The death of her father forces Harriet out of her home to escape the advances of her stepbrother, the rule of her stepmother and into service at Dalton House. Over time Harriet develops a friendship with the Dalton's crippled son Joseph but her life is changed completely when she inherits Greyladies, an old and possibly haunted house.

    Jem Phipps has always loved Katy. His proposal of marriage rescues her from scandal but after tragedy strikes, Jem becomes a reluctant soldier on the battlefields of The First World War, leaving Katy behind, restless and alone. Lionel White, the local curate, has just returned from India bringing a dash of colour to the small village and offers Katy a window on the wider world. Only when Katy joins up as a WAAC girl does she finally break free from the stifling class-ridden hierarchies that bind her but the brutality of 20th-century global war brings home the price she has paid for her search. Through the horrors of WW1, she discovers only love brings freedom. In essence, Daffodils is a love story, whose tender heart is almost torn apart through this tumultuous time. COMPLETELY REVISED EDITION

    When her aunt gives her an ultimatum to leave, Jessamine accepts a position as companion to Lord Kirkendale’s sister—even though she’s been warned her predecessors can’t seem to resist the earl’s exceptional good looks. Can Jessamine manage to hold onto her job without losing her heart?To honor a promise made to his dying father, Lord Kirkendale agrees to an arranged marriage to a woman he cannot love. Although he is resigned to a life without sentiment, the arrival of his sister’s new companion awakens a slumbering passion. Can he find a way to secure his own happiness without sacrificing his family’s honor, or will his broken promise result in the ruination of the person he loves most?

    Across generations, four couples find buds of romance blooming around these quaint structures.In 1897, Amelia Bachman became a schoolteacher to avoid getting hitched. Will love-struck carpenter Hank Zimmermann dissolve her resolution and turn a Sunday house into a home?World War I nurse Mildred Zimmermann opens her Sunday house to patients during an outbreak of influenza. Will she provide more than a shelter from the storm to war hero Nelson Winters?In 1943, Trudy Meier craves adventure yet is terrified at the possibility of leaving Fredericksburg. Roving columnist Bradley Payne rents the Meier's Sunday house, but when he hears the call of the open road, can he take Trudy's heart with him?Gwen Zimmermann has been carrying meals to injured geologist Clay Tanner, who's staying in a local Sunday house. Does Clay have the courage to trust God with his love--and with his life?Will the roughly hewn loves of these couples be strong enough to support a forever-after shelter?

    He has been severely wounded in the same action which killed his lifelong friend Jack Brookes, one of the Pommeroy gardeners. Before he died, he left a message which Richard believes to be for Jack’s sister Lily, now the only remaining child of the widowed head gardener. Expecting gratitude, he is puzzled by Lily’s coolness. For Lily realizes that her brother’s words are intended for another although she cannot reveal the secret she unwillingly shares with Richard’s sisters, Leonora and Louisa, and which all three are anxious to keep from him. Leonora is being pressured into marriage by her overbearing mother and believing that she has nothing left to live for, submits to what she can no longer avoid. The consequences are disastrous. Despite his best efforts, Richard is powerfully drawn to Lily, who leaves Pommeroy on the death of her father. A chance revelation explodes the secret which has almost estranged them all and Jack’s legacy changes from one of bitter sorrow and blame to healing, redemption and a passionate love which takes no heed of class or birth.

    Marriage to the handsome and charming Oliver Faraday appears to offer a perfect match, so what cause does she have for misgivings?Dr. Nicholas Carstairs has scant patience with frivolous pleasure-seekers and an upper class that closes ranks against outsiders. Why then is he haunted by the lovely girl in the window, someone entirely beyond his reach?A champagne celebration at Broadway Manor marks the start of a happy future for Helena, but what no one can predict are the consequences of her decision or the appalling danger it will bring."Margaret Kaine's previously won the RNA Best Newcomer Award and the Society of Authors Sagittarius Prize in 2003"

    

    The record of intricate and complex diplomacy and alliances among these powers in the run-up to the Great War often ignores the role of Serbian nationalism and the signal moment it produced: the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on the morning of Sunday, 28 June 1914, by Serbian terrorists. It put an exclamation point on the political tension and instability of the Balkans in the years before the outbreak of war. In his new book The Sleepwalkers (called by the New York Times “a masterpiece”), Christopher Clark tells how the European continent, seemingly at peace, fell into war just thirty-seven days after the incident at Sarajevo. The assassination of the archduke, Clark argues, was not a marginal act, as many historians have suggested, but a key provocation. The conflict that began that summer mobilized 65 million troops, claimed three empires, 20 million military and civilian deaths, and 21 million wounded. The American historian Fritz Stern called it “the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang.” The Old World aspects of these events disguise some very modern elements in the assassination at Sarajevo: a cavalcade of automobiles, a squad of suicide bombers, and “an avowedly terrorist organization with a cult of sacrifice, death, and revenge” that existed across political borders, without a clear location. Here in gripping detail is the story of what happened on that fateful morning in Sarajevo.