Shortly before Dee dies, she tells her son, Thomas, that she thinks her death is a punishment. Thomas, whose own emotional life is complicated, tries to piece together his parents' lives in order to make sense of his mother's words.

    Years after Patrick’s death, ninety-year-old Emma still has the painting hanging over her bed at their country home as a testament to their love.To Emma’s granddaughter, Laura, the portrait is also a symbol of so much to come. The masterpiece is serving as collateral to pay Laura’s tuition at a prestigious music school. Then the impossible happens when an appraiser claims the painting is a fraud. For Laura, the accusation jeopardizes her future. For Emma, it casts doubt on everything she believed about her relationship with Patrick. Laura is determined to prove that Patrick did indeed paint the portrait. Both her grandmother’s and Patrick’s legacies are worth fighting for.As the stories of two women entwine, it’s time for Emma to summon up the past—even at the risk of revealing its unspoken secrets.

    Just a few years later, romance and these differences erupt simultaneously with the war in Europe. In a fit of fury and boyish pride, Riley enlists in the army and finds himself involved in the transformative nightmare of the twentieth century.While Riley and his commanding officer, Peter Locke, fight for their country and their survival in the trenches of Flanders, Peter's lovely and naive wife, Julia, and his cousin Rose eagerly await his return. But the sullen, distant man who arrives home on leave is not the Peter they knew. Worried that her husband is slipping away, Julia is left alone with her fears when Rose joins the nursing corps to work with a pioneering plastic surgeon treating wounded and disfigured soldiers.Only eighteen at the outbreak of the war, Nadine and Riley want to make promises to each other—but how can they when their future is out of their hands? Youthful passion is on their side, but then their loyalty is tested by terrible injury, and even more so by the necessarily imperfect rehabilitation that follows.Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight—and those who don't—and a poignant testament to the power of enduring love.

    Osgood. He’s been content to raise his family and run the only service station in town. But when a new station is set to open right across the road from Virgil’s pumps, he suddenly faces obstacles in his career, his marriage, and his self-worth that he’s never even dreamed of.Cornelius Alexander wants his new Zipco station to succeed and help establish a strong foundation for his growing family. As long as he follows the Zipco guide, he’s sure to be a success―and prove his father wrong.Reverend Caudill wants to be a conduit for grace in his town, but that grace is challenged by the changes sweeping through in the early 1960s. For the sake of this small town, Virgil and Cornelius must learn to get along, but how do you love your neighbor when his very presence threatens to upend everything you hold dear?

    Routinely beaten by her father and bullied by schoolmate Victor Harrison, the waifish yet fiery redhead vows to run away and never return. Just a few short years later, run she does—fleeing the unspeakable repercussions of her father’s gambling. In Winnipeg, Bridget lands a job at a garment factory, the first step on her journey to shed her past and begin anew.When her father dies, Bridget—now a striking and accomplished woman—returns home to claim her inheritance. But she has no identification to prove her stake, and no one in town recognizes her—except Victor, who has become a pastor and a candidate for town mayor. Though war has wounded him, his secret affection for Bridget remains, and now he’s the only one who can help her prove her integrity. But can he also prove he’s a changed man worthy of her forgiveness?As Victor preaches of freedom in faith, will his words spark Bridget’s once-hopeless heart and lead her to the life she’s been seeking?

    After the horrors of a cavalry charge against machine guns he transfers to the R.F.C where he becomes a gunner and observer. Eventually he becomes a pilot and shows a flair for aerial combat. Set against the backdrop of England in 1914 it shows the contrast between life in England and the brutal war in Flanders.

    She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of Paradise House . . .After reading The Lady Irania, publishers Brace and Gilchrist are certain the novel will be a success, in spite of - and perhaps because of - its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book: 'Some old lady, romanticising behind lace-curtains' . . . 'Angelica Deverell is too good a name to be true . . . she might be an old man. It would be an amusing variation. You are expecting to meet Mary Anne Evans and in Walks George Eliot twirling his moustache.' So nothing can prepare them for the pale young woman who sits before them, with not a seed of irony or a grain of humour in her soul.

