The Tea Rose


Jennifer Donnelly - 2002
    A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.But Fiona's life is shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man take from her nearly everything-and everyone-she holds dear. Fearing her own death, she is forced to flee London for New York. There, her indomitable spirit propels her rise from a modest West Side shop-front to the top of Manhattan's tea trade. But Fiona's old ghosts do not rest quietly, and to silence them, she must venture back to the London of her childhood, where a deadly confrontation with her past becomes the key to her future.

POISONED CHALICE: Mabel de Belleme Normandy's Wicked Lady (Medieval Babes: Tales of Little-Known Ladies Book 8)


J.P. Reedman - 2021
    

Belvoir's Promise


Susanna M. Newstead - 2017
    A young nobleman. And death stalks them both.... The date is 1191 Aumary Belvoir is seventeen. Seventeen, and bound by an oath so holy, he dare not break it.
 Unexpectedly thrust into the position of the Warden of the Savernake; a woodland of one hundred and fifty square miles in Wiltshire, will Aumary succeed in stamping his authority on the forest? He has also acquired a half brother he did not know he had. With the help of his experienced staff and his willing family, things go well. The surprise brother, Robert proves a worthy assistant. Then the deaths begin. Are they accidents as they seem or is there something more sinister happening in the forest? Seventy year old Aumary is dictating his story to a scribe. He can no longer write for himself and wishes to set down for all time, the truth of two mysteries; the death of Arthur Duke of Brittany, King John's nephew and rival, and other more disturbing deaths closer to home. Aumary Belvoir sets off to uncover a plot so dastardly and deadly, so patient and well planned that it takes thirteen years to lay bare.

Portrait of Stella


Susan Wüthrich - 2014
    Jemima Ashton is desperate to discover her real identity. With scant information and the burning question 'who am I?', she embarks on an incredible journey of detection. On learning of her late mother Stella's disappearance during WWII, she retraces her footsteps across the globe and at a distant vineyard, unearths a family she had no idea existed. While treading a path of narrow-minded bigotry, scandalous revelations emerge of two families inextricably linked by one woman and the drastic steps they took to hide the truth. ‘A powerful story of love and loss spanning two generations’ Frances di Plino - author of the Paolo Storey Crime Series

The Lost Daughter


Iris Cole - 2021
    She couldn’t know the terrible price she would pay.Clary’s home is the foundling hospital where she has lived since birth. When a terrible tragedy occurs, Clary is blamed and thrown to the streets with her only possession - a token, left by her birth mother.When Bill Whitely finds Clary beaten in a back alley, he offers her sanctuary, but a startling discovery spurs her forward into a dangerous undertaking.As Clary navigates a forbidden world, secrets and suspicions are rife, forcing her to flee for her life.Alone and destitute on the streets, Clary is lured into a world of debauchery, where she must fight to regain herself and find the answers she is looking for.Will Clary ever discover the truth of her past? And what of Bill? Is he lost to her forever?For fans of Dilly Court and readers who love historical romance.

The Ghost Writer


John Harwood - 2004
    There he finds a manuscript, and from the moment his mother catches him in the act, Gerard Freeman's life is irrevocably changed. What is the invisible, ever-present threat from which his mother strives so obsessively to protect him? And why should stories written a century ago entwine themselves ever more closely around events in his own life? Gerard's quest to unveil the mystery that shrouds his family, and his life, will lead him from Mawson to London, to a long-abandoned house and the terror of a ghost story come alive.

Before I Met You


Lisa Jewell - 2012
    She had forfeited university, parties, boyfriends, summer jobs - all the usual preoccupations of a woman her age - in order to care for Arlette in their dilapidated, albeit charming home on the English island of Guernsey. Her will included a beneficiary unknown to Betty and her family, a woman named Clara Pickle who presumably could be found at a London address. Now, having landed on a rather shabby street corner in '90s Soho, Betty is determined to find the mysterious Clara. She's ready for whatever life has to throw her way. Or so she thinks . . . In 1920s bohemian London, Arlette De La Mare is starting her new life in a time of postwar change. Beautiful and charismatic, she is soon drawn into the hedonistic world of the Bright Young People. But two years after her arrival in London, tragedy strikes and she flees back to her childhood home and remains there for the rest of her life. As Betty navigates the ups and downs of city life and begins working as a nanny for a rock star tabloid magnet, her search for Clara leads her to a man - a stranger to Betty, but someone who meant the world to her grandmother. Will the secrets of Arlette's past help Betty find her own way to happiness in the present? A rich detective story and a captivating look at London then and now, "Before I Met You" is an unforgettable novel about two very different women, separated by seventy years, but united by big hearts and even bigger dreams.

