Diney Costeloe

Plymouth, 1941. As sirens blare all around, the Shawbrook family take refuge in a packed shelter. Bombs have already begun to fall through the night sky when they realise their infant son, Freddie, has been forgotten in the rush, left to sleep in his crib....

Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him....

It is two years before the outbreak of World War 1, and the Oakley family are typical of their time. Andrew Oakley little imagines, as he sets off for work one February morning, that their lives are about to change in the most dramatic and tragic fashion....

After her mother's death, 20-year-old Sophie Ross is left orphaned, with only her erstwhile nursemaid and faithful friend, Hannah, for company....

A young woman fights to save a treasured war memorial and uncovers a tragic story that reverberates from World War I to the present day....

After the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of 1870-71, the St Clair family return to Paris, seeking refuge and security, only to be swept up into the terrible cruelties and violence of the Commune....

When Adelaide Anson-Gravetty finds out her father is not the man who raised her, she is both shocked and intrigued. Determined to find out more about her new family, she travels to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy in France to meet her aunt, the Reverend Mother....

Germany, 1937. Fear and betrayal stalk the streets. People disappear. Persecution of the Jews has become a national pastime. When Ruth Friedman's husband is arrested by the SS, she is left to fend for herself and her four children....

Dartmouth Circle is quiet and exclusive - just the way its residents want it to stay, especially arch busybody Sheila Colby. When she hears that the house next door to her has been bought for a student and four friends to rent, she is incandescent....

As the St Clair family prepare for the wedding of their daughter, Clarice, at the great country house of Montmichel, trouble is brewing....

The war is over, but trouble is brewing.... Wynsdown, 1949. In the small Somerset village of Wynsdown, Charlotte Shepherd is happily married and now feels settled in her adopted home....

When one of the houses in an exclusive cul-de-sac is sold to students, dramas begin to unfold and secrets long hidden come to the surface.

Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage...

Lucinda McFarlane is engaged to be married to dashing Sir David Melcome, but their society wedding has to be scaled right down when war is declared. Will David even live to see their baby born?

Thirteen-year-old Lisa has escaped from Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport. She arrives in London unable to speak a word of English, her few belongings crammed into a small suitcase. Lonely and homesick, Lisa is adopted by a childless couple.

In the small Somerset village of Wynsdown, Charlotte Shepherd is happily married and now feels settled in her adopted home after arriving from Germany on the Kindertransport as a child during the war.