Book picks similar to
You Stole My Heart Away by Joan Jonker


family-saga
fiction
historical-fiction
borrowed-books

The Lost and Found Girl


Catherine King - 2011
    When the legitimacy of her twin babies with Edgar is called into question, the tiny infants are taken from Beth and sent far away. James is adopted by Edgar's uncle, the very wealthy Lord Redfern, master of Redfern Abbey. But little Daisy is sent to a cold-hearted childless couple who raise her to be a maid rather than a daughter. When Daisy, at 16, finally escapes her hard life with her adoptive brother Boyd, they arrive at the Abbey to seek work and refuge. Little does Daisy know that her flesh and blood is the next in line to be Lord of the Abbey. There is a strange connection between Daisy and James, something they can neither explain nor ignore. But will the truth be discovered in time?

The Haunting of Clandestine House


Celina Myers - 2019
    It is known as the haunted house that swallows people whole. It isn’t until an out of town buyer Hannah Watts purchases Clandestine house that the the dark past of the time capsule home will come to light. What happened to the Clandestine family? What is going to happen to Hannah?

The House Across the Street


Lesley Pearse - 2018
    The woman who lives there, Gloria, is the most glamorous neighbour on the avenue, owning a fashionable dress shop in Bexhill-on-Sea. But who is the woman who arrives in the black car most Saturdays while Gloria is at work? Sometimes she brings women to the house, and other times the women come with children.Then one night, the house burns down. In the wreckage, the bodies of Gloria and her daughter are found. Katy is sure the unexplained strangers must be responsible, until her father is arrested and charged with murder.Surely the police have arrested the wrong person? Is the rest of the street safe. Can Katy find the truth before it’s too late?

The Lost Daughter of Liverpool


Pam Howes - 2017
    In Liverpool, the blackout blinds may be coming down, but one family is about to face devastating misfortune… Dora Evans is finally marrying the love of her life, Joe Rodgers, and her dreams of opening a dressmaking business look as if they might come true. With twin daughters on the way, Dora has everything she’s ever wanted.  But then tragedy strikes: one of Dora’s babies dies in infancy, and a catastrophic fire changes their lives forever. Dora is consumed with grief, struggling to get through each day and Joe is suddenly distant, finding solace in his colleague, Ivy.  With Ivy watching and scheming, and Dora battling against her own demons, can she keep her family together? The Lost Daughter of Liverpool is a heartbreaking and gripping story of love, loss and hope. Perfect for fans of Nadine Dorries, Diney Costeloe and Kitty Neale. Discover Pam’s new series, The Mersey Trilogy, today. Read what everyone’s saying about The Lost Daughter of Liverpool: "Absolute belter of a story!!" Chelle's Book Reviews “I loved this book! … have a supply of tissues ready … a beautifully written book that kept me reading until the early hours. I just didn’t want it to end.” 5* Stardust Book Reviews “A new favourite saga writer to add to my list.” 5* Bookworms & Shutterbugs “I love this book so much … [it will] keep you gasping for more … Oh my dayz.” 5* Read Along With Sue Ward “One of the best family sagas I've read … A wonderful, emotional roller coaster of a read, highly recommended … tissues are essential!” Brook Cottage Books “A deeply moving story…I found myself gasping out loud … [it] brought me close to tears … I found The Lost Daughter of Liverpool increasingly hard to put down … I will certainly be back for part two … definitely one to watch out for.” Em the Bookworm “The story is brilliant … Once I started this book, I just couldn't wait for every chance I got to read it.” 4* I Love Reading “What a beautiful book! Brilliantly written, this warm-hearted, evocative tale was amazing from start to finish.” 5 * Renita D’Silva “Oh wow, absolutely superb. Read it in under two days. Loved everything about this book. A fantastic story and I'm so excited for the next one in this trilogy.” Goodreads Reviewer “The storyline was brilliant and had me hooked from the first chapter, really looking forward to reading the follow up.” 5* Goodreads Reviewer “…Just fantastic. Being a big fan of family saga’s, this book didn’t disappoint, it had it all. Love, heartbreak, obsession, loss and hope.

