Knowing the Germans could invade their quiet home the resident children of Guernsey are evacuated. Among them are Amelia Ashton, and her older sister Evelyn.The promise to stay safe.Forced onto the boat by her older sister, seventeen-year-old Amelia Ashton arrives in Weymouth with hundreds of other children. Although she is placed with a kind and loving foster family in Derbyshire, her world is torn apart. With all her communication cut off from her family, and the boys at school joining to fight in the war, Amelia struggles with her own desire to help. On a whim, she lies about her age and boards a train headed to volunteer with the Woman’s Land Army. Finding solace in the work of farm life, she reconnects with William, a young man from Derbyshire, and who doesn’t waste any time asking for her hand in marriage. Can Amelia start a new life without looking over her shoulder at what she left behind in Guernsey or will the war change everything?The promise to survive.Fearing for her parents’ lives, nineteen-year-old, Evelyn Ashton stays behind, living through the German occupation plaguing her once beautiful home—the island of Guernsey. Living under German rule, the residents find a new meaning of desperation and despair, trying to survive on rations and evade the threats of being sent off to a death camp. After her parents die in a bombing, Evelyn is left alone to fend for herself against her enemy, and when German soldiers take over her house, she seeks refuge in the only family she believes she has left—Henry—the man once interested in her sister. Can they find comfort in each other or will the occupation claim not only their love but also their lives?Two sisters. Two promises. One bloody war that changes their lives forever.

    Petersburg, 1725. Peter the Great lies dying in his magnificent Winter Palace. The weakness and treachery of his only son has driven his father to an appalling act of cruelty and left the empire without an heir. Russia risks falling into chaos. Into the void steps the woman who has been by his side for decades: his second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, as ambitious, ruthless and passionate as Peter himself.Born into devastating poverty, Catherine used her extraordinary beauty and shrewd intelligence to ingratiate herself with Peter’s powerful generals, finally seducing the Tsar himself. But even amongst the splendor and opulence of her new life—the lavish feasts, glittering jewels, and candle-lit hours in Peter’s bedchamber—she knows the peril of her position. Peter’s attentions are fickle and his rages powerful; his first wife is condemned to a prison cell, her lover impaled alive in Red Square. And now Catherine faces the ultimate test: can she keep the Tsar’s death a secret as she plays a lethal game to destroy her enemies and take the Crown for herself?From the sensuous pleasures of a decadent aristocracy, to the incense-filled rites of the Orthodox Church and the terror of Peter’s torture chambers, the intoxicating and dangerous world of Imperial Russia is brought to vivid life. Tsarina is the story of one remarkable woman whose bid for power would transform the Russian Empire."

    events that, while peripheral to the saga itself, will shape events to come, shake the republic, and herald the one thing Caesar's army have feared most: a full-scale revolt.Cenabum: The fire arrow - Caesar's chief quartermaster, Cita, encounters trouble with supply lines.Bovillae: The fallen eagle - Former prefect Paetus leaves Rome with revenge on his mind.Gergovia: Rise of kings - Priscus and his companions witness tumultuous events firsthand.

    So begins Reva's "darkly hilarious" (Anthony Doerr) intertwined narratives, nine stories that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. But even as the benighted denizens of 1933 Ivansk Street weather the official neglect of the increasingly powerless authorities, they devise ingenious ways to survive.In "Bone Music," an agoraphobic recluse survives by selling contraband LPs, mapping the vinyl grooves of illegal Western records into stolen X-ray film. A delusional secret service agent in "Letter of Apology" becomes convinced he's being covertly recruited to guard Lenin's tomb, just as his parents, not seen since he was a small child, supposedly were. Weaving the narratives together is the unforgettable, chameleon-like Zaya: a cleft-lipped orphan in "Little Rabbit," a beauty-pageant crasher in "Miss USSR," a sadist-for-hire to the Eastern Bloc's newly minted oligarchs in "Homecoming."

    

    Will Rising had dragged himself from humble beginnings to his own small tailoring business in Gloucester - and on the way he'd fallen violently in love with Florence, refined, delicate, and wanting something better for her children. March was the eldest girl, the least loved, the plain, unattractive one who, as the family grew, became more and more the household drudge. But March, a strange, intelligent, unhappy child, had inherited some of her mother's dreams. March Rising was determined to break out of the round of poverty and hard work, to find wealth, and love, and happiness.

