Until her father’s feud with a fellow bargeman threatens to destroy everything. To save them all, Rosina agrees to marry Harry, the son of a wealthy merchant. But a chance encounter with a handsome river pirate has turned her head and she longs to meet him again. When her father dies a broken man, Harry goes back on his promise and turns Rosina out onto the streets. She is forced to work the river herself, ferrying rubbish out of London and living rough. In spite of her hardships, she cannot forget her pirate and when tragedy threatens to strike once more she is forced to make a choice. But is she really prepared to risk everything for love?

    Maureen Jackson is a prisoner of her father's blackmail. Three years ago, she'd been hoping to marry Rory, the man of her dreams. However after her mother's death Maureen was left to care and work for the overbearing father who claimed he couldn't manage without her. Now Rory is back in London with a pregnant wife in tow and reminds Maureen of the life that should have been hers. Janet Ashley is the daughter of Peggy and Laurence, landlords of the local pub The Dog and Pheasant on Mulberry Lane. With the war looming, Janet hopes to marry her sweetheart Mike, but her father refuses to grant them his blessing. Going against his wishes Janet finds herself pregnant and Peggy is determined to hold her family together at all costs. The Girls of Mulberry Lane is the first in a series set in London's East End during WW2. Order the next book in the Series out JANUARY 2018 - A Wedding at Mulberry Lane.

    But nineteenth-century England is an unforgiving place for a young woman with limited means and as her grandfather's health fails, it seems perfect timing that she meets Jasper Dellafore. Yet her new husband is not all he seems. Alone in the Channel Islands, Tilly finds her dream of a loving marriage is turning into a nightmare. 2012: Bestselling novelist Nina Jones is struggling with writer's block and her disappointing personal life. Nothing is quite working. After a storm damages Starwater, her house on Ember Island, she decides to stay for a while and oversee the repairs: it s a perfect excuse to leave her problems behind her on the mainland. Then Nina discovers diary pages hidden in the walls of the old home. And a mystery unravels that she is determined to solve. Though the two women are separated by years, Starwater House will alter the course of both their lives. Nina will find that secrets never stay buried and Tilly learns that what matters most is trusting your heart.

    But their days of childhood innocence and adventure are destined to be followed by the apocalypse that will overwhelm their world as they come to adulthood.For Rosie, the path ahead is full of challenges: torn between her love for two young men, her sense of duty and her will to live her life to the full, she has to navigate her way through extraordinary times. Can she, and her sisters, build new lives out of the opportunities and devastations that follow the Great War?Louis de Bernières’ magnificent and moving novel follows the lives of an unforgettable cast of characters as the Edwardian age disintegrates into the Great War, and they strike out to seek what happiness can be salvaged from the ruins of the old world.

    Julia, a young and brilliant German designer, is about to launch the fashion show that could bring the breakthrough success she has sacrificed so much to achieve. All her dreams for the future are on the brink of reality—until an unknown past comes to find her. A grandfather she never knew existed approaches her with an astonishing claim. Julia’s father, believed dead for decades, is still alive. As a great lie is revealed, Julia embarks on a journey to uncover the lost pieces of her past. It takes her on a tour through Italy—from Milan to Naples to Sicily, back three generations to an immigrant heritage that struggled to build new roots in Germany after the war, and to secrets that have remained hidden for sixty years.Milan, 1954. Vincent, a handsome German engineer for BMW, arrives with the task of testing the Isetta, a revolutionary Italian car. His interpreter is the talented and enigmatic Giulietta, and the two soon fall passionately in love. Giulietta is full of life and dreams—she loves to design and sew clothes—but is held back by her family, who emigrated from Sicily, and by a promise that already binds her to another man. She will find herself forced to choose between love and duty, freedom and tradition—it is a choice that will mark the fate of generations to come.A saga of love and loss between two people and two countries, Anywhere But Home is a heartbreakingly beautiful story of forging new lives across foreign landscapes and cultures, of old wounds and forgiveness, and of the enduring bonds of family.

    But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London. When Alexis decides to visit Crete, however, Sofia gives her daughter a letter to take to an old friend, and promises that through her she will learn more.Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone's throw from the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga - Greece's former leper colony. Then she finds Fotini, and at last hears the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters and a family rent by tragedy, war and passion. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island, and how secrecy holds them all in its powerful grip...

    Desire. Deception. A wondrously imagined tale of two female botanists, separated by more than a century, in a race to discover a life-saving flower . . .In Victorian England, headstrong adventuress Elizabeth takes up her late father's quest for a rare, miraculous plant. She faces a perilous sea voyage, unforeseen dangers and treachery that threatens her entire family.In present-day Australia, Anna finds a mysterious metal box containing a sketchbook of dazzling watercolours, a photograph inscribed 'Spring 1886' and a small bag of seeds. It sets her on a path far from her safe, carefully ordered life, and on a journey that will force her to face her own demons.In this spellbinding botanical odyssey of discovery, desire and deception, Kayte Nunn has so exquisitely researched nineteenth-century Cornwall and Chile you can almost smell the fragrance of the flowers, the touch of the flora on your fingertips . . .

