothing to inherit and no future, working his father's land for his keep. He is also tall, powerfully built, and handsome, and crosses the path of Squire's impressionable daughter. Nick has to run, fast, with ten shillings and his father's blessing. Luckily, or so he thinks, he comes across a kind gentleman who can help him. After Nick is persuaded to say that he is looking for work, he discovers the man is recruiting for the Navy, and Nick has just 'volunteered in fact'.

England, 1940: When seventeen-year-old John Sharratt’s life is shattered by a single, devastating bomb dropped by the Luftwaffe, he is thrust into a world of loss and longing. With his family gone and his heart heavy, John’s conscription into the army offers a refuge and a new beginning, even in the face of turmoil. As he dons the battledress of a British soldier at Seaforth Barracks, John embarks on an intense journey of transformation.

Captain Nathaniel Perry has survived the Battle of Waterloo with some slight distinction, and finds himself respected in his fashionable mess on the regiment's return to England. That is a problem, for he has no private income. He had managed well enough on his pay on campaign, but could not do so in the Peace. Simultaneously with his promotion to major in acknowledgement of his actions at the Battle, he is called to London at the behest of a dying grandfather, a merchant who had disowned him, disapproving of his mother's marriage. Perry discovers he is the sole surviving heir . . . and rich.

1878: When his family loses their home, to Jack Roberts, who has grown up hearing stories of the Crimean war and the magnificent charge of the Heavy Brigade, the choice between working in a dangerous factory or enlisting in the army and putting on the famed red uniform is an easy one. But when fighting for Queen and Country takes him far from home to defending a small mission station from overwhelming numbers, it is anything but easy and bravery and stoicism take on new meaning.

Everyone could see it coming. But one man could do something about it. Oh, he couldn't avert the nuclear holocaust, but a scientist in Austria, ruthlessly using billions of research dollars for his own purposes, set himself up and out: he created a time machine, and filled a warehouse with low-tech survival gear. Too bad he didn't get to use it himself. Instead, a team of American grad students, led by their professor, is sent back to the late Roman Empire. Even though they are experts in this time and place, they are about to realize that books and actual experience are very different things.