Showing titles in 20th Century

France, 1916. Sophie Lefevre is ordered to serve the German officers who socialise in her hotel. When the new Kommandant sets eyes on Sophie's portrait - painted by her husband Edouard - a dangerous obsession is born. Almost a century later, Sophie's portrait hangs in the home of Liv Halston. A chance encounter reveals the painting's true worth - and its troubled history that is about to resurface and turn Liv's life upside down…

Through years of war and devastation, Tatiana and Alexander suffered the worst the twentieth century had to offer. Miraculously reunited in America, they now have a beautiful son, Anthony, the gift of a love strong enough to survive the most terrible upheavals. Though they are still young, the ordeals they endured have changed them-and after living apart in a world laid waste, they must now find a way to live together in postwar America.

Grace Fitzgerald, a fiery-haired dreamer, longs to escape the confines of her windswept Dingle fishing village. Across the Atlantic, Richard Lewis, heir to a Savannah banking fortune, suffocates under the weight of societal expectations he can't quite understand. When their worlds collide through a twist of fate, Grace and Richard uncover a bond so profound it shakes the very foundations of their existence. As Europe inches towards chaos, they find themselves caught in a whirlwind of discovery, challenging everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other.

Under the clamour of the Sydney Harbour Bridge being built nearby, Grace Fairweather is working in her father's grocery shop in The Rocks when she begins making her own confectionery. Her colourful creations of toffees, lollies and chocolates soon become crowd favourites, and Grace begins to dream of one day opening her own sweetshop. When the roguish but irresistible Londoner Alfie Sweeting comes to work for the Fairweathers, his ambition for her success thrills her - so much so that she begins to question her engagement to Norman.

May 1941. German paratroopers launch a blitzkrieg from the air against Crete. They are met with fierce defiance, the Greeks fighting back with daggers, pitchforks and kitchen knives. During the bloody 11-day battle, Alenka, a young Greek woman, saves the lives of two Australian soldiers. Jack and Teddy are childhood friends who joined up together to see the world. Both men fall in love with Alenka.

The moment Pixie Tate steps inside the opulent Aldershoff Hotel in Manhattan, one of the last relics of New York's Gilded Age, she senses instantly that its elegant walls hide a dark secret. Pixie knows that she must use her unique gift to travel back in time in order to discover the mysteries of the past, and as she slips back over a hundred years, she's shocked to find herself in the midst of one of the most famous events in history. As the stars twinkle overhead, Pixie realises that time is running out.

Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She’d hoped for plenty of it when she agreed to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy. She even volunteered to serve as an old lady's companion on an ocean liner. But Maud didn't expect the old lady to turn up dead on the very first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham. Violet is everything Maud has been trained to distrust, yet can’t help but desire: a magician, an actress and a magnet for scandal.

Roya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the local stationery shop run by Mr. Fakhri. The store, stocked with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick pads of writing paper, also carries translations of literature from all over the world. And when Mr. Fakhri introduces her to his other favorite customer - handsome Bahman, with his burning passion for justice and a shared love for Rumi's poetry - Roya loses her heart at once. But around them, life in Tehran is changing.

Edith Lavery is a woman on the make. The attractive only child of a middle-class accountant, she leaves behind her dull job in a Chelsea estate agents and manages to bag one of the most eligible bachelors of the day: Charles Broughton, heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. But is life amongst the upper echelons of 'good' society all that it seems? Edith soon discovers there's much more to the aristocracy than dancing in Anabel's, shooting small birds and understanding which fork to use at dinner.

Eva Kershaw thought she would never marry and is happy living a quiet life with her dear friend Alice. But Alice is ill, and her nephew, Gus, has thrust himself into their household. Alice's dearest wish is that Eva should not make the same mistakes she did, and she alters her will so that Eva and Gus are strongly compelled to marry. Eva obliges to fulfil her dead friend's wishes. But Gus is not all he seems to be: he is not Alice's kind nephew but a robber, a confidence trickster, and not even Gus Blake. And Eva is in terrible danger....

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn't one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she's the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they're long-stemmed roses, she's a dandelion: an adorable bloom that's actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her. When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning.

France, 1942. At the end of the day, the schoolteacher releases her pupils. She checks they have their identity passes and warns them not to stop until the German guards have let them through the barrier that separates occupied France from Free France. As the little ones fly across the border and into their mothers' arms, she breathes a sigh of relief. No one is safe now. Not even the children.

Summer is coming to the four streets - but so is trouble, especially for its redoubtable women, who've struggled through a bitter winter to put food on the table. Peggy Nolan, with seven boys and a husband too lazy to work, has hit rock bottom and is hiding a terrible secret. Maura and Tommy Doherty always looked out for any neighbour in trouble, especially Peggy, but they're far away, running a pub in Ireland and corrupt copper, Frank the Skank, is moving into their old house on the four streets. Can anything bring them home in time?

Rebecca Wood takes the role as postmistress in a sleepy seaside town, desperate for anonymity after a scandal in Sydney. But she is confronted almost at once by a disturbing discovery - her predecessor committed suicide. To add to her worries, her hopes for a quiet life are soon threatened by the attentions of the dashing local doctor, the unsettling presence of a violent whaling captain, and a corrupt shire secretary, as well as the watchful eyes of the town's gossips.

Set in Yorkshire, Hong Kong and America, this remarkable novel continues the story of an unorthodox and endlessly fascinating family. As the spirit of Emma Harte lives on in her granddaughter, Paula O’Neill, an engrossing drama is played out in the glamorous arena of the wealthy and privileged, underscored by a cutthroat world of jealousy and treachery. Paula must act with daring and courage to preserve her formidable grandmother’s glittering empire from unscrupulous enemies - so that Emma’s precious dream lives on for the next generation.

Paris 1946: A young woman, Eve Archer, has come to Paris to find Serge Lavertu, the father she never knew. But before Eve can find the courage to tell him who she is, Serge is arrested, accused of selling a French national treasure to Hitler during the war and murdering the original owner. Could Serge truly be guilty of treason or has he been set up?

Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler of the Metropolitan Police doesn’t count himself a gullible man. When he encounters a graphologist who deduces people’s lives and personalities from their handwriting with impossible accuracy, he needs to find out how the trick is done. Even if that involves spending more time with the intriguing, flirtatious Joel Wildsmith than feels quite safe. Joel’s not an admirer of the police, but DS Fowler has the most irresistible handwriting he’s ever seen. If the policeman’s tests let him spend time unnerving the handsome copper, why not play along?

Lizzie Kershaw is an independent spirit; ever since her father's death she has had to be a survivor. Home life is harsh, though, and desperate to escape it, she makes an ill-advised marriage. But she discovers that she's married a selfish and violent man. His beatings never seem to stop, and, with the help of some suffragettes, she escapes to Manchester, where she finds work in a munitions factory - she is finally the independent woman she has always longed to be. But her husband, whose cruelty knows no bounds, tracks her down and drags her back home to more beatings than ever....

Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.

Dr. Ainsley Graham is cultivating a reputation as an eccentric. Two years ago, he catastrophically ended his academic career by publicly claiming to talk to ghosts. When Joachim Cockburn, a WWI veteran studying the power of delusional thinking, arrives at his door, Ainsley quickly catalogs him as yet another tiresome Englishman determined to mock his life's work. But Joachim is tenacious and openhearted, and Ainsley's intrigued despite himself.