Showing titles in 20th Century

Cliffehaven, December 1946. From a hill above the town of Cliffehaven, a young woman makes a heart-breaking choice that will change the course of her life forever. Hours later, a baby is found in the Nativity crib of the local church. Who could have left him there, and why? The mystery preoccupies everyone in Cliffehaven - not least Peggy Reilly, who has enough to contend with at Beach View Boarding House without this extra secret to unravel.

Snobs is the story of Edith Lavery, the attractive only child of a comfortably-off accountant, who earns a living answering the telephone in a Chelsea estate. Attending Royal Ascot, she meets Charles Broughton, who as Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, is a gossip-column favourite. He proposes, she accepts, and here is the crux of the story: is she really in love with Charles or with his title and all that goes with it?

France, 1943. Forced to flee war ravaged Poland, Sara and her parents are offered refuge in a beautiful but dilapidated house in the French Alps. It seems the perfect hideaway, despite haunting traces of the previous occupants who left in haste. But shadows soon fall over Sara's blissful summer and her blossoming romance with local villager Alain. As the Nazis close in, the family is forced to make a harrowing choice that could drive them apart forever, while Sara's own bid for freedom risks several lives.

A warm and heartfelt WW2 saga of hope, love and female friendship, and how women pull together through good times and bad. Perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Nadine Dorries. In 1940s Hampshire the war is settling into its stride, bringing dark days for many. Eighteen-year-old Connie Baxter works as an usherette at the Criterion Picture House in Gosport. Here she meets Vera, a cleaner at the cinema, and her niece, Babs, who sells ice creams and dreams of being in the spotlight.

Queenie Brogan wasn't always an East End matriarch. Many years ago, before she married Fergus, she was Philomena Dooley, a daughter of Irish Travellers, planning to wed her childhood sweetheart, Patrick. But when tragedy struck and his narrow-minded sister, Nora, intervened, the lovers were torn apart. Fate can be cruel, and when Queenie arrives in London she finds that Patrick Mahon is her parish priest, and that the love she had tried to suppress flares again in her heart. But now in the final months of WW2, Queenie discovers Father Mahon is dying and must face losing him forever.

It's been two months since Will Darling saw Kim Secretan, and he doesn't expect to see him again. What do a rough and ready soldier-turned-bookseller and a disgraced, shady aristocrat have to do with each other anyway? But when Will encounters a face from the past in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up, as shifty, unreliable, and irresistible as ever. And before Will knows it, he's been dragged back into Kim's shadowy world of secrets, criminal conspiracies, and underhand dealings.

Clara Fitzroy refuses to conform to convention. Her reckless behaviour has devastating consequences and an ill-judged liaison threatens to destroy everything she's hoped for. Clara has to make a decision that will change her life. Will she make the right one? She asks Daisy Carter, the hotel housekeeper, for help, but Daisy has problems of her own. A family relationship brings grief and heartache and a well meaning action ends in disaster. A life-changing moment, a heartbreaking choice.

England, 1943: Deciding to throw herself into war work, Nancy Callaghan joins the Special Operations Executive in Baker Street. There, she begins solving ‘indecipherables’ – scrambled messages from agents in the field. Then Nancy meets Tom Lockwood, a quiet genius when it comes to coding. Together they come up with the idea of printing codes on silk, so agents can hide them in their clothing to avoid detection by the enemy. Nancy and Tom grow close, and soon she is hopelessly in love. But there is a traitor in Baker Street, and suspicions turn towards Tom.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, Sofia cannot look her father in the eye. Sofia’s mother, her papa’s cherished wife, is Jewish—how dare he work as a doctor for the SS? She cannot forgive him, even if the bargain was made to spare their lives. In the middle of the night, Isaac emerges from a packed train with hundreds of others. Beneath Auschwitz’s barbed wire, the SS decide prisoners’ fates on the spot—and Isaac is chosen to work. Every breath feels like it could be Isaac’s last, so when he sees a beautiful auburn-haired girl peering out of the farm window, it feels like a dream.

