Showing titles in 20th Century

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighbourhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorise it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

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.

As a 13-year-old World War Two evacuee, Edie’s mother was chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family. In the grand and glorious Milderhurst Castle, a new world opened up for Edie’s mother. She discovered the joys of books and fantasy and writing, but also, ultimately, their dangers. Fifty years later, as Edie chases the answers to her mother’s riddle, she too is drawn to Milderhurst Castle and the eccentric Blythe sisters. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past.

Summer 1999: Twentysomething Sawyer is striving to make it in New York. Between her assistant job in publishing, her secret dreams of becoming a writer, and her upcoming wedding to her college boyfriend, her is plate full. Only one problem: She is facing an incredibly lonely summer as her fiancé has been spending longer and longer hours at work...with an all-too-close female colleague, Kendra. When Kendra's boyfriend, Nick, invites Sawyer to meet up and compare notes about their suspicions, the meeting goes awry.

1901. When the Earl of Stainton dies in a tragic hunting accident, Giles, the eldest son of the noble Tallant family, must step forward to replace him as the head of the family. But Giles has avoided the Castle and his stifling relatives for years, deciding instead to forge his own path away from the spotlight. Now, he must put aside his ambitions and honour his duty to the family.

When the Berlin Wall goes up, Karin is on the wrong side of the city. Overnight, she’s trapped under Soviet rule in unforgiving East Berlin and separated from her twin sister, Jutta. Karin and Jutta lead parallel lives for years, cut off by the Wall. But Karin finds one reason to keep going: Otto, the man who gives her hope, even amidst the brutal East German regime.

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 family secret. A century of heartache . . . The Girl on the Cliff is an evocative, moving story of family, loss and hope, from Lucinda Riley, the international bestselling author of The Seven Sisters series.

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.

Doctor Frances Brakespeare continues to settle into her new life in rural Somerset at Orchard Cottage Hospital, striving to improve the medical treatments on offer to the community. After successfully establishing a mother and baby clinic, Frances is determined to move with the times and add family planning advice to her roster – but are the residents of Norton Dene ready for such progress or will she face opposition?

Liverpool, 1946: the blackout blinds may be coming down, but one family is about to face devastating misfortune. Dora Evans is finally marrying the love of her life, and her dreams of opening a dressmaking business look as if they might come true. With twin daughters on the way, Dora has everything she's ever wanted. But then tragedy strikes: one of Dora's babies dies in infancy, and a catastrophic fire changes their lives forever. Can Dora save herself, her marriage and her daughter?

It's 1921, and after years of working for Cadbury's at Bournville, Dorothy Adwell is on her way to a new adventure in the colonies, helping to establish the Firm's new Australian factory. A promotion and a fresh start are just what she needs after the horrors of the Great War and the loss of her beloved husband. During the long sea voyage, she meets Thomas and is immediately drawn to him. The war has left Thomas damaged, both mentally and emotionally, and Dorothy vows to help him—if only he will let her.

Gordon Parker is an eager eighteen-year-old Australian boy desperate to fight for his country, and Nobuko 'Cherry' Sakuramoto is a sixteen-year-old girl struggling to survive in Japan in the aftermath of World War II. But when they fall in love, they change the course of history. When Gordon arrives in Japan, he expects ruthless samurai, angry Japanese men ready to kill Australians at every corner. Instead, he finds Cherry, terrified of ex-enemy soldiers, a survivor of the atomic bomb. Against all the rules and all the odds, they fall in love.

It is 1914, and Maria, a shy teenager, is appointed to Buckingham Palace as a seamstress for the royal family. There, she is lucky enough to meet the prince of Wales and is soon captivated by his glamour and intensity. But theirs is a doomed love affair, and before long Maria’s life takes a tragic turn. Torn between passion and integrity, she makes a choice that has devastating consequences.... Can a beautiful quilt, discovered many years later, reveal the truth behind what happened to Maria?

Dottie and Mary forged a friendship over a bag of penny sweets when they were eight years old. They've shared everything together since then. Now, at seventeen, they're both shopgirls working at Woolworths. As they go out in the world in pursuit of love and happiness and life becomes more complicated, the simplicity of their childhood dissolves. The heady excitement of first love will consume them both, but the pain of unintentional betrayal will test their friendship.

It’s 1968 and it’s cold when Felicity arrives in London to stay with her mother, improve her English, do a secretarial course - and meet a suitable man. She is already missing her home in Provence and her father and his new wife and their extended family. But it’s only for a year she tells herself - and then she can go back to France and do what she really wants and become a painter. And then she bumps into Oliver who is quite the most interesting young man she has ever met.

Cilka was only 16 years old when she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, in 1942. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, noticed her long beautiful hair, and forced her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka did what she had to in order to survive Auschwitz. And yet after Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz in 1945, Cilka was charged as a collaborator and sentenced to serve a 15-year sentence for 'sleeping with the enemy'. Once again, she found herself on a brutal train journey, crammed into a carriage with many desperate women and children.

She's descended from vampire royalty, gifted with a power she should not possess. He's a werewolf and former Supernatural Intelligence Agent, charged with protecting her at all costs. Neither anticipated they would have to marry in order to ensure her protection.

Will Shaw and his friends are typical college students, enjoying dances and parties without much care for life beyond. When Thomas, a handsome Naval officer and newly arrived student, nearly stumbles into Will and his friends, Will's heart spins, though he doesn't understand why. Sparks of something new burst within, opening his eyes to possibilities he'd never dreamed. In the giddy fog of a forbidden courtship and the safety of the campus bubble, the world's troubles seem far away. Until they aren't.

Ally D'Aplièse is about to compete in one of the world's most perilous yacht races, when she hears the news of her adoptive father's sudden, mysterious death. Rushing back to meet her five sisters at their family home, she discovers that her father—an elusive billionaire affectionately known to his daughters as Pa Salt—has left each of them a tantalizing clue to their true heritage. Ally has also recently embarked on a deeply passionate love affair that will change her destiny forever. But with her life now turned upside down.