Showing titles in 20th Century

It is 1910 in the Lincolnshire Wolds. Fourteen-year-old Rosie Waterhouse lives with her father, Sam, well-known as the local poacher, in a cottage on the Thornsby Estate. The land is owned by William Ramsey, a harsh and heartless man, determined his only son, Byron, should marry well and produce an heir. Rosie is quick to learn the tricks of her father’s trade and it’s when she’s poaching fish from the estate’s stream that she meets Byron.

Tragedy strikes the village and Sheila is determined to help those who are suffering. Sheila is determined to help those who are suffering and soon finds herself seeking out new ways to make a difference. But when her long-term beau proposes, she faces a dilemma: can she give up her new purpose in life? Land Girl Caroline throws herself into her work after her close friend Selina leaves the farm, and finds solace in new friendships. But when a new arrival comes to the farm, she can’t deny the attraction that springs up between them. Will she find the courage to follow her heart?

Spring 1940. As the war rages on, Vickers steelworks is busier than ever, which is proving tough for Nancy as she juggles working long hours and looking after two young children, all while waiting for her husband to return home safely. Betty is determined to roll up her sleeves and joins the Women’s Voluntary Service to keep busy and from fretting about her fiancé. But Patty is left worrying about someone closer to home. Sweetheart Archie has been keeping a secret from her, and one that puts him in great danger. Will it threaten to pull them apart for good?

Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives.

April 1942. Enemy gunfire on Penzance beach brings the Cornish Girls rushing to the rescue. But even as the war rages around them, the biggest challenge facing each woman turns out to be one of the heart. Can the Cornish Girls help one another to open themselves up to love?

Lavender Road boasts a pawnbroker, a pub, two rows of terraced working class homes and, at one end, the big house owned by the local brewer. When war breaks out, the lives and fortunes of the families who live in Lavender Road are changed out of all recognition. For Joyce, it means a struggle to keep food on the family table; for Jen it may mean the end of her dream to become an actress; and for Pam, there is the sickening seesaw of emotions as she fights attraction to her handsome lodger and a growing distance from a husband who is judged not fit to enlist.

October 1940. When VAD nurse Evie narrowly escapes being killed in an air raid during the London Blitz, it propels her to make a life-changing decision to break free of her troubled and unhappy life. She escapes to the Norfolk countryside to start afresh, with a job at the newly opened Great Plumstead Hall hospital, and a wonderful new home at Rookery House. The community of Great Plumstead welcomes evacuees to the village—mothers and children bombed out of their London homes. Sisters Prue and Thea, along with members of The Mother's Day Club, help the new arrivals settle in.

In the thick of World War II, Nora Brouwer is the Resistance's most valuable asset. When her cover is blown in a botched execution, her life is in grave danger. She must leave Amsterdam immediately and embark on a perilous journey across war-torn Europe, fighting to stay out of the Nazis' clutches. Meanwhile, Floris Brouwer—the city's top Jew hunter and Nora's husband, is hell-bent on exacting revenge on his traitorous wife. As he faces deportation to the very camps he had sent hundreds of Jews to, he seizes a lifeline to avoid certain death, but the cost is unimaginable.

Lucinda McFarlane is engaged to be married to dashing Sir David Melcome, but their society wedding has to be scaled right down when war is declared. Will David even live to see their baby born? Mabel Oakley, once a maid for the McFarlanes, has inherited Thomas Clarke’s printing works, but an unexpected turn of events leaves her at the mercy of her father’s old enemy, solicitor John Sheridan, just as she is beginning to fall for his son. What can she do?

Kim Maxwell has been languishing in the “cooler” in what she sees as punishment for getting caught—and tortured—by the Nazis, before being freed by Resistance fighters and smuggled back into England. Now she is sent for by the head of SOE. This is her chance to prove herself. A fellow agent has been found murdered. It would seem that Lilian Harvey heard something she shouldn’t have and that her murder was a warning. Setting out to uncover the culprit, Kim spots a strange zigzag pattern on the wall above the bed where the body was found, which Lilian drew using her own blood as she lay dying.