    A life altering event led Catrina Davies to hide from her family and society. Alone in The Highlands she exists in a lonely world cared for only by her savior, a kind old gentleman. When she receives a surprise visitor, Travis Millard, the man she used to love, her head and heart are thrown into turmoil. Travis is determined to save her from this poor life and return her to her family where she belongs. No one is more surprised than he when she agrees to marry him. When Catrina arrives back at her family estate, Davmoor Court in Yorkshire, she is stunned to see the changes. While her father clings to life, Davmoor is nearly ruined by her brother's gambling obsession, and there is something strange about his new wife. As Catrina adjusts to her regained position in society and being with Travis, her marriage comes under attack from Travis's grandmother, who has her own secrets and reason for loathing the Davies family. When one of her brother's adversaries comes to stake his claim on the estate, the resulting chaos threatens not only Catrina's home, but the very lives of those she loves the most. Can she find the strength to fight once more for the right to be happy?​

    Will the corrupt Metropolitan Police save or sacrifice him? 1863 Weeksville, Brooklyn: The free Black community of Weeksville becomes home to an unusually small boy and his mother who fled Manhattan during New York’s Draft Riots. When his mother succumbs to her injuries, the boy swears revenge against everyone and everything that contributed to her death. His diminutive size and acrobatic climbing abilities make him a spectacle to behold, while his awkward social habits make him an outcast to everyone in Weeksville, except the adopted family he swears to protect. When his stepbrother is attacked, the boy becomes embroiled in a battle between the Irish Gangs and Whiskey Kings of Irishtown while the corrupt Metropolitan Police sit on the sidelines. The backdrop of the action is the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the racial tensions of the period.Will the boy survive the ordeals of the day and achieve his dream of being a high-flying tower man on the bridge project? Or, will he become another victim of the Irish gangs and never know the joy of standing atop the tallest structure in North America?

     In Victorian London’s East End, life for Hope Daniels in the public house run by her parents is not as it seems. Pa drinks and gambles, brother John longs for a place of his own, sister Violet dreams of a life on stage and little Alfie is being bullied at school. Silas Quirk, the charismatic owner of a local gentlemen’s club and disreputable gambling den her father frequents, has his own plans for Hope. When disaster strikes the family lose everything and the future they planned is snatched away from them. Secrets are revealed that make Hope question all she’s ever believed in. Can Hope keep them together when fate is pulling them apart? What will she sacrifice to save her family? A captivating story of tragedy and triumph you won’t want to put down.

    She reinvents herself and is living a respectable life as Catherine Henry, married to a medical school dean in Tucson, Arizona. In 1985, when their 5-year-old son, Michael, is diagnosed with a chemotherapy-resistant leukemia, Catherine must return to Willowood, face her family and the 19-year-old son, a product of her rape, she gave up for adoption. She knows her return will lead to a murder charge, but Michael needs a bone marrow transplant. Will she find forgiveness, and is she willing to lose everything, including her life, to save her dying son?

    Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She’d been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder.Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief—to let go of the dead and embrace the living. But that’s not easy in this house full of haunting memories.Just when the search for the truth seems hopeless, a stranger approaches Marion with chilling words: I saw her fall.Now Marion is more determined than ever to find out what happened that night at Brawders, and why. With no one she can trust, Marion may risk her own life to uncover the secrets buried with Alice in the family plot.

    The breast of the mail bore a ragged hole and the heavy links were sticky. It took a moment for Hedyn to realize it was soaked in drying blood.“A bascinet and hauberk?” he asked.“Aye, you shall need these before the night is done.” . . . Treachery, disease, hunger, and death plague their steps as King Henry’s men near their fateful battle with the French army at Agincourt. Eager to see the world that lies beyond his small Cornish village, 12 year ol Hedyn, son of an archer and serf, is thrilled to be chosen to join King Henry’s army as it advances on Normandy. His excitement quickly gives way to exhaustion in body and spirit, as well as worry for the safety of his newfound friends and comrades. Can a mysterious stranger with a secretive past offer Hedyn hope amidst the horrors of battle?

    All this seems far removed from Kami, a boy who quietly goes about his everyday life in his farm village until one day he trips over the unconsious body of a warrior hidden in the long grass.That discovery will lead him on an adventure across the warring kingdoms, facing assassins and enemy soldiers as he journeys to the capital to face the new Shogun. Through his travels he aspires to become a samurai, and in his many challenges he eventually comes to understand what it means to be one.