Alice I Have Been


Melanie Benjamin - 2009
    Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war. For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.

The Love We Gave


Gretta Curran Browne
    "Part thriller, part love story … it’s hard to resist turning the pages."—BELFAST TELEGRAPH"Books are often described as 'page-turners' but this is very true of this one’ … Once started the reader will find it very hard to put down.’--- SOUTHSIDE NEWS."Succeeds in combining a fast-paced tale involving vast sums of money, immense power, women both wounded and wounding, and a variety of credible male characters from the traumatised Vietnam veteran Jimmy Overman to the seedy publisher, James Duncan … an excellent book.’ – IE BOOK REVIEWPARIS 1940 ― Sixteen year-old Jacqueline Castineau joins the French Resistance and proves herself more lethal than any Nazi.LONDON 1963 ― The music of Elvis, the Beatles, and Smokey Robinson hum through the city night and day; and the life of a shy young English waitress changes spectacularly when an off-duty American soldier comes into the bistro where she works.AMERICA1963 ― President Kennedy is in the White House and Martin Luther King is marching for Civil Rights.In this incredible and beautiful love story, jealousy and vengeance play a cruel part – set between two wars, the horror of the past come back to casts dark shadows over the present, and uneasiness about the fearful threats of the future.

From Liverpool with Love


Lyn Andrews - 2014
    Perfect for readers of Anne Baker, Dilly Court and Katie Flynn. 'A spellbinding portrayal of the lives and love of the hardy folk of Liverpool' - Lancashire Evening PostIn 1920s Liverpool, Jane, her little brother Alfie and their mother Ellen have faced the horrors of the workhouse together. But when Ellen dies, two very different paths open up for the siblings.Jane is sent to work in the Empire Laundry and builds a new life for herself with the neighbours who take her in. She finds solace there and the promise of a happy future when she falls for Joe, their eldest son.But Alfie absconds from the workhouse and embarks on a life of crime. When their paths cross once more, Alfie turns on his sister. His plans will jeopardise every happiness she hoped for... What readers are saying about From Liverpool with Love: 'A heart-warming story with a fantastic ending''Lyn Andrews at her best, it made me laugh and cry''Enjoyed this book from page one - didn't want to put it down'

Brides of Texas


Cathy Marie Hake - 2016
    Robert, a doctor; Duncan, a cobbler; and Christopher, a lawman set up shop in a small Texas town and quickly make the acquaintance of local women. Tragedy has struck Mercy Stein on the eve of her wedding, leaving her soul battered. Alone and crippled, Carmen Rodriguez wears a protective shell of bitterness. Harboring a secret, Kathryn Regent always seems to be getting in others way. Can gifts left by their father help the brothers lead these women to healing faith?

Ross Poldark


Winston Graham - 1945
    But instead, he discovers that his father has died, his home is overrun by livestock and drunken servants, and Elizabeth, having believed Ross dead, is now engaged to his cousin. Ross must start over, building a completely new path for his life, one that takes him in exciting and unexpected directions....Thus begins an intricately plotted story spanning loves, lives, and generations. The Poldark series is the masterwork of Winston Graham, who evoked the period and people like only he could, and created a world of rich and poor, loss and love, that listeners will not soon forget.

Burgundy Gloves


Julia David - 2017
    Temperamental Allison Kent finally finds a chance to soar into her dreams of adventure. Except… In the spring of 1880, one tragic moment changes everything. Allison's planned future comes to a devastating halt when she is found at the bottom of a ravine, left for dead. Levi Graham is a strong independent backwoodsman, who stumbles upon the injured young woman. Good Samaritan, he’s finding out the hard way, is not his best strength. In addition to caring for this helpless, confusing woman, he encounters a robbery, a fire, visits from relatives, and the cabin’s previous owners, all disrupting his former peaceful life of solitude and trapping. Clutching her mother’s Burgundy Gloves, Allison can only hope time will awaken her from this awful nightmare. Strange people, strange ideas and a strange young man looking long and wanting at her. How can she convince him she has nothing to give when she no place to call home? Will she rouse from the dark fog before she’s left to fend for herself? Will her heart heal before she breaks his to pieces? See below for a look at the Burgundy Gloves Short Video Clip.

One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow


Olivia Hawker - 2019
    For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.

Gracelin O'Malley


Ann Moore - 2001
    Only fifteen when she married the local English landlord to save her family from financial ruin, she has tried to be a dutiful wife, providing him with an heir. Despite her husband's escalating cruelty, Gracelin's spirit remains unbroken, though she is no longer the innocent country girl she once was. As famine devastates the land, she openly defies him by feeding the desperate souls who come to the door. As political unrest sweeps across the countryside, she harbors Irish rebels -- her own brilliant brother among them -- keeping hidden, as well, the deepest secret of her heart. And as disaster threatens those she loves most, Gracelin fights to keep them alive, her profound courage inspiring everyone around her.