In enemy-occupied Paris, as the locals go to bed starving and defeated by the war, music and laughter spills through the door of a little restaurant, crowded with German soldiers. The owner, Marianne, moves on weary feet between its packed tables, carrying plates of steaming, wholesome food for the enemy officers. Her smile is bright and sparkling, her welcome cordial. Nobody would guess the hatred she hides in her heart. That night, the restaurant closes its doors for the final time.

Cornwall 1943. When eighteen-year-old Alice receives a mysterious work summons for a special unit in Bude, she's terrified but excited. Forbidden from telling a soul, she launches into training for the most important job she’s ever had. Meanwhile, Penny – a land girl from the farm – also heads to Bude to work at the dairy. Dreaming of finding love, Penny longs for the confidence to speak to a charming local fisherman. Young widow Florence runs the boarding house where Alice and Penny are staying. Between caring for a small child and her tearaway younger sister, she is utterly run off her feet.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, an enthralling historical saga that recreates the danger, romance, and sacrifice of an era and brings to life one courageous, passionate American - Mildred Fish Harnack - and her circle of women friends who waged a clandestine battle against Hitler in Nazi Berlin.

Liverpool, 1940. There comes a moment in every child’s life when they must learn to stand on their own two feet. For 15-year-old Ellie Lancton, that time has come all too soon. The death of her mother and the increase in air raids leaves Ellie alone and in grave danger. It’s not long before she is forced to leave her beloved Liverpool behind and cross the Mersey to seek refuge in the countryside. But as the war takes comforts away, so too does it bring new opportunities: for work, new friendships and perhaps a little love....

When fiercely independent chambermaid Nancy Nettleton first moved to London and the Buckingham hotel, the last thing on her mind was finding love, let alone falling for the debonair demonstration dancer Raymond de Guise. As the festive season approaches, life at the exclusive hotel is busier than ever, with guests arriving from around the world, seeking comfort, relaxation and refuge as tensions build across Europe and it looks like another war is imminent.

When vital aerial reconnaissance photographic plates are stolen by the enemy, former Sherlockian Irregulars Becky and Flynn are called to action. As they traverse the war zone incognito with Madame Curie and her daughter in a mobile radiology lab, they help wounded soldiers and civilians, facing increasing dangers and betrayals. With their relationship deepening amidst the chaos, they'll need their wits, courage, and each other. Especially without Sherlock Holmes by their side. Will it be enough?

A strange twist of fate connects a British soldier fighting in WWI in 1916 with a young woman living in modern-day England a century later, in this haunting best-selling literary time-travel novel.

At twenty-five, Ruby Nevins has already endured more than most. But after two years of battling cancer, she’s warily determined to move forward. Researching a new project about a French actress, she soon uncovers an old diary that will change her life forever… Cécile, the “it” girl of early 1940s French cinema, vanished from Nazi-occupied Paris in 1942. Sylvia Rousseau, Cécile’s dressmaker and confidante, left that same year. Working to piece together the truth behind Cécile’s disappearance and Sylvia’s extraordinary life, Ruby recognizes the women as kindred spirits.

Sheffield, 1892. Patrick Halliday rules his family with a rod of iron. He’s hard on both his wife and his elder daughter, Flora, but he spoils his youngest, Mary Ellen, because she reminds him of his beloved mother. When Mary Ellen, aged seventeen, finds that she is pregnant, Patrick throws her out of the family home and Flora goes with her. After wandering the Derbyshire countryside for miles, they find shelter on a farm, working for their keep. When Flora must return to her job as a buffer girl in Sheffield’s cutlery trade, she is reunited with her friend, Evelyn Bonsor.

The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war: under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in the mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war—of any war—told for a whole generation of victims.