Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in 20th Century

A British nurse in WWI Egypt races to deliver explosive intelligence that could change the course of the war in this novel of suspense, adventure, and love.

Rising singer-songwriters Jane Quinn and Jesse Reid looked untouchable. Captivating crowds in festival meadows, lighting up turntables, intoxicating fans from coast to coast. It was a connection that inspired the greatest love songs. But nothing lasts forever. Beneath the hits that made them, a dark secret threatened to break them. Now it’s time to hear the whole story, finally revealed in Jane’s iconic album, Songs in Ursa Major....

As the world teeters on the brink of WWII, Eliza Lavery is alone in the world after her fiancé, Davey, was lost in the Irish Civil War. But a chance meeting on the wild beauty of Ballmastocker Bay could change everything. Eight decades later, troubled by her future, Saoirse O’Donnell walks on the pink sands of Bermuda’s Horseshoe Bay. When she uncovers a connection to Eliza, all those years before, she hears a story that promises to influence her own heart and her own choice – but also to reveal a long-buried secret.

January 1941. As the residents of Goodwill House feel the hard bite of winter, land girl Charlie Somiton is still glad of the warm friendships she has made there. Not just her fellow land girls, Daphne and Sal, but also dashing local G.P. Dr James Willoughby who looked after Charlie when she was injured at work. Charlie likes Dr Willoughby, but she fears that there can never be more between them than just friendship. Because despite her upper-class background, Charlie carries with her a terrible secret that she can never share with James.

Venice, 1943: The world is at war, and Stella Jilani is leading a double life. By day, she works in the lion’s den as a typist for the Reich; by night, she risks her life as a messenger for the Italian resistance. Against all odds, Stella must impart Nazi secrets, smuggle essential supplies and produce an underground newspaper on her beloved typewriter. But when German commander General Breugal becomes suspicious, it seems he will stop at nothing to find the mole and Stella knows her future could be in jeopardy.

Liverpool, 1955. With her abusive husband drinking all her wages, Alice faces a daily struggle to provide for her family. Her eldest daughter, Cathy, has always longed to be a nurse, but when poverty means she’s forced to leave school and get a job it looks like her dreams are over. But Cathy isn’t willing to give up, and with the support of old friend - and new love - Gianni, she manages to secure a place as a cadet nurse. Now, though, her mam must stand up to her violent husband alone - and with less money coming in, Alice will be in danger of losing everything.

The First World War is over, and in a quiet Hampshire village, artist Stanley Spencer is working on the commission of a lifetime, painting an entire chapel in memory of a life lost in the war to end all wars. Combining his own traumatic experiences with moments of everyday redemption, the chapel will become his masterpiece. When Elsie Munday arrives to take up position as housemaid to the Spencer family, her life quickly becomes entwined with the charming and irascible Stanley, his artist wife, Hilda, and their tiny daughter, Shirin.

A sweeping, multigenerational saga for fans of Downton Abbey, set around the stately home of Cavendon Hall as the roaring '20s change the family's fortunes forever. It's 1926. One stately home's future lies with four very different young women.... On a summer weekend in 1926, the Ingham family gathers at Cavendon Hall, the great house in Yorkshire that has been their family home for centuries, summoned by the earl.

Summer, 1945. The nation rejoices as the Second World War comes to an end, but Banbury Street matriarch Eva Parke foresees trouble ahead. Her daughter, Mildred, awaits the return of her fiancé from overseas duty, and doubts begin to seep into her mind about how little she knows of the man she has promised to marry. Meanwhile new neighbour, dancer Cissie Cresswell, hides a terrible secret. Can the two young women unite to face the doubt and uncertainty of the future?

England, 1943: Deciding to throw herself into war work, Nancy Callaghan joins the Special Operations Executive in Baker Street. There, she begins solving ‘indecipherables’ – scrambled messages from agents in the field. Then Nancy meets Tom Lockwood, a quiet genius when it comes to coding. Together they come up with the idea of printing codes on silk, so agents can hide them in their clothing to avoid detection by the enemy. Nancy and Tom grow close, and soon she is hopelessly in love. But there is a traitor in Baker Street, and suspicions turn towards Tom.

WWII secrets, forbidden love, and one terrible mistake... When Mia discovers an old letter, she sets out on a mission to uncover the truth about her grandmother's past. With the help of brooding local guide Leo, they sneak into the closed-off Isola di Parissi, where Mia falls in love with both the country and her guide. But as they uncover hidden and handwritten notes, Mia learns of a heartbreaking mistake her grandmother made during WWII that tore apart the island community. Will Mia be forced to leave Italy and her newfound love forever?

Charlotte Brookes flees her lecherous guardian McBride, taking her younger sister with her. After a year on the road, they stumble into a Yorkshire village where the Wheelers, owners of the village shop, take them in. This new life is strange for Charlotte, but preferable to living with McBride or surviving on the roads.

In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a microcosm of France and its agony in 'the black years'. Here is the full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusistic, as well as examples of extraordinary courage and altruism.

Born a Native American but brought up Amish, Hester Zug, at age 20, flees her Amish home. Her father's too-tender care of her has made her stepmother wildly jealous, and so Hester sets off, knowing only that she can't stay. Hester's natural instincts for navigating the forests in colonial Pennsylvania, along with the book of medicines and remedies given to her by an aged Native American woman, allow her to survive until she gets sick from drinking river water.

The compelling new Second World War novel from the author of Always in My Heart. In defending herself against her brutal husband, eighteen-year-old Ruby Clark is forced to flee London. She has no idea where Cliffehaven is, or what she will find there, but she knows that she will never be able to return home again. At first it seems she’s fallen on her feet. She gets a job at the local armaments factory, and the couple she is billeted with are kind and supportive.

When Olivia Sheridan arrives in the Whitsundays as spokesperson for a big mining company, it should be a straightforward presentation to the town about their proposed project. But when a handsome local fisherman shows her what ecological impact the proposal will have, Olivia is forced to question her father's motives for the scheme. Struggling with newly divided loyalties, Olivia is thrown further into turmoil when she is mistaken for a woman who disappeared more than 60 years before.

The beautiful bastide at Beaulieu-sur-Mer has always been an idyllic retreat for the Challant family, but the summer of 1928 changes everything. One humid, stormy night, a young local boy suffers a fatal accident in the bastide’s grounds – and the suspicious circumstances around his death sets off a chain of whispers in the town on the Riviera. For the Challant children, they have no choice but to move on and leave those terrible events in the past. But through the years of loves and losses, marriages and betrayals, the Challants’ lives will always be tainted by that night.

On her deathbed, Lucy Fallow's mother makes her twelve-year-old daughter promise to look after her four younger siblings and keep house for her father and two older brothers. When the Fallow menfolk lose their jobs they take work wherever they can. But it's not long before they are working on the wrong side of the law and under the watchful eye of Tom McKenzie. Meanwhile, through the hardship Lucy begins to form a relationship with Jacob McKenzie, the boy next door, and one evening they dance cheek to cheek in the moonlight and know that one day they will marry.

A long-forgotten secret, a scandalous attraction and a place where two women's lives are changed forever. 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No-one could have predicted what would unfold.

England, 1919: Rose and Ivy board a ship bound for Australia. One is travelling there to marry a man she has never met. One is destined never to arrive. Australia, 2016: Amongst her late-grandmother's possessions, Molly uncovers a photograph of two girls dressed in First World War nurses' uniforms, labelled 'Rose and Ivy 1917', and a letter from her grandmother, asking her to find out what happened to her own mother, Rose, who disappeared in the 1960s.