Holiday Heist at Dunhaven Castle: A Cate Kensie Mystery (Cate Kensie Mysteries Book 3)


Nellie H. Steele - 2020
    When Cate recognizes one of the stolen necklaces from when she traveled back in time to the year 1856 to solve a murder mystery, Cate knows there’s only one thing left for her to do. Despite the hectic holiday season approaching, complete with two grand holiday events, Cate must travel to 1925 and unravel the mystery surrounding the jewelry theft. However, things take an unexpected turn when she arrives. As Cate discovers more unanswered questions, she starts to wonder if there’s a piece to the puzzle she has yet to uncover. While Cate and estate manager, Jack, try to unravel the puzzle in the past, another mystery brews in the present for Cate. Strange and eerie nightmares centered around a bookcase in Dunhaven Castle’s library disrupt Cate’s sleep, rattling her mind even during her waking hours. She wonders if these are connected to the jewelry theft or if something darker lurks in Dunhaven’s halls.Can Cate solve the mysterious theft of her family’s jewelry? Will the bookcase hold the secrets to the past? If it does, will Cate be able to decipher the clues on its shelves? Or is there something more sinister at work in Dunhaven Castle? Find out if Cate has what it takes to solve the newest mysteries at Dunhaven Castle in Holiday Heist at Dunhaven Castle, book three of the riveting cozy mystery series Cate Kensie Mysteries.

Instructions for a Heatwave


Maggie O'Farrell - 2013
    Instructions for a Heatwave finds her at the top of her game, with a novel about a family crisis set during the legendary British heatwave of 1976. Gretta Riordan wakes on a stultifying July morning to find that her husband of forty years has gone to get the paper and vanished, cleaning out his bank account along the way. Gretta's three grown children converge on their parents' home for the first time in years: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, with two stepdaughters who despise her and a blighted past that has driven away the younger sister she once adored; and Aoife, the youngest, now living in Manhattan, a smart, immensely resourceful young woman who has arranged her entire life to conceal a devastating secret. Maggie O'Farrell writes with exceptional grace and sensitivity about marriage, about the mysteries that inhere within families, and the fault lines over which we build our lives—the secrets we hide from the people who know and love us best. In a novel that stretches from the heart of London to New York City's Upper West Side to a remote village on the coast of Ireland, O'Farrell paints a bracing portrait of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.

In the Time of Famine


Michael Grant - 2011
    The British government called the famine an act of God. The Irish called it genocide. By any name the famine caused the death of over one million men, women, and children by starvation and disease. Another two million were forced to flee the country. With the famine as a backdrop, this is a story about two families as different as coarse wool and fine silk. Michael Ranahan, the son of a tenant farmer, dreams of breaking his bondage to the land and going to America. The passage money has been saved. He’s made up his mind to go. And then—the blight strikes and Michael must put his dream on hold. The landlord, Lord Somerville, is a compassionate man who struggles to preserve a way of life without compromising his ideals. To add to his troubles, he has to deal with a recalcitrant daughter who chafes at being forced to live in a country of “bog runners.”In The Time Of Famine is a story of survival. It’s a story of duplicity. But most of all, it’s a story of love and sacrifice.

A Nurse at War


Maggie Holt - 2005
    So at twenty-one she escapes to London to train as a nurse, where she gathers many admirers - none more dashing than RAF officer Sandy Redfern, with whom she falls in love.But the coming of war, with the chaos of the Blitz, brings upheavals and unforeseen entanglements. On hearing of Sandy's reckless affair with a married woman, a heartbroken Lily throws herself into her work. Then further changes in circumstances bring her to a busy RAF hospital in Hampshire, where a faithful childhood sweetheart persuades her to become engaged to him.And then fate brings Sandy Redfern back into her life, physically scarred by burns and inwardly embittered. What of their once passionate love and her present commitment? Can the past ever be recaptured?

Rose Alley


Audrey Howard - 2006
    It's no place for proud Queenie Logan and her daughter Gillyflower. And it seems Queenie's dreams of escape will come true. Transformed by Miss Hunter's School for Girls, Gilly opens a successful dressmaking shop. And though she always thought she would marry the boy next door, soon she is courted by one of the richest young men in the city.But they have made a terrible enemy, who lurks in the Liverpool slums and seeks his chance to destroy them. And in the respectable new world they have joined someone else will prove even more dangerous to Gilly and those she loves.

Willow Hill


Phyllis A. Whitney - 1975
    

Blood of the Reich


Mike Whicker - 2009
    Set in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the height of World War II, Blood of the Reich is a non-stop thriller that continues story of the enigmatic German spy Erika Lehmann.

Devil's Sonata


Elizabeth Edmondson - 2011
    from an internationally renowned author.This haunting tale follows two cursed families in a saga of romance, black magic, and music set in an ancient abbey where the lines between the past 500 years and the present are blurred into oblivion. The handsome, mysteriously compelling owner of Beauregard Abbey, Nicholas Beauregard, must help Zuleika Rathbone as she traces the path of a murderous ancestor, rousing an unimaginable evil centered around a mystical violin. An unlikely romance amidst the havoc wreaked by practitioners of the dark arts takes the reader deep into the thrilling world of the occult.