A Gown of Thorns


Natalie Meg Evans - 2015
    Devastated, she accepts an offer in France from an old family friend - to be au pair to the woman's grandchildren. Within a week, Shauna is deep in the Dordogne. With little to do other than organise her two charges' busy social diaries, she has endless hours in which to explore the magical landscape that surrounds her. Her new home is the ancient Chateau de Chemignac with its vineyards and hidden secrets, including a locked tower room where she unearths a trove of vintage gowns, one of which feels unsettlingly familiar. Then Shauna falls asleep one afternoon in a valley full of birdsong, and has a strange dream of a vintage aircraft circling threateningly overhead. So when she suddenly awakes to find charming local landowner Laurent de Chemignac standing over her - Shauna wonders if the dashing aristocrat might be just the person to help her untangle this unexpected message from the past.

Fallen Land


Taylor Brown - 2016
    Callum, a seasoned horse thief at fifteen years old, came to America from his native Ireland as an orphan. Ava, her father and brother lost to the war, hides in her crumbling home until Callum determines to rescue her from the bands of hungry soldiers pillaging the land, leaving destruction in their wake. Ava and Callum have only each other in the world and their remarkable horse, Reiver, who carries them through the destruction that is the South. Pursued relentlessly by a murderous slave hunter, tracking dogs, and ruthless ex-partisan rangers, the couple race through a beautiful but ruined land, surviving on food they glean from abandoned farms and the occasional kindness of strangers. In the end, as they intersect with the scorching destruction of Sherman's March, the couple seek a safe haven where they can make a home and begin to rebuild their lives. Dramatic and thrillingly written with an uncanny eye for glimpses of beauty in a ravaged landscape, Fallen Land is a love story at its core, and an unusually assured first novel by award-winning young author Taylor Brown.

Innocent Strangers


Millys Altman - 2012
    Just as they prepare to journey on, they are arrested for the murder of a beautiful heiress to a coal mining fortune. Suddenly, they must escape the noose that is waiting to hang them. How they do this in a parochial town that brands them as criminals and refuses to give up its dark secrets is a tale of dogged sleuthing. Probing uncovers shocking details of intrigue, double-dealing, blackmail, and adultery in the past life and loves of this charming passionate woman. The trail finally leads them close to exposing the identity of the real murderer, but time is running out.

The Venetian Contract


Marina Fiorato - 2012
    Five years after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto, a ship steals unnoticed into Venice bearing a deadly cargo. A man more dead than alive disembarks and staggers into Piazza San Marco. He brings a gift to Venice from Constantinople. Within days the city is infected with bubonic plague—and the Turkish Sultan has his revenge. But the ship also holds a secret stowaway—Feyra, a young and beautiful harem doctor fleeing a future as the Sultan's concubine. Only her wits and medical knowledge keep her alive as the plague ravages Venice. In despair the Doge commissions the architect Andrea Palladio to build the greatest church of his career—an offering to God so magnificent that Venice will be saved. But Palladio's own life is in danger too, and it will require all skills of medico Annibale Cason, the city's finest plague doctor, to keep him alive. But what Annibale had not counted on was meeting Feyra, who is now under Palladio's protection, a woman who can not only match his medical skills but can also teach him how to care.

A Surprise Christmas Bride For The Heartbroken Widower: The Twelve Mail Order Brides of Christmas


Emma Morgan - 2015
    She had hopes for a chance to find love and a new life, but instead her husband-to-be doesn’t want her, and is ready to send her back home. After losing his wife and young child, John is sure he would never love again. So when his brother’s wife sends for a bride without his consent, his mind is made up. She has to go, as soon as he can save up enough money for her fare back East. Sarah and John agree that she will leave in the spring, after the winter season. And as they spend time together, their love begins to grow despite their intentions. But as the holidays bring back memories of his lost family, John withdraws. Can Sarah find a way into his broken heart, or will he send her home, and go back to his lonely life?

Not Yet Drown'd


Peg Kingman - 2007
    When had he sent it? And why had he retitled a certain tune "Not Yet Drown'd"?Irresistibly, Catherine is drawn to India to search for answers. With her stepdaughter and their two maids—one an enigmatic Hindu, the other a runaway American slave—she follows an obscure trail of tea, opium, and bagpipe music. In the course of their journey they meet botanists, smugglers, engineers, soldiers, and artists—as well as love and betrayal. And as they copy, translate, and finally understand certain Scottish and Indian paintings and music, they discover unsuspected truths about the man they are seeking.This luminous and accomplished romance is the author's first novel.

The Notorious Mrs. Winston


Mary Mackey - 2007
    But she takes an even greater risk when she finds herself in love with John Taylor, her husband's nephew. As much as John loves her, his devotion is to the Confederacy - and to the rebellious fighters known as Morgan's Raiders. Separated from him by the war, Claire boldly travels across the war-torn country in search of her lover. Disguised as a male soldier, she suddenly finds herself drafted by none other than General Morgan himself, swept up in the greatest guerilla raid in American history - and caught between her loyalty to the Union and her love for John.