1944 - The Isle of Wight: 16 year-old Constance’s life on the island is sheltered until the death of her brother, brings the reality of war crashing down around her. He leaves behind his pregnant widow, Ginny. When Constance meets a handsome Canadian airforce man, she’s eager to escape her grief and be swept up by first love. It’s a love which has ramifications she could never envisage. Present day: When young British backpacker, Isabel Stark happens across a car accident on a lonely stretch of road in the South Island of New Zealand her life changes forever.

When Cora Stubbs and her siblings, are whisked away from home to the English countryside, a supposed haven from Hitler's terror, they soon realize their sanctuary harbours dangers far more profound than the looming threat of war. Ignited by sheer will and love for her family, Cora strives to carve a new existence amidst grief and the lingering shadows of a lost love. Womanhood beckons and with it, the critical question: can she ever truly escape her troubled past?

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.

1942: Saba Tarcan is a talented young singer with big dreams. So when an opportunity arises to entertain the troops in the Middle East, she jumps at the chance, cutting short a burgeoning love affair with a young RAF pilot, Dom. It soon becomes clear that entertaining won’t be Saba’s only mission. It's a move that will jeopardize not only her own safety, but also the love of her life.

Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, a war widow, returns to her childhood home for a final visit before the house is sold. But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her youth and someone has been there before her. As Kate uncovers an old secret that haunts the home she thought she knew, she is forced to confront a dark truth from her own past.... Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. And someone was crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate. Someone I knew well....

The 13th heartwarming novel in the Beach View Boarding House series, from Sunday Times best-selling author Ellie Dean. As the war continues to keep her family far away, Peggy Reilly must continue to look after her girls at the Beach View Boarding House and maintain hope that this dreadful war will soon be over.

Liverpool, 1951: Dora Rodgers is settling into a new life with her daughters Carol and Jackie, moving on from the betrayal of her husband. But then an unexpected knock at the door rips her family in two. Carol is taken away by a welfare officer to live with Dora's estranged husband, Joe. Dora is determined to fight for her child, but she struggles to cope when shocking news from Joe breaks her heart once more.

Cousins Masha and Rachel Morgenstern board the luxury liner the SS Manhattan bound for New York, desperate to escape the concentration camps that claimed the rest of their family. America offers a safe haven, but to reach it they must survive a hazardous Atlantic crossing. Among their fellow passengers fleeing the war, each with their own conflicts, secrets, and surprises, are the composer Igor Stravinsky, making a new start after a decade of tragedy, and Rose Kennedy, determined to keep her four children from harm.

A pact is sealed in secret behind the foreboding walls of Newgate Prison. In return for one night of unparalleled pleasure, a dashing condemned criminal consents to wed a beautiful heiress, thereby rescuing her from an impending and abhorred arranged union. But in the fading echoes of hollow wedding vows, a solemn promise is broken, as a sensuous free spirit takes flight to a lush Caribbean paradise, abandoning the stranger she married to face the gallows unfulfilled.

Farm girl Veronica McDermott is desperate to find more to life than peeling potatoes. Persuading her family to let her attend college in Dublin, she has no idea what she is getting into. Recruited to type for Eámon De Valera, she is soon caught up in the danger of those fighting for Ireland's independence from Britain. The attentions of a handsome British soldier do not go unnoticed by Veronica's superiors. But when she is tasked with earning his affections to gather intelligence for Sinn Féin, it isn't long before her loyalty to her countrymen and her feelings are in conflict.

1917. Parentless sixteen-year-old Mizza Bricard, at a party surrounded by the most scandalous women in Paris - including Coco Chanel - sees what society expects of a woman alone in the world. That night, she vows to never be gossiped about because of who has paid for her pearls, a vow that drives her through decades and couture houses until finally her name is remembered and a legend created.