Showing titles in 20th Century

FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TEA PLANTER'S WIFE Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Silk Merchant's Daughter by Dinah Jefferies, read by Eliza Parkes. Dinah Jefferies' stunning new novel is a gripping, unforgettable tale of a woman torn...

Bindi Summer, the hard-working manager at The Waratah Inn, is tired, feeling low, and wondering where her life is headed. Then, she is blind-sided by a shock revelation and the sudden arrival of her ex-boyfriend, who shows up at the inn, questioning his decision to leave her almost two years earlier. When Josh Owens, an old high school crush, shows up out of the blue, all Bindi wants is to hunker down and ride out the storm, but Josh won't be put off so easily.

On a June day, a young woman in a summer dress steps off a Chicago-bound bus into a small midwestern town. She doesn't intend to stay. She is just passing through. Yet her stopping here has a reason and it is part of a story that you will never forget. The time is the 1950s, when life was...

The fourth book in the War at Home series by the author of The Morland Dynasty novels. Set against the evocative backdrop of World War I, this is an epic family drama featuring the Hunters and their servants.

Paris, 1939: Gazing out at the glittering skyline, Evelina clutches the letter from her love in shaking hands. “I know I do not deserve you, my darling, but I pray that you will change your mind. You have my heart, and I hope that nothing will keep us apart…” London, present day. Blake gazes down at a scrap of shimmering silver velvet attached to a faded dress design, tracing the details with wonder. They were left with her grandmother at Hope’s House, a home for unmarried mothers, before she was adopted.

Heartbreak and family loyalty collide in Rita Bradshaw's number one bestselling Dancing in the Moonlight, read by actress Anne Dover. As her mother lies dying, twelve-year-old Lucy Fallow promises to look after her younger siblings and keep house for her father and two older brothers. Over the...

The year is 1919, and the Great War has ended. As everyone picks up the pieces of their lives, I have only copious amounts of alcohol and women keeping me together. Most of the men I went to war with didn't make it home, including my best friend, Miles. I thought I knew everything about him until I discovered he made me the executor to his little sister Rainey's dowry.

Can their friendship survive the darkest days of war? When Abigail arrives for a new start in Bristol in the late 1930s, she knows life won’t be easy - particularly as she is the unmarried mother of three-year-old Emily Grace. But as the war starts to take over the city and threaten their very existence, will Abigail’s new friends, Carrie and Eileen, be enough to keep herself and her daughter safe?

Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, a war widow, returns to her childhood home for a final visit before the house is sold. But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her youth and someone has been there before her. As Kate uncovers an old secret that haunts the home she thought she knew, she is forced to confront a dark truth from her own past.... Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. And someone was crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate. Someone I knew well....

Paris, Christmas 1933. The Strasbourg express crashes into a local train outside Paris, leaving wreckage and broken bodies strewn on the tracks. On board is Gilles Malroux. In the chaos and confusion, he swaps his identity papers with a stranger, steals a suitcase and vanishes. Gilles' sister...

In this epic and haunting series a young man's life is forever changed as, enveloped in the bohemian art world of the 1930s, he embarks on a journey of love, loss, and restoration. Jack has been praised all his life for his extraordinary artistic talent and is rarely seen without his sketchpad. However, in Jack's world art is considered a hobby - men are expected to have jobs that offer security and advancement. When tragedy threatens, Jack is torn: Should he follow the well-laid plans for his future or pursue a path set to disappoint his family and which offers only uncertainty?

Mere words can't end their families' feud, but they still plan to rewrite a future together. Buffalo, NY, 1924. Laura Bradshaw adores stories with happily ever afters. But since her mother died seven years ago, the Bradshaw Shoe Company heiress has been as good as locked away in a tower. Her...

Brought to you by Penguin. London, 1939 When tragedy strikes, Libby Andrews is left homeless and destitute, fending for herself on the capital's most dangerous streets. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Libby is on the cusp of making a decision that could jeopardise her future...

As a small child, Nellie Peace was always dreaming but sensed her mother’s rejection. Abandoned and sent into service at Beaumont House at an early age, Nellie is lost and alone until she meets the unpredictable and reclusive artist Lucas Harrington and falls in love with him. This unlikely association between master and servant is encouraged by Lucas’ gentle-natured Aunt Alice, as Lucas sees something unusual in Nellie and is compelled to paint her. Broken promises lead to inevitable heartbreak, and Nellie flees Beaumont House in disgrace for London.

1942. When Helda Dahlstrøm flees her abusive husband and Nazi-occupied Norway with her eight-year-old son she doesn't know if they'll make it out alive. In her desperate journey to safety she'll find safety on the rocky shores of the Shetland Islands, rescued by Canadian Flight Sergeant Bill Gauthier. As WWII's destruction rages at their doorsteps, can love find its way through the rubble?

The Empire is not just a theatre. From music hall to vaudeville, from revue to grand musical spectacular, it holds a special place in the nation's heart. For its audience, for its actors and singers, for the stagehands, the front-of-house staff, for its backers and its debtors—and above all for its owners—it truly is a palace of dreams. And for young Jack Treadwell, struggling to adapt to civilian life after the horrors of the trenches, it's a lifeline. When he receives a letter out of the blue inviting him to work at The Empire, he leaps at the chance.

1940, Liverpool: Alice Turner and her best friend, Millie Markham, work for the war effort at Rootes munitions factory, making shell caps and Halifax bombers. Alice’s sweetheart, Terry, is home from the front for a brief period of leave. But the honeymoon is soon over. Terry must go back to the dangers of Nazi-occupied France, and the ever-present air raid sirens quickly bring Alice back down to earth.

England, 1924. Nell Potter pens successful romantic mysteries as the enigmatic Margot Evangeline, but off the page, things aren’t quite so wonderful. Nell, tormented by a terrible ordeal in her past, can’t settle, and her writing is coming less and less easily. When she receives an invitation to Hill House, a stunning Georgian manor deep in the countryside, it feels like a chance to escape her troubles. Hill House is as beautiful as Nell could have ever imagined but, it turns out, not exactly restful. It seems the manor has its own secrets.

The unforgettable, heartbreaking love story from a New York Times bestselling author about a young socialite and the boy who once stole her heart—now an iconic motion picture starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. At thirty-one, Noah Calhoun, back in coastal North Carolina after World War...

In 1905, on her twenty-sixth birthday, Mimi Reventlow receives a marriage proposal from the vicar of her family’s church. But a future of housework, childcare, and servicing a parish doesn’t appeal to the restless and unconventional Mimi. She has ambitions of her own--to follow in the footsteps of her beloved uncle Josef and become a traveling photographer. Leaving behind all that has been mapped out for her, Mimi dares to pursue her passion and sets out alone to make her own mark. A visit to her ailing uncle in the idyllic mountain town of Laichingen, Germany, pauses Mimi’s journey.