    Laura Kelley and the man she loves sneak away from their judgmental town to attend a performance of the scandalous Ziegfeld Follies. But the dark consequences of their night of daring and delight reach far into the future...That same evening, Bohemian poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her indulgent husband hold a wild party in their remote mountain estate, hoping to inspire her muse. Millay declares her wish for a new lover who will take her to unparalleled heights of passion and poetry, but for the first time, the man who responds will not bend completely to her will...Two years later, Laura, an unwed seamstress struggling to support her daughter, and Millay, a woman fighting the passage of time, work together secretly to create costumes for Millay's next grand tour. As their complex, often uneasy friendship develops amid growing local condemnation, each woman is forced to confront what it means to be a fallen woman...and to decide for herself what price she is willing to pay to live a full life."Lovers of the Jazz Age, literary enthusiasts, and general historic fiction readers will find much to love about Call Me Zelda. Highly recommended." –Historical Novel Society, Editors' Choice

    An island in the iron grip of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate.The forces of King Charles have been utterly defeated. The sovereign is dead, his supporters beaten, humiliated and scattered.But it is not just former Cavaliers who find themselves hounded by the new regime. Many of those who fought for Parliament have fallen foul of the oppressive rule of the Major-Generals.One such man is Major Samson Lyle: Roundhead, outlaw, fugitive. Forced into exile after a dispute with the ruling elite, he has returned, intent on waging war against those now in command. Skilled with pistol and blade, Lyle takes the fight onto the busy roads south of the capital, forging a formidable reputation as a notorious highwayman.Along with his trusted young ward Bella, and Eustace Grumm, an irascible former smuggler, Lyle dodges the ever-present threat of capture to menace those against whom he has sworn revenge. But when the robbery of a powerful lawyer alerts Lyle to the imprisonment of a former comrade, the Major is plunged into a dangerous game of intrigue and deceit that may finally prove his undoing. And he must tread carefully, for Parliament have dispatched their own man to hunt the elusive outlaw. The villainous Colonel John Maddocks is tracking Lyle's every move, and soon he will come face to face with the Ironside Highwayman.

    Set in mid-nineteenth century Gloucestershire, a saga focusing on two farms and families who own them.

    Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance and a new baby; a child awake in the night explores the familiar rooms of her home, strange in the dark; a housekeeper caring for a helpless old man uncovers secrets from his past. The first steps into a turning point and a new life are made so easily and carelessly: the stories focus in on crucial moments of transition, often imperceptible to the protagonists. A girl accepts a lift in a car with some older boys, or a young woman reads the diaries she comes across when she’s housesitting. Small acts have large consequences, and some of them reverberate across decades; things fantasised in private can reach out to affect other people, for better and worse. An older woman recovering from serious illness speaks to a lonely young man on a train; an old friend brings bad news to a dinner party; a schoolteacher in the throes of a painful affair in 1914 has mixed feelings about her pupils’ suffragette craze. The real things that happen to people, the accidents that befall them, are every bit as mysterious as their longings and their dreams.Bad Dreams shows yet again that Tessa Hadley is a master of her art, one of the very finest writers at work in Britain today.

    The story of an imposter and bigamist, who travels to the North where he marries the maid of Buttermere, a young woman whose natural beauty inspired the dreams and confirmed the theories of a=early 19th century writers.

    Her husband, whom she was forced to marry by her archenemy Sir Robert Walpole as punishment for her support of a Stuart rebel, has speculated with her dowry. The only property left to her is a crumbling public house on the Great North Road. Cecily makes it into one of the great coaching inns, spies for the 'Old Pretender' and fights to save her people from the gallows of Walpole's terrible Black Acts. Thanks to a wily lawyer, Cecily becomes the saviour of her country in a way she hadn't expected.

    Beeton and well before Julia Child, there was Eliza Acton, who changed the course of cookery writing forever. England 1837. Victorian London is awash with exciting new ingredients from spices to exotic fruits, but Eliza Acton has no desire to spend her days in the kitchen. Determined to be a poet and shamed by the suggestion she write a cookery book instead, she at first refuses to even consider the task. But then her father is forced to flee the country for bankruptcy, shaming the family while leaving them in genteel poverty. As a woman, Eliza has few options, so she methodically collects recipes while teaching herself the mysteries of the kitchen. And to her surprise, she discovers she is not only talented at cooking—she loves it.To assist her, she hires seventeen-year-old Ann Kirby, the impoverished daughter of a war-injured father and a mother losing her grip on reality. Under Eliza’s tutelage, Ann learns about poetry, cookery, and love, while unravelling a mystery in her mistress’s past. Through the art of food, Eliza and Ann develop an unusual friendship and break the mold of traditional cookbooks by adding elegant descriptions and ingredient lists, that are still used today.Told in alternate voices, this is an amazing novel of female friendship, the ensuring struggle for freedom, the quiet joy of cookery, and the place of food in creativity all while bringing Eliza Acton out of the archives and back into the public eye.

    Set in France between 1910 and 1940 and first published in France in 1947, five years after the author’s death, All Our Worldly Goods is a gripping story of war, family life and star-crossed lovers. Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and his grandfather, the tyrannical family patriarch. Their marriage provokes a family feud that cascades down the generations. This brilliant novel is full of drama, heartbreak, and the telling observations that have made Némirovsky’s work so beloved and admired.