A terrible sacrifice. A second chance... 1952. In the fragile atmosphere of post-war Paris, Sophie Bernot is training as a heart surgeon. A young woman in a man's world, Sophie is determined to bury her past and forge her medical career, whatever the costs.Across the channel, Sebastian Ogilvie is burning with ambition for his first architectural project. As his schemes lead him to France, and to a chance encounter with Sophie, his future seems full of promise.But when Sophie and Sebastian find themselves entangled in a brief, passionate affair, they each face a choice that will change their lives irrevocably, and a secret that will take years to be uncovered... Sweeping from Paris to London, to the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, this is an unforgettable story of passion, heartache and forgiveness. Perfect for fans of Santa Montefiore and Lucinda Riley

    Penelope with her mother and brother struggles to maintain their vast and crumbling ancestral home while postwar London spins toward the next decade's cultural revolution. Penelope wants nothing more than to fall in love and when her new best friend Charlotte a free spirit in the young society set drags Penelope into London with all of its grand parties she sets in motion great change for them all. Charlotte's mysterious and attractive brother Harry uses Penelope to make his American ex-girlfriend jealous with unforeseen consequences and a dashing wealthy American movie producer arrives with what might be the key to Penelope's and her family's future happiness. Vibrant witty and filled with vivid historical detail The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets is an utterly unique debut novel about a time and place just slipping into history.

    Half French, half English, Marguerite Carter, young and beautiful, has lost her parents and survived a terrifying war, working for the SOE behind enemy lines. Leaving her partisan lover she returns to England to be one of the first women to receive a degree from the University of Cambridge.Now she pins back her unruly auburn curls, draws a pencil seam up her legs, ties the laces on her sensible black shoes, belts her grey gabardine mac and sets out towards her future as an English teacher in a girls' grammar school. For Miss Carter has a mission--to fight social injustice, to prevent war and to educate her girls.Through deep friendships and love lost and found, from the peace marches of the fifties and the flowering of the Swinging Sixties, to the rise of Thatcher and the battle for gay rights, to the specter of a new war, Sheila Hancock has created a powerful, panoramic portrait of Britain through the life of one very singular woman.

    He was thinking about the lynx. The way it had looked at him, acknowledging his existence, then passing out of his life like smoke. . . It was the first thing—the only thing—that had managed, if only for a moment, to displace from his mind the image of the child. He had carried that image with him for a year now, and it had been a weight so great that sometimes he could hardly stand. Mary Lawson’s beloved novels, Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge, have delighted legions of readers around the world. The fictional, northern Ontario town of Struan, buried in the winter snows, is the vivid backdrop to her breathtaking new novel.  Roads End brings us a family unravelling in the aftermath of tragedy: Edward Cartwright, struggling to escape the legacy of a violent past; Emily, his wife, cloistered in her room with yet another new baby, increasingly unaware of events outside the bedroom door; Tom, their eldest son, twenty-five years old but home again, unable to come to terms with the death of a friend; and capable, formidable Megan, the sole daughter in a household of eight sons, who for years held the family together but has finally broken free and gone to England, to try to make a life of her own.  Roads End is Mary Lawson at her best. In this masterful, enthralling, tender novel, which ranges from the Ontario silver rush of the early 1900s to swinging London in the 1960s, she gently reveals the intricacies and anguish of family life, the push and pull of responsibility and individual desire, the way we can face tragedy, and in time, hope to start again.

    Her brother, Asa is dead — killed by the King’s army, so when she stumbles across a wounded British soldier, her sense of right and wrong is challenged. Should she help a soldier of the enemy who took her brother’s life, or let him die, cold and alone?The war has also broken British soldier Daniel Lowe’s spirit. A severely wounded prisoner of war, he escaped his rebel captors while on a death march to Boston. As the pain in his injured leg worsens, he wonders if the young woman looking down at him is an angel or the enemy.Need and compassion bring these two young lives together, but will the bitterness of war keep them apart? Or can they find their way to love and forgiveness on the Road to Deer Run?

    The end to hostilities will bring her violent husband Charlie home. It also sets off a chain of events that brings more strife and destruction to the people of Paradise Gardens, Hackney - including Zeldas squabbling family and the mysterious local healer, Zinnia Makepeace - than did the Blitz.That's not all. A new boss is making Zelda's life difficult. Zelda's nephew, Tony, is hanging around Brian Hole, a one-boy crime wave and only child of Ma Hole, leader of the local spivs.But Tony can sing - he has, in fact, the voice of an angel - and Miss Makepeace knows a voice coach in Soho. The people Zelda meets there change her life. Bert and Maggie Featherby offer her a way out of Hackney and her failed marriage, while the local hood, Maltese Joe, decides to take on Ma Hole.

    The youngest of three, she longs to be loved by her mother, but Ellen spends all her time with her eldest son, while Abbie and her brother, Sam, take refuge with their neighbours, Sandra Lewis and Peter Ryan. Although vibrant and attractive, Abbie pushes people away with her constant need for reassurance. Infatuated with Peter, she longs for the day when he tells her that he loves her. And Sam is courting Sandra. But Peter and Sandra have a secret - one that could destroy the friends' relationship should it become known. Will Abbie finally find the security and affection she has been searching for all her life, or will she always be looking for love...?

