My Last Duchess

In 1875, Sisi, the Empress of Austria is the woman that every man desires and every woman envies. Beautiful, athletic, and intelligent, Sisi has everything - except happiness. Bored with the stultifying etiquette of the Hapsburg Court and her dutiful but unexciting husband, Franz Joseph, Sisi comes to England to hunt. She comes looking for excitement and she finds it in the dashing form of Captain Bay Middleton, the only man in Europe who can outride her. Ten years younger than her and engaged to the rich and devoted Charlotte, Bay has everything to lose by falling for a woman who can never be his,

Sweeping from the Great War, through the Jazz Age to the 1940s, this unforgettable tale follows the entwined lives of the Fentons, an aristocratic family from Yorkshire. Set against the rich canvas of the first half of the twentieth century, A Season of Secrets is an unforgettable tale of passion and betrayal, love and war from the ever popular Margaret Pemberton.

Edith Lavery is a woman on the make. The attractive only child of a middle-class accountant, she leaves behind her dull job in a Chelsea estate agents and manages to bag one of the most eligible bachelors of the day: Charles Broughton, heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. But is life amongst the upper echelons of 'good' society all that it seems? Edith soon discovers there's much more to the aristocracy than dancing in Anabel's, shooting small birds and understanding which fork to use at dinner.

1995, London. When Sir James Harrison, one the greatest actors of his generation, passes away at the age of 95 he leaves behind not just a heartbroken family but also a secret so shocking, so devastating that it could rock the English establishment to its core. Joanna Haslam is an ambitious young journalist assigned to cover the legendary actor's funeral. The great and the good of the celebrity world are there. But Joanna stumbles on something dark beneath the glamour: the mention of a letter James Harrison has left behind, the contents of which others have been desperate to conceal for over 70 years. 

Summer 1935. Best friends Kate Shelton, Ella Tetley and Daphne St. Maur are on the cusp of a new life, having graduated with classics degrees. Kate is desperate to start work on an archaeological dig straightaway, and she is thrilled to be given a position at the famous Knossos palace site in Crete. However, she doesn't bargain for working with gruff site director Lewis Sinclair - nor for her own complex feelings towards him. In Yorkshire, Ella's family expect her to marry Sam, her steady friend who is training to be a doctor....

It's 1911. Aged just 15, Mary Kirk and Wallis Warfield meet at summer camp. Their friendship will survive heartbreaks, continents, and the demands of the English crown until it is shattered by one unforgivable betrayal.... In 1997, Kendall's romantic break in Paris is shattered when the taxi ahead of them crashes suddenly. The news soon follows: Princess Diana is dead. Trying to forget what she has witnessed, Kendall returns home, where the discovery of a long-forgotten link to Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, will lead her to the truth of a scandal....

A Question of Trust is vintage Penny Vincenzi: rich with characters, life-changing decisions, glamour, love, desire and conflict. London, 1950s. Tom Knelston is charismatic, working class and driven by ambition, ideals and passion. He is a man to watch. His wife, Alice, shares his vision. It seems they are the perfect match. Then, out of the blue, Tom meets beautiful and unhappily married Diana Southcott, a fashion model. An exciting but dangerous affair is inevitable and potentially damaging to their careers.

Gracie Burton is a grandmother living quietly in Devon. She has rarely left the village over the past 40 years. Her daughter, Carina, is immensely high-powered, with her own fast-paced business in London. She has very little time for her 17-year-old daughter, Anastasia, away at boarding school, and even less time for her ageing mother. In many ways, the three of them barely know each other. 

Damian Baxter is very rich and dying. He lives alone, attended by chauffeur, butler, cook and a housemaid, a life of everything and nothing. Before he goes he needs to know if he has a living heir. At stake is his fortune - in excess, he reckons, of £500 million. By the time he married he was sterile (the result of adult mumps in his early twenties), but what about before that unfortunate illness? Had he fathered a child as a young man?

A love affair...between Matt Shaw, self-made property tycoon, and Eliza Clark, dazzling fashion editor and one-time Deb of the Year. Their story spans sixties London, the extravagance of Milan and the lovely decaying country house that has been in Eliza's family for generations, and the source of huge trouble itself.

Wentworth is today a crumbling and forgotten palace in Yorkshire. Yet just 100 years ago it was the ancestral pile of the Fitzwilliams' - an aristocratic clan whose home and life were fuelled by coal mining. This is the story of their spectacular decline: of inheritance fights; rumours of a changeling and of lunacy; philandering earls; illicit love; war heroism: a tragic connection to the Kennedys'; violent deaths: mining poverty and squalor; and a class war that literally ripped apart the local landscape.

Dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age. Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive firsthand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England - and what England thought of them.

Florrie Buckley is an orphan living on the wind-blasted moors of Cornwall. It's a hard existence, but Florrie is content; she runs wild in the mysterious landscape. She thinks her destiny is set in stone. But when Florrie is 14, she inherits a never-imagined secret. She is related to a wealthy and notorious London family: the Graces.

Enter the world of the rich charismatic Lytton family and their powerful publishing empire in this passionate family saga, spanning the Edwardian era to World War I and the excesses of the glamorous 20s. Enter the world of Celia LyttonÑa woman who is used to getting her way. She moves through life making difficult and often dangerous decisions that affect herself and others.

The House of Farrell - home of The Cream, an iconic face product that has seen women flocking to its bijoux flagship store in the Berkeley Arcade since 1953. At Farrell, you can rely on the personal touch. The legendary Athina Farrell remains the company's figurehead and in her kingdom at the Berkeley Arcade, Florence Hamilton plies their cosmetics with the utmost discretion. She is sales advisor - and holder of secrets - extraordinaire. But of course the world of cosmetics is changing and the once glorious House of Farrell is now in decline.