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

Without a mother, Rosie is at the mercy of her father and thuggish brothers. Then one day a friend comes to the farm in the form of cockney housekeeper Heather Farley. But soon enough Heather vanishes, abandoning Rosie to her fate. Only when Thomas Farley comes to find his sister several years later does Rosie learn the terrible truth about Heather - and her family. Running away from home, she finds herself pursued by the man who brought ruin on her family. Is he out to get her, too? Or could he have some other reason for chasing her?

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.

Paris 1943. Elise Chevalier knows what it is to hate. Her fiancé, a young French soldier, was killed by the German army at the Maginot Line. Elise's mother fears for her outspoken daughter. In occupied Paris, there is a punishment for those who draw attention to themselves; those who refuse to stay silent.

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.

Maisie Marlowe has come to America in the search of a new life. When she unearths a beautiful, neglected old carousel, she seizes the opportunity to carve a thrilling new destiny for herself. But Maisie doesn't know that beneath its glittering facade, the carousel is hiding a dark secret. Twenty years ago, it was linked to a number of people inexplicably vanishing into thin air—and now history has begun to repeat itself . . .

A lost child: On the eve of the first world war, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her – but the Authoress has disappeared without a trace. A terrible secret: On the night of her 21st birthday, Nell O'Connor learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she embarks upon a search for the truth that leads her to the windswept Cornish coast and the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor, once owned by the aristocratic Mountrachet family.

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.

From the best-selling author of The Piano Tuner comes Daniel Mason's The Winter Soldier, a story of love and medicine through the devastation of the First World War. Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a 22-year-old medical student when World War One explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus.

Occupied Italy, 1944. In the mountain regions south of Bologna, Liliana Nicoletti’s family finds escaped POW James Foley behind German lines. Committed to the anti-Fascist cause, they deliver him to a powerful band of local partisans. But when the SS launches a brutal attack against the Resistance, Liliana’s community is destroyed. Forging an unbreakable bond, James and Liliana's only hope of survival is to make it to the Allied lines. Twelve years later, fate reunites Liliana, newly widowed, and James, now a journalist for a New York magazine.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss. Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days.

South London, 1981: Daphne is the only Black girl in her class. All she wants is to keep her head down, preferably in a book. The easiest way to survive is to go unnoticed. Daphne's attempts at invisibility are upended when a boy named Connie Small arrives from Jamaica. Connie is the opposite of small in every way: lanky, outgoing, and unapologetically himself. Daphne tries to keep her distance, but Connie is magnetic, and they form an intense bond.

Brook Eden has never known where she truly belongs. Though raised in the palace of Monaco, she's British by birth and was brought to the Grimaldis under suspicious circumstances as a babe. When Brook's friend, Justin, uncovers the fact that Brook is likely a missing heiress from Yorkshire, Brook leaves the sun of the Mediterranean to travel to the moors of the North Sea, to the estate of her supposed family.

Flying instructor Ellie Simpson has grown up a tomboy. She's never had an interest in the latest fashions or finding a husband; her only passion is flying her beloved Tiger Moth. But when war is declared, she is no longer be able to do what she loves most - fly.

Hampshire, 1913. Amidst the glitz and glamour of England’s High Society, Sarah Trenwith is more of a wallflower living in the shadow of her beautiful sister Marianne. But as the war approaches Sarah will have to step out of the place society and her family have assigned her if she’s to do her part and claim the love she always dreamed of from afar.

Munich, 1943. My heart breaks as I watch the smug couple carry the tiny bundle into their sinister black limousine. Carefully I write the baby’s name into my secret notebook. No matter the danger, I will do everything I can to reunite him with his mother… As the darkest shadows of the war spread, nurse Margarete Weiss is sent away to work in a mother and baby home in a beautiful corner of the German countryside.

Heartbroken and hoping for a new start, Abi Howes takes a summer job in rural France at the Château Bellevue. The old château echoes with voices from the past, and soon Abi finds herself drawn to one remarkable woman’s story, a story that could change the course of her summer - and her life. In 1938, Eliane Martin tends beehives in the garden of the beautiful Château Bellevue. In its shadow she meets Mathieu Dubosq and falls in love for the first time, daring to hope that a happy future awaits.