The Widow and the Tree


Sonny Brewer - 2009
    Some say the fabled giant tree was once a knee-high seedling brushed by the black boot of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez. No other tree along the entire coastal crescent from New Orleans to Apalachicola can rival its majesty or its power to draw people to it. In silence and with dignity, the Ghosthead has served as sentinel to the widow's family land for countless generations. It was a childhood friend and a spirit guide in troubled times. Her father is buried in its shade. So why would the widow walk into a biker bar and hire a man to fire his chainsaw and inflict fatal gashes around its trunk, ending in a few minutes what took five centuries to create? The Widow and the Tree is a tale of dark deeds committed with mercy in mind, provoking the reader to ask: Would I have done the same thing? This book is based on a true story.

The Mill Girls of Albion Lane


Jenny Holmes - 2015
    Saturday nights at the dance hall and dressmaking with her two best friends keep Lily upbeat, and now there’s a blossoming romance with childhood friend Harry Bainbridge to put an extra spring in her step, too.But then a run of misfortune threatens Lily’s work, home and personal life, and she has to rely on the community at the mill to rally together for support. With so many others to worry about, will Lily always put them first or can she find her own happy ending?A heart-warming, nostalgic tale of triumph over adversity that readers of Katie Flynn, Donna Douglas and Call the Midwife will adore.

The Last Letter from Your Lover


Jojo Moyes - 2008
    When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband. Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance. A spellbinding, intoxicating love story with a knockout ending, The Last Letter from Your Lover will appeal to the readers who have made One Day and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society bestsellers.

The Battle for England


Bernard Neeson - 2017
    The RAF is on the verge of defeat, the Royal Navy near mutiny.In an underground bunker, Churchill and the British commanders await the onslaught. Their plan to throw back Hitler's army is about to be put to the test.Churchill is confident they can throw back the enemy.But not all his enemies are abroad.

As If Women Mattered


Virginia DeLuca - 2014
    Magazine and consciousness raising. As the post-World War II era of peace, prosperity, and pointy bras gives way to the life-expanding changes of the women’s movement, four women meet and over the course of two decades, create a space that allows them all to thrive, with humor and irreverence, as they each struggle to reconcile the realities of adult life with the expectations of youth. “Virginia DeLuca’s captivating novel, 'As If Women Mattered', fuses compelling social drama with page-turning storytelling. Four women, whose consciousness-raising group becomes a life-long, life-saving family of the heart, wrestle with marriage, motherhood, careers and sex, during a time when no one knew the rules anymore, and it was all up for grabs. The entwined stories of these women will keep you up way past midnight, experiencing the extraordinary era when women rose up and found their voices, and each other.” Randy Susan Meyers, International Bestselling Author of "The Murderer’s Daughters" and "The Comfort of Lies" “'As If Women Mattered' takes me vividly back to my own experiences in the early second-wave women’s movement and, in its characters’ lives, highlights many of the dynamics and issues that made those years so fascinating, so fraught and so fruitful. Thank you especially, Ginny DeLuca, for following the ongoing friendship between these four women over time.” Wendy Sanford, cofounder and coauthor, "Our Bodies, Ourselves"

Dice


T.N. Baker - 2007
    Rollin' dice is an everyday hustle for Wasuan, and he's one of the best the hood has ever seen. No one can defeat him. That is, until he stumbles across a dude from the same hood named Tone who has just as much confidence, a little too much mouth, lots of cash to back it up, and a strong desire for Wasuan's girl. When Wasuan is challenged and the stakes grow high, he finds himself caught out in deeper waters than he can swim in, with Tone dangling three options: pay up, take your last breath, or sacrifice something much greater...his girl, Enychi. But when Enychi agrees to spend one night with Tone in order to save her man's life, she finds herself caught up in an unwilling love triangle like the streets have never known. Love, betrayal, lies, sex and money are just the beginning in this scandalous tale, where loyalties are put to the ultimate test. In this new novel, T. N. Baker takes the term "sheisty" to a whole new level.

