Showing results by publisher "Orion Publishing Group Limited" in Historical Fiction

Piet Barol is an alluring and intelligent young man who has escaped his drab existence, living with his father in the university town of Leiden, and moved to Amsterdam to take up a job at a stunning mansion in the city's 'Gilded Curve'. He has been employed by the extremely wealthy Vermeulen-Sickerts family to tutor their son Egbert, a boy with prodigious musical talent who has not set foot outside for a year and a half.

Piet Barol and Stacey are navigating the turbulence and opportunities of colonial South Africa in a quest for comfort and riches. The Land Act has turfed thousands of black families out of their homes, and Piet is appalled by their treatment. But after five years of decadent living, Piet and Stacey are short of cash and in need of wood for the furniture business they have founded. So Piet sets off to pursue a fabled tree, a journey which will take him deep into the homelands of the Xhosa clan, who believe that the spirits of their ancestors reside in the magical trees.

The De Witt family, who once led an idyllic and privileged life, are struggling to piece together the shattered fragments of their lives in the aftermath of the Great War. In 1939, the world is on the verge of turmoil with the approaching storm of the Second World War. The fragile peace of the De Witts' world is threatened once again as the family must deal with the consequences of another devastating war.

January 1941. Peggy Collins has learned a lot during her time as a Spark Girl. Posted to Swansea as a driver to the squadron leader, she often hears things she shouldn't, and she knows to be discreet, understanding how serious the phrase 'loose lips sink ships' really is. Peggy meets and falls in love with pilot Jim Hudson, but her heart is broken when he becomes missing in action, and Peggy is left fearing the worst. That isn't the end of the shocks in store for Peggy, and she is forced to remember a promise made long ago. But can she keep her word while the bombs fall?

The year is 1993. The Ku Klux Klan hold a rally provoking violence from an unexpected quarter which leaves authorities with an extraordinary dilemma: how do you handle a 98-year-old perpetrator who will not speak out except to admit her guilt? The year is 1919. Exiled in disgrace from her family, mixed-race Alicia is shocked by the primitive conditions when she arrives in Key West. Unlike anywhere else in Florida, people just get along - whites, blacks, Cubans, Catholics and Jews.

Having fled to New York following his involvement in a terrible crime, Irish-born Danny McCabe throws in his lot with Nicolas and Lucia Mariani, Corsican siblings who have come to America to make their fortune. In New York the trio get by, earning money from fighting and - on Nicolas Mariani's part - increasingly illicit activity. Lucia has ambitions of becoming an actress, and, following a fight that goes horribly wrong, the three of them head to Los Angeles, the city of dreams.

As a new year begins and the world is at war, Evie Yeo is turning over a new leaf. Her nearest and dearest in the little Devon village of Lymbridge, the war effort for the boys on the front and her class of infant pupils will be getting all of her attention this year, and nothing will soften her resolve. Though rations are slim and work is hard with the men away, Evie knows she's lucky to have her friends and family around her - even if they don't always agree on each other's choices in fashion, hobbies or love.

Sophia Beaumont-Brown was an 'it' girl. But now she's in the papers for all the wrong reasons. She's single, sofa surfing and not speaking to her family; only her grandmother has any faith left in her. From her hospital bed, Tilly Beaumont sends Sophia letters about her life: dispatches about wartime England, about family secrets and, finally, about the most beautiful thing she ever owned - a necklace of the most incredible pearls. If Sophia's prepared to listen, she'll unlock the secret story of generations of incredible women.

England, 1937. In the village of Blacknowle on the Dorset coast, 14-year-old Mitzy Hatcher has endured a wild and lonely upbringing. Shunned by her neighbours, the arrival of renowned artist Charles Aubrey - along with his exotic mistress and their daughters - is like a breath of fresh air. As Charles's muse, Mitzy develops a deep and abiding bond with the Aubrey household over the course of the following three summers. Gradually, Mitzy begins to perceive a future she had never thought possible....

Pretty Amy Curran was just eighteen years old when she met Barney Patterson, the love of her life, on Southport pier in 1939. Their romantic, passionate marriage was made in heaven - or so they both believed.

Russia, 1854: the Crimean War grinds on, and as the bitter winter draws near, the battlefield hospitals fill with dying men. In defiance of Florence Nightingale, Rosa Barr - young, headstrong and beautiful - travels to Balaklava, determined to save as many of the wounded as she can.

New York, January 1896: Arthur Conan Doyle, the renowned creator of Sherlock Holmes, arrives at the Britannic Hotel with his wife, Louisa, ready to begin his first American tour. While he prepares his lectures, Louisa becomes mesmerised by this brash, vibrant, dangerous city, especially when a woman's brutally butchered corpse is found in a Bowery alley and Louisa is convinced from the artist's sketch in the paper that she'd seen the victim at the hotel.