Showing titles in 20th Century

London, 1940. Emmeline Lake and her best friend, Bunty, are trying to stay cheerful despite the Luftwaffe making life thoroughly annoying for everyone. Emmy dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent, and when she spots a job advertisement in the newspaper she seizes her chance - but after a rather unfortunate misunderstanding, she finds herself typing letters for the formidable Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt of Woman's Friend magazine.

In July 1944, Arielle von Auspeck arrives at the glamorous Hotel Ritz in occupied Paris. Half-French, half-German, she is happy to be back in France, where she her husband, Gregor, a retired colonel, will join her soon from Germany. Arielle and Gregor have thus far been able to hide their private opposition to Hitler. Then her world falls apart. She receives word that Gregor was part of Operation Valkyrie and a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in Poland, and has been shot as a traitor.

London, July 1944. Journalist Emmy Lake's career is soaring: Woman's Friend magazine is a huge success, and she is finally realizing her dream of becoming a Lady War Correspondent. On the personal front, Emmy's husband Charles has been posted closer to home, and they and their friends Bunty and Harold have escaped to the countryside for a few precious summer days. They all know how lucky they are.

Germany, 1944. Taken from the camps to serve the Fuhrer himself, Anke Hoff has been assigned as midwife to one of Hitler’s inner circle. If she refuses, her family will die. Torn between her duty as a caregiver and her hatred for the regime she’s now a part of, Anke is quickly swept into a life unlike anything she’s ever known - and she discovers that many of those at the Berghof are just as trapped as she is. Soon, she’s falling for a man who will make her world more complicated still.

To the outside world, Electra D’Aplièse seems to be the woman with everything: as one of the world’s top models, she is beautiful, rich and famous. Yet beneath the veneer, Electra’s already tenuous control over her state of mind has been rocked by the death of her father, Pa Salt, the elusive billionaire who adopted his six daughters from across the globe. Struggling to cope, she turns to alcohol and drugs. As those around her fear for her health, Electra receives a letter from a complete stranger who claims to be her grandmother.

A multigenerational novel of love, oppression, trauma and the pursuit of freedom, inspired in part by the author's own family history, China Room twines together the stories of a woman and a man separated by more than half a century but united by blood.

Martha Wallace came to Dublin from her home in America to find her birth mother. But instead she has lost her heart to the impossibly charming JP Deverill. Bridie Doyle, now mistress of Castle Deverill, is determined to make the castle she used to work in her home. But her flamboyant husband, Cesare, has other ideas. Kitty Deverill has come to terms with her life with her husband, Robert. But then Jack O'Leary, the love of her life, returns to Ballinakelly....

Emmy Darling has a secret. She has a few. Her lemon meringue pie is a recipe from a women's magazine, she's always wanted to be a playwright, and the best parts of her husband Sebastian's plays are the scenes she's written during edits. But when charismatic theatre impresario and leading lady, Virginia van Belle, insists Emmy write about her wartime experiences as the lead play in her 1957 season, Emmy is faced with every writer's dilemma.

As WWII rolls across Europe, Kitty boards a ship set for England. Money is what she really needs right now, especially with tiny baby Billy back in Dublin. In Lancashire, Kitty settles into the hard work and soon makes new friends, playing in the Bomb Girls Swing Band by night. Life seems to be looking up. But when a letter arrives from home, she realises she might need her friends’ help before it's too late and she loses her baby forever....

The New York Times best-selling author of 'Til Death Do Us Part transports listeners to 1930s California, where glamour and seduction spawn a multitude of sins. At the exclusive Burning Cove Hotel on the coast of California, rookie reporter Irene Glasson finds herself staring down at a beautiful actress at the bottom of a pool. The dead woman had a red-hot secret about an up-and-coming leading man, a scoop that Irene couldn't resist.

Windsor, 1940: War rages, and as bombs rain down across Britain, nowhere is safe: not even a royal palace. Secretly tasked with foiling a suspected plot, Sophie Klein is placed in the Royal Library at Windsor castle, where the princesses reside. But when she learns that Windsor is compromised, Sophie must sacrifice everything she knows to save the future queen of England. Philadelphia, Present day: Digging into her great aunt’s family tree, Lacey Turner comes across a mysterious book bearing the stamp of Windsor Castle’s royal bindery. But how did it come to be in her family’s possession?

London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before, when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe — and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war. Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history.

Poland, 1980. Anxious, disillusioned Ludwik Glowacki, soon to graduate university, has been sent along with the rest of his class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together, they spend a dreamlike summer swimming in secluded lakes, reading forbidden books - and falling in love. But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw, and to the harsh realities of life under the Party. Exiled from paradise, Ludwik and Janusz must decide how they will survive; and in their different choices, find themselves torn apart.

The present: Emilie de la Martiniéres has always fought against her aristocratic background, but after the death of her glamorous, distant mother, she finds herself alone in the world and sole inheritor of her grand childhood home in the south of France. An old notebook of poems leads her in search of the mysterious and beautiful Sophia, whose tragic love affair changed the course of her family history.

1925 New York. Arthur Kenzie's life's work is protecting the world from the supernatural relics that could destroy it. When an amulet with the power to control the tides is shipped to New York, he must intercept it before it can be used to devastating effects. This time, in order to succeed, he needs a powerful psychometric...and the only one available has sworn off his abilities altogether. Rory Brodigan's gift comes with great risk. To protect himself, he's become a recluse, redirecting his magic to find counterfeit antiques.

Lancashire, 1930s. When her mother dies, leaving her an old sewing box and a clue to her father's identity, 22-year-old Maisie Bassett is determined to make a fresh start. Changing her name and moving to the small town of Rivenshaw, she finds a respectable job in a grocery store. But unwanted attentions from a man at her new church make life increasingly difficult - until the shy, handsome Gabriel Harte comes to her rescue.

Alice Lake has arrived in London from Liverpool to start her training as a District Nurse, but her journey has been far from easy. Her parents think that she should settle down and get married, but she has already had her heart broken once and isn’t about to make the same mistake again. Alice and her best friend, Edith, are based in the East End, but before they’ve even got their smart new uniforms on, war breaks out, and Hitler’s bombs are raining down on London.

Morocco, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Frenchwoman Marie-Madeleine is not the kind of woman who goes through life sitting down, something her new husband can attest.

In 1942, Eva is forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children escaping to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva realises she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember their own identities.

Keara Michaels doesn't want to leave her family in Ireland, but fate sends her first to Lancashire, then across the sea to Australia, pregnant and penniless. And Theo Mullane, the man who loves her, is married, with an ailing baby son, so cannot follow her as he longs to. Mark Gibson leaves Lancashire to avoid marriage. But gold prospecting is a dangerous pursuit, and when his gentle young wife dies in childbirth, his father-in-law kidnaps the baby. So Mark runs away again, this time to Western Australia, where he employs Keara in his country inn.