Showing results by author "Kate Hewitt" in All Categories

1944, London. When Lily meets enigmatic GI Matthew in war-torn London, she doesn’t expect to fall in love. While her sister starts a reckless affair with another GI, Lily tries to hide her growing feelings for Matthew. But Matthew has a devastating secret. One that could change their lives forever.

Just like the whole town of Starr’s Fall, thinks Laurie Ellis – as she and her beloved dog Max head to collect the store keys. Maybe she has seen better days, too, but she’s certainly ready for a new start—and to leave her past behind. Still Laurie wonders whether she made a terrible mistake in coming to lovable but shabby Starr’s Fall. Will she even find customers for her pet store and bakery, never mind a community to welcome and accept her?

England, 1868: Orphaned and penniless, eighteen-year-old Sarah is left the sole guardian of her beloved little sister Lucy—who she’s vowed to protect at all costs. With nowhere left to turn, she is forced to accept mysterious widower James Mills’s proposal of marriage. She believes being his bride can’t possibly be as bad as the threat of the workhouse. But nothing prepares her for the darkness of her marriage, the shocking secrets of her new family, and the lengths she will have to go to keep her sister safe…

England, 1766: Abigail is happily married to James, a tobacco trader turned sea captain, and is looking forward to starting a family and settling down in Whitehaven, deep in the Lake District. But after a series of devastating losses, she finds herself in turmoil, with her future suddenly seeming unknown…

When Ava arrives in Greece, it’s with a heart that’s shattered into a thousand pieces. But as she pulls up in a tiny village nestled on a cliff above the glittering Ionian Sea and steps out in front of a tumbledown house that once belonged to her grandmother Sophia, everything changes. At first Ava almost wants to laugh at this bizarre inheritance - a home that has been uninhabited since the Second World War - that appears as close to collapse as she herself feels. But with nowhere left to run to, her only choice is to start putting the house together again.

With older sister Rachel home to help run the family farm and navigate their father's terminal illness, Harriet Mowbray feels untethered, yet surprisingly free. She wants to embrace her future but continually trips over the insecurities and hurts from her fraught family relationships. When a mysterious millionaire purchases a derelict manor home to renovate into a hotel set to open before Christmas, Harriet pushes herself out of her comfort zone. She approaches the owner to become a client for her fledging bakery business.

Seven months ago, our family left suburban Connecticut for my parents’ isolated lake house in a naïve attempt to reconnect. Life had imploded, or so I thought then. I hoped the change would reset us: a montage of Hallmark moments—card games in candlelight, spontaneous hugs and important, healing chats. What I got was a nuclear holocaust five days after we arrived. A week ago, the lake house burned to the ground. Our last place of safety. Now, I watch my children huddle together, their faces lit up by our tiny campfire beneath the towering blackness of endless pine forests.

As the youngest Holley sister, Miriam has always been a bit of a rebel. After spending several years backpacking through Europe and Australia, she’s now back home...unemployed and pregnant, with no boyfriend or husband in sight. At first, Miriam only wants to hide away from the shocked and prying eyes of her father’s parishioners, but her sisters won’t let her. Determined to help her find her way, they urge Miriam to accept a job working as an assistant to Simon, the new vicar...and to think about what will happen when the baby comes.

Germany, 1939: When Rachel Blau’s husband Franz is released from Dachau, she barely recognizes the man she married. But she knows in order to keep him safe they must leave the country they call home and pray a life far from the Nazis will heal him. Until he is better, she must be brave for both of them…

The Penryn family have always been eccentric—living in a dilapidated castle in the wilds of Cumbria with an orchid-mad father and a classicist mother who likes to re-enact Greek myths, who wouldn’t be? Now the family is restoring the castle, and Olivia Penryn is in charge of reviving the once-profitable garden. Nursing a broken heart and a guilty conscience, Olivia longs to lose herself in roses and lavender, but she’s filled with doubt. She’s never handled a project this big. When Olivia hires Will Turner to help with landscaping, her bruised heart begins to heal—and hope.