    At the war’s end, Frankfurt was a smoldering ruin, severely damaged by the Allied bombings. But that was two decades ago. Now it is 1963, and the city’s streets, once cratered are smooth and paved. Shiny new stores replace scorched rubble. Eager for her wealthy suitor, Jürgen Schoormann, to propose, Eva dreams of starting a new life away from her parents and sister. But Eva’s plans are turned upside down when a fiery investigator, David Miller, hires her as a translator for a war crimes trial.As she becomes more deeply involved in the Frankfurt Trials, Eva begins to question her family’s silence on the war and her future. Why do her parents refuse to talk about what happened? What are they hiding? Does she really love Jürgen and will she be happy as a housewife? Though it means going against the wishes of her family and her lover, Eva, propelled by her own conscience , joins a team of fiery prosecutors determined to bring the Nazis to justice—a decision that will help change the present and the past of her nation.

    But it is not only streets, businesses and homes that have been laid waste. Lives, too, have been devastated. Marriages have been disrupted, family life shattered, and now the inhabitants must find their own way back to normality - if they can remember what that is.Lucy Pengelly is just one woman whose life has been torn apart by the war. What will happen when her husband returns from the POW camp in the Far East? And what of the growing friendship between Lucy and her friend David, who played such an important part in their lives during the Blitz?

    But in another time, another place, there had been dancing, people, laughter, love. . . . She had had another life before she came to us, long before she came to me. . . .She was the cherished grandmother who sang songs in Russian, loved to roller-skate, and spoke little of her past. But when Granny Dan died, all that remained was a box wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. Inside, an old pair of satin toe shoes, a gold locket, and a stack of letters tied with ribbon. It was her legacy, her secret past, waiting to be discovered by the granddaughter who loved her but never really knew her. It was a story waiting to be told. . . .The year was 1902. A new century was dawning as a motherless young girl arrived at a ballet school in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the age of seven. By age seventeen, Danina Petroskova had become a great ballerina, a favorite of the Czar and Czarina, who welcomed her into the heart of the Imperial family. But events both near and far away shook the ground upon which she danced. A war, an extraordinary man, and a devastating illness altered the course of her life. And when revolution shattered Russia, Danina Petroskova was forced to make a heartbreaking choice--as the world around her was about to change forever.Granny Dan is about the magic of history. In it, Danielle Steel reminds us how little we know of those who came before us--and how, if we could only glimpse into their early lives, and see who they once were, there is so much we would understand and learn. For in this extraordinary novel, a simple box, filled with mementos from a grandmother, offers the greatest legacy of all: an unexpected gift of a life transformed, a long-forgotten history of youth and beauty, love and dreams.

    But as she does so through four seasons of one extraordinary year, she discovers that nothing comes for free. Told by a narrator whose urgent, unforgettable voice will break your heart, The Colour of Milk is an astonishing novel.

    "The Winter Palace" tells the epic story of Catherine the Great's improbable rise to power--as seen through the ever-watchful eyes of an all-but-invisible servant close to the throne. Her name is Barbara--in Russian, Varvara. Nimble-witted and attentive, she's allowed into the employ of the Empress Elizabeth, amid the glitter and cruelty of the world's most eminent court. Under the tutelage of Count Bestuzhev, Chancellor and spymaster, Varvara will be educated in skills from lock picking to lovemaking, learning above all else to listen--and to wait for opportunity. That opportunity arrives in a slender young princess from Zerbst named Sophie, a playful teenager destined to become the indomitable Catherine the Great. Sophie's destiny at court is to marry the Empress's nephew, but she has other, loftier, more dangerous ambitions, and she proves to be more guileful than she first appears. What Sophie needs is an insider at court, a loyal pair of eyes and ears who knows the traps, the conspiracies, and the treacheries that surround her. Varvara will become Sophie's confidante--and together the two young women will rise to the pinnacle of absolute power. With dazzling details and intense drama, Eva Stachniak depicts Varvara's secret alliance with Catherine as the princess grows into a legend--through an enforced marriage, illicit seductions, and, at last, the shocking coup to assume the throne of all of Russia. Impeccably researched and magnificently written, "The Winter Palace" is an irresistible peek through the keyhole of one of history's grandest tales. "From the Hardcover edition."

    It is a story of food, star-crossed lovers, ancient myths and one boy's rise from outcast to hero.Orphaned when his mother dies of starvation, having been cast out of her village as a witch, John is taken in at the kitchens at Buckland Manor, where he quickly rises from kitchen-boy to Cook, and is known for his uniquely keen palate and natural cooking ability. However, he quickly gets on the wrong side of Lady Lucretia, the aristocratic daughter of the Lord of the Manor. In order to inherit the estate, Lucretia must wed, but her fiance is an arrogant buffoon. When Lucretia takes on a vow of hunger until her father calls off her engagement to her insipid husband-to-be, it falls to John to try to cook her delicious foods that might tempt her to break her fast.Reminiscent of Wolf Hall and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, John Saturnall's Feast is a brilliant work and a delight for all the senses.

    But then a tragic accident changes everything, and introduces a stranger, Jack, into her life. Gorgeous and mysterious, Jack is like no-one Emma has met before. But Richard is the man she loves...Two different men. Two different destinies. How will Emma end her story?

    The foundation book of a series. Which I shall be reading as each one is written. Loved it.' - 5 star real reader reviewSunderland, 1940, and the women go to the shipyards to do their bit for the war effort.Polly never dreamed she would be able to work in the shipyards like the men in her family but times are tough and her new job ends up giving her more than she ever expected when she meets enigmatic dock diver Tommy Watts.During the day, head welder Rosie teaches her fledgling flock of trainees their new trade, but at night she hides a secret life.And mother hen Gloria signs up to escape her brutal husband, but finds she cannot run from her problems.The Shipyard Girls start off as strangers - but end up forging an unbreakable bond of friendship in the most difficult times.