When Sophie Weiss boards the SS St Louis, she has no reason to stay in Germany. The Nazis have taken everything from her, and her only hope is escape. But when she meets fellow Jewish refugees Rosa, Hannah and Rachel on board, the friendship they form gives Sophie hope that there can be happiness in her future, after all.

The Penryn family have always been eccentric—living in a dilapidated castle in the wilds of Cumbria with an orchid-mad father and a classicist mother who likes to re-enact Greek myths, who wouldn’t be? Well-heeled Londoner Althea Penryn doesn’t expect a divorce and job hunt over the Christmas holidays, but her husband claims he’s done and the prenup is solid. She packs up her reluctant teenage children and heads home to Casterglass Castle to confront the ghosts of her past—including the real one her mother claims lives in the old guard tower.

Persephone is the youngest Penryn, and she’s always felt like an afterthought. As her siblings ventured out one by one, she was left behind, learning to rely on herself. Now that they’ve all returned and are on a mission to save their home, she’s reluctantly falling in with their plans and keeping her distance, especially when an Oxford-educated intern arrives wanting to learn how to save one’s ancestral home. 

When Rachel Mowbray left behind her family farm in North Yorkshire at eighteen, she never planned on returning. But when her ex-childhood sweetheart calls and insists she returns due to her father's declining health, she travels north. Every moment home reminds Rachel why she left—her sister Harriet is both hostile and cold, her father barely communicates with anyone, and the house feels stuck in time. Plus, her old neighbor and ex, sheep farmer Ben Mackey, still has the power to make her pulse race…a decidedly unwelcome realization!

Autumn Laine has lost her creative sparkle. After losing her grandad and her job as an illustrator in quick succession, she is at a crossroads in life and needs a break. Spending time with her parents in Paris, even in the artistic community of Montmartre, doesn't appear to be the answer. So when her penpal, Rosie, invites her to stay in the Lake District, Autumn jumps at the chance to get away from the hustle and bustle of Paris. After all, where better to re-discover her creativity than the place which inspired her heroine Beatrix Potter?

When Danni Carter moves to Cornwall from London, she hopes it will be the fresh start she so desperately needs. She’s nervous, but hopefully the change of scene will help her to finally forget her feelings for Lucas Newman, a man she can never be with, because he’s already engaged to Danni’s best friend, Esther. But when Lucas and Esther decide to follow Danni to Cornwall, and both announce they will be working with her at the new St Piran’s hospital, Danni is thrown into turmoil again.

I never expected to have to uproot my family to go live in my parents’ isolated cottage on Lost Lake. It’s twenty miles to the nearest town, an insignificant speck in endless pine forests. Nobody’s lived here for a decade. Now, I pick up a rusty pail from its nest of autumn leaves and turn to my daughter. Suddenly, I recall how I used to help my own mother pick wild strawberries up here as a little girl. Maybe, this isn’t a punishment. Maybe this place will be the making of our family.

Janine Potter grew up on the other side of the tracks. Her mother, Nancy, struggled with just about everything—alcohol, men, money—and Janine made a pledge to herself that she would never be like her. At age nineteen, Janine met Jack Potter, the son of an oil tycoon, and never looked back. Her life became a series of cocktail parties and multi-million-dollar apartments all across the world, and rubbing elbows with celebrities. Slowly, memory of her mother faded, although the trauma never really did.

With nowhere else to go, Harriet Colgan has returned to the sleepy village of Cranfield to sell her beloved aunt and uncle’s cottage, the only place she ever called home. When she arrives at Lavender Cottage, Harriet discovers plans to replace the beautiful lavender fields, her uncle’s pride and joy, with an industrial warehouse.With time on her hands, she realises she must fight to protect her family’s legacy and the village of Cranfield as well. Workaholic businessman Joe Randall was expecting an easy purchase of the lavender fields.

1904: Ellen Copley is still a child when she leaves behind the sooty rail yards of Glasgow and crosses the Atlantic Ocean with a heart full of dreams. Yet within weeks of their arrival in America, her father has disappeared - leaving Ellen with resentful relatives, feeling alone and scared for her future. But then her kind Aunt Rose invites Ellen to stay with her large family in their rambling house on beautiful Amherst Island, which nestles like a jewel in the blue waters of Lake Ontario.

Berlin, 1936: From her beautiful new home Liesel Scholz barely notices the changes to the city around her. Her life is one of privilege and safety thanks to her father’s job working for the new government. But soon a chance encounter with Rosa, the daughter of their Jewish housekeeper, leaves Liesel in no doubt that something isn’t right. Frankfurt, 1946: An idealistic American captain, Sam Houghton, arrives in Germany to interrogate prominent Nazis on trial and to help rebuild a battered country. He hires an enigmatic and damaged woman named Anna as his interpreter.

Living in a bustling farmhouse with her mum, aunt and uncles, cousin and too many dogs to count, surrounded by the breath-taking Cotswolds countryside, she knows she is privileged and protected. But all families have secrets, and the Travers family are no exception. Their farmhouse sits in the grounds of the Juniper Meadows estate, passed down through the generations and now being made to pay its own way with a myriad of businesses and projects.

Since she inherited the Starfish Café, Hollie has poured her heart into the business, striving to keep her mother's traditions and warm-hearted spirit alive. But behind closed doors, Hollie is searching for true happiness, as she grieves the tragic loss of her family who were once the beating heart of the café. Jake lives by two rules: don’t let anyone get close, and don’t talk about what happened. Can Hollie and Jake break down the barriers that have been holding them back from finding love and happiness before Christmas comes around? With courage, nothing is impossible.

England, 1939: When Alice marries twinkly-eyed, kind-hearted vicar David, it means leaving everything from her old life behind and moving into the draughty vicarage in the beautiful but remote village of Goswell, Cumbria. Though homesick, she's determined to make a new life there for herself and her husband. But soon tragedy strikes, and Alice is devastated when war breaks out and David chooses to sign up to fight. But everything changes when she's asked to take in a child evacuee, and she makes a promise to protect this girl, no matter what it costs her…

It had always been Tabby's dream to work with cats and an inheritance from her beloved nanna has finally made that a reality. Idyllic Castle Street in Whitsborough Bay couldn’t be a better place for pastry chef Tabby to open a cat café with her boyfriend, Leon. But when Leon leaves her in the lurch, the pressure mounts for Tabby. With Christmas fast approaching, she has to open the café on her own – a daunting prospect, especially when she's been hiding her health issues from the ones she loves.