The Garden of Lost and Found


Harriet Evans - 2019
    Liddy Horner discovers her husband, the world-famous artist Sir Edward Horner, burning his best-known painting The Garden of Lost and Found days before his sudden death.Nightingale House was the Horner family's beloved home - a gem of design created to inspire happiness - and it was here Ned painted 'The Garden of Lost and Found', capturing his children on a perfect day, playing in the rambling Eden he and Liddy made for them.One magical moment. Before it all came tumbling down...When Ned and Liddy's great-granddaughter Juliet is sent the key to Nightingale House, she opens the door onto a forgotten world. The house holds its mysteries close but she is in search of answers. For who would choose to destroy what they love most? Whether Ned's masterpiece - or, in Juliet's case, her own children's happiness.Something shattered this corner of paradise. But what?

Wagons West


Russell J. Atwater - 2020
    Their first day out reveals how wrong he is and the perilous dangers of the Santa Fe Trail.It would have been a massacre but for Trent and Pat MacLeod.Trent favors a Sharps .50 caliber buffalo rifle, while his younger brother Pat packs two Texas Navy Colts. They both prove deadly and a force to be reckoned with.The Cowans and the McLeod brothers’ forge a bond those first few days, sustained in part by Trent’s attraction to the eighteen-year-old Becky Cowan. His overtures are not returned.The brothers join the Cowans on their hazardous journey west as they face harsh conditions, bandits and Indian attacks. Will their oxen survive the trip? Will the man Bruce Cowan is fleeing catch up with them? Should they take the Cimarron Cutoff through the desert or stick with the Santa Fe Trail through the mountains?Even with the help of Trent and Pat, the Cowans are forced to learn quickly to survive the rigorous demands of the Wild West.

Commonwealth


Ann Patchett - 2016
    Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny’s mother, Beverly—thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.#1 New York Times Bestseller

Man in Armour


Siobhan McKenna - 2020
     Charles lives in the testosterone-driven, high-powered, brutal world of investment banking. It is a world dominated by deals, bonuses, bravado and savagery. Charles is a master of this world. Each day he shrugs on a metaphorical suit of armour and goes out into a dog-eat-dog world to accumulate power and make money. He's a man who is familiar with casual brutality - his childhood saw to that.But there is a price to pay. Now, at the peak of his career, his armour is rusted and bloodstained and no longer protecting him the way it once did. He finds himself empty. Always cold. No friends. A family that is falling apart.Over the course of two days, everything in Charles' life comes into question. His carefully constructed world is starting to splinter - and he's splintering too.Shocking and at times immensely moving, Man in Armour is a compelling story of a man at the end of his tether, written with a sharp-eyed, incisive focus that also carries real emotional - and moral - resonance. Written by an ultimate business insider - a woman who knows intimately and at first hand this world of power, money and deal-making - this novel carries an undeniable authenticity and force.'The detailed setting of the finance world - the highs and lows, cutthroat practices and relentless pace -is vividly rendered ... Man in Armour is very readable' Bookseller+Publisher'There's no doubt McKenna can write a page-turner' Sydney Morning Herald

Android Karenina


Ben H. Winters - 2010
    Winters is back with an all-new collaborator, legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and the result is Android Karenina an enhanced edition of the classic love story set in a dystopian world of robots, cyborgs, and interstellar space travel.As in the original novel, our story follows two relationships: the tragic adulterous romance of Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky, and the much more hopeful marriage of Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya.These four, yearning for true love, live in a steampunk-inspired 19th century of mechanical butlers, extraterrestrial-worshiping cults, and airborne debutante balls. Their passions alone would be enough to consume them-but when a secret cabal of radical scientific revolutionaries launches an attack on Russian high society's high-tech lifestyle, our heroes must fight back with all their courage, all their gadgets, and all the power of a sleek new cyborg model like nothing the world has ever seen."Filled with the same blend of romance, drama, and fantasy that made the first two Quirk Classics New York Times best sellers, Android Karenina brings this celebrated series into the exciting world of science fiction.