    It was a momentous day for so many reasons. It was Amy's 18th birthday and the day her sister gave birth to a baby boy. It was also the day that Amy heard the news on the radio: Great Britain was at war with Germany.Living with her family in Opal Street, Liverpool, Amy and her friend got jobs at a factory, and to begin with life went on much the same as before. Then the bombs began to fall on Liverpool, and Amy's fears grew. Her brother was fighting in France, her boyfriend had joined the RAF and they all lived in a very dangerous world.

    Ruby Lennox begins narrating her life at the moment of conception, and from there takes us on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of an English girl determined to learn about her family and its secrets.

    William Marshal is portrayed as being brave, intelligent - but flawed and human too.” Michael Arnold William Marshal was born in a time of civil war. In a time of bloodshed and honour. As a boy he is used as a pawn, during the conflict between Stephen and Matilda. But as a young man he trains as a knight. Marshal learns his trade in England and Normandy, fighting in tournaments and war-games, gaining friends and enemies alike. But the boy must become a man - and the squire must become a knight. Marshal soon finds himself embroiled in the campaigns of Henry II and the rivalry between French Kings. Where once he fought for fame and riches, the young knight finds himself fighting for his life. The Knight Banneret is the first book in an epic series chronicling the story of William Marshal, “the Greatest Knight”. For fans of Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden and Michael Jecks. Praise for Richard Woodman: “This series could develop into something very special. Richard Woodman knows how to tell a story, but has a healthy respect for history... Compulsive reading.” Saul David “Brings medieval Europe to life. The well-crafted action and historical insights enthral and entertain.” Richard Foreman, author of Band of Brothers. ‘Richard Woodman reminds us of the importance of merchant ships and our debts to the seafarers – men and women – who manned.’ HRH Princess Anne ‘If Neptune’s Trident sets the standard for what is to follow - we can at least rest assured that there is a series that truly does justice to our proud merchant maritime past.’ Nautilus UK Telegraph ‘Richard Woodman tells many a good tale in this first volume and it is fascinating to read. I highly recommend this first volume in the Neptune s Trident for anyone with an interest in the early modern period. If the rest of the series is as good as this one, they should all be on the bookshelves of those studying the history of Britain, from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.’ Open History Captain Richard Martin Woodman LVO is an English novelist and naval historian. He is the author of the series ‘A History of the British Merchant Navy’ and the Sword of State trilogy, which recreates the true story of George Monck, a giant of the 17th Century.

    They moved to America as young boys and helped tame the Wild West with not only their fists, but impeccable manners! In all that time, they kept hearing bits and pieces of a tale their mother told them. Over the years however, not to mention the loss of their mother, they lost most of the story and could only remember one major detail. A crocodile. Oh, and their third cousin the earl of course, who later became a duke, and whose duchy eventually fell to Duncan – but that’s another tale. This tale is something else entirely …Anthony Sayer had toiled for the East India Company for many years and after the death of his father was more than happy to return to England once and for all. Unfortunately, the Company had other ideas for Anthony, ones he wasn’t too thrilled to take on. Little did he know he’d be taking on so much more.Isabelle Bainbridge – better known as Isabelle Painbridge (or Hurricane Isabelle, depending on which circles one ran in) had given up any hopes of marriage. At twenty-six she was considered “on the shelf” by most of the ton and began to despair of ever finding a husband. Enter one Anthony Sayer. He was handsome, an earl and, better yet, available! But when a diary is delivered to her, its secrets turn Isabelle’s life upside down. Wishing to escape the horrible truths of the diary, she heads for India hoping to escape the scandal that will surely follow should anyone learn the book’s secrets. Unfortunately she runs into something else while abroad. Namely, one Anthony Sayer. And he isn’t exactly glad to see her. After all, Anthony has secrets of his own ...Enjoy this clean and wholesome romance full of fun, adventure, and a few critters to boot!

    Confused, little Suz begins to blame herself for her mother's death. Her father eventually brings them back, but instead of finding a safe haven to rebuild their family, Suz finds herself plunged into a life of misery at the mercy of an uncaring and brutal stepmother.Unwanted tells the story of Suz's struggle to escape from her broken home and leave her fractured past behind her. But lurking in the shadows is a dark family secret...

    Round the market square the life of Caxley revolved, from horse-drawn drays to the noisy new motors and the aeroplanes which the young men of Caxley longed to fly, from the coronation of King Edward VII to the last flowering of the Empire, ending on the muddly battlefields of the Somme..For Sep it was the end of an era; for Bertie and Kathy, the beginning of happiness; and for young Edward, tasting his first glass of wine, there was a world of tomorrows.

    1911: Inside an asylum at the edge of the Yorkshire moors, where men and women are kept apart by high walls and barred windows, there is a ballroom vast and beautiful. For one bright evening every week they come together and dance. When John and Ella meet It is a dance that will change two lives forever.Set over the heatwave summer of 1911, the end of the Edwardian era, THE BALLROOM is a tale of unlikely love and dangerous obsession, of madness and sanity, and of who gets to decide which is which.

    At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table" - as far from the Captain's Table as can be - with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator's elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself "with a distant eye" for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat's Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story - by turns poignant and electrifying - about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.