As the frozen earth gives way to the first spring crocuses, pushing their way into the warmer air, Maggie arrives in Starr’s Fall. She’s looking for a new start, with her lovable but painfully shy teenaged son in tow. It feels like the odds are against her, but she’s determined to come out winning this time, and to fulfil her dream of opening up a board game café. But not everything’s a game, and when she finds herself attracted to a man who’s known as a different sort of player, she worries she’s setting herself up to lose. Zach is funny, surprisingly geeky, and bonds with her son.

Berlin, 1936: From her beautiful new home Liesel Scholz barely notices the changes to the city around her. Her life is one of privilege and safety thanks to her father’s job working for the new government. But soon a chance encounter with Rosa, the daughter of their Jewish housekeeper, leaves Liesel in no doubt that something isn’t right. Frankfurt, 1946: An idealistic American captain, Sam Houghton, arrives in Germany to interrogate prominent Nazis on trial and to help rebuild a battered country. He hires an enigmatic and damaged woman named Anna as his interpreter.

After her husband unexpectedly dies, Ava moves to Willoughby Close, trying to keep her chin up and to herself as she’s always done - not answering questions, not making friends, and not seeing much of a future. Her marriage was far from perfect, but it offered her a much-needed security that has now been ripped away. She’s not sure what to do now that she’s 35, widowed, penniless...and unexpectedly pregnant with her late husband’s child.

Belinda "Lindy" Jamison has moved to the Cotswolds for a fresh start and to open a dancing school - her lifelong dream. Pushing 40 and still looking for Mr. Right, Lindy is determined to no longer wait for happiness but to reach for it with both hands. Soon Lindy has a motley crew of would-be dancers. But her most intriguing pupil is Roger Wentworth, a 40-something bachelor with a shy and awkward manner, but a heart of blazing gold.

Twelve years ago when her daughters were mostly grown, Anna walked away from Embthwaite Farm with no plan except to preserve her sanity and to find a ray of light to cling to. But going home is harder than even Anna imagines. Her daughters are miles away from forgiveness and rebuff her every overture of help and communication, and her ex, who knows why she left, doesn't even want to speak to her. But Anna's determined to face her demons, make amends, and reconnect with her family.

It’s a warm, early summer’s evening, when Mia’s doorbell rings unexpectedly. She opens the door to see the silhouette of a teenage girl, standing in the shadow beyond the porch light - and in an instant, she realizes who it is. Daisy, the daughter she gave up as a baby. She says she has a terrible secret. And she believes the only person who can help her is Mia. Her birth mother. Mia, however, has secrets of her own. Ones that she is afraid to let Daisy or anyone else know.

Nazi-occupied Vienna, 1940. As bombs fall over Europe, Hannah Stern is a 27-year-old nurse who is just trying to survive. When she takes a position at Vienna’s esteemed psychiatric hospital, Am Steinhof, she thinks it will take her away from the danger. Her estranged half-brother has arranged the job for her on the condition that she must take his son, Willi, there too. He insists it’s a place where Willi will be safe. And Hannah soon forms a close bond with the sweet, fragile child in her care.

Rachel Holley has always dreamed of a wedding - the white dress, the fairy tale, and, of course, the happily-ever-after. But when her fiancé breaks it off the night before, claiming she doesn’t love him, Rachel’s fairy tale ends in ashes. Homeless, hopeless, and feeling like her life has been completely derailed, Rachel must start over in all sorts of ways - and hold her head up high in the fishbowl of her tiny village.

In the pretty, privileged college town of Milford, New Hampshire, everyone is friendly, and everything is safe. And on this cold autumn day, as red and yellow leaves begin to fall from the trees, and everyone wraps up for the first time, it would be easy to believe nothing bad could ever happen here. Until a screech of tires is heard, a thud, a child’s scream. The crash that sees Jenna’s six-year-old daughter, Amy Rose, being hit by a car driven by 17-year-old Maddie.

When Laurel West discovers her estranged sister Abby has checked herself into rehab and wants her to take care of her 14-year-old son, she doesn’t hesitate to step in. Abby was there for Laurel a long time ago, and she longs to be able to offer the same. However, as a single woman who still dreams of the fairy tale, Laurel isn’t prepared for teenaged Zac’s sullen moods or silent rage. When he’s expelled from school, she decides to take drastic measures and temporarily relocate them to her great aunt’s cottage on the windswept hills of the Orkney islands north of Scotland?