Showing results for "Life" in 20th Century

It is 1946 in Birmingham: the Second World War is over and three young women face a new kind of life. But peacetime brings its own pressures . . . Read by Penelope Freeman (Her Wartime Secret) Katie O'Neill's childhood has been dominated by her temperamental mother and by frightening secrets...

With Mulberry Lane's favourite pub, The Pig & Whistle undergoing renovation, proprietors Peggy and Able Ronoscki leave the chaos behind and head off on a trip of a lifetime to America. But disaster hits and Peggy finds herself in a critical condition in hospital. Meanwhile, business is booming for young entrepreneurs Fay Ronoscki and Maggie Rowan with their new restaurant and catering empire. Neither has time for love. But when fate throws a famous global singing sensation and glamourous racing car driver into their paths, falling in love with Jace and Greg seems beyond their control.

'A beautiful, hypnotic, emotional novel. I couldn’t stop turning the pages' CECELIA AHERN *** Can they find each other in every lifetime after…? Claudia is searching for her past. Suffocating in the glamour of Hollywood, A-list star Claudia Baxter is desperate for an escape. But when she...

It is 1919. Liverpool has been devastated by World War I. But at last the war is over. Emily Parkinson goes back into service and enjoys the return to normality. But her sister, Phoebe-Anne, has ideas beyond her station. Working as a lady's maid, Phoebe-Ann hopes that one day she will be more than just a friend to her mistress's shell-shocked brother James Mercer. When Emily is brutally attacked, the sisters' lives come close to ruin.

It's 1953. Memories of the war are beginning to fade. Young Queen Elizabeth has just ascended to the throne. Isobel McIntyre is a doctor-in-training at a London teaching hospital. It's not easy being a woman working in medicine. And Isobel carries the additional burden of a shocking secret. One night three years ago, Isobel took the chance to walk into another woman's life. By the time she understood the implications, it was too late to turn back. Now the secret she's been hiding for so long threatens everything.

Sometimes the past won't stay hidden, it demands to be uncovered. The Forgotten Life of Arthur Pettinger is a moving story from best-selling author Suzanne Fortin. Arthur Pettinger's memory isn't what it used to be. He can't always remember the names of his grandchildren, where he lives or which way round his slippers go. He does remember Maryse though, a woman he hasn't seen for decades, but whose face he will never forget.

The Second World War has finally ended and so begins a new era of freedom and opportunity for the Cazalet family in Casting Off, the fourth novel in Elizabeth Jane Howard's magnificent Cazalet Chronicles. Read by Indira Varma (Game of Thrones, Luther and Oedipus at The Old Vic). 'Compelling...

In a sleepy English village in 1944, Annabel and her son, Daniel, live in the shadow of war. With her husband away, Annabel withdraws ever deeper into long-ago memories of happier times. When mother and son befriend Hans, a German PoW consigned to a nearby farm, their lives are suddenly filled with thrilling secrets. But Hans has plans of his own and will soon set them into motion, with chilling consequences.

Deploring social injustice, Lady Deborah Claremont opens a staff agency, concealing the fact that she's a member of the aristocracy. But Deborah has become accustomed to keeping secrets. It began eight years ago in 1918 when her dashing French lieutenant was tragically killed. Amid an undercurrent of social unrest and with the General Strike looming ahead, Deborah meets two very different men: handsome Theodore Field, MP, and the charismatic union firebrand Evan Morgan.

After a whirlwind romance, usherette Connie is swept off her feet when projectionist Charlie proposes in a film reel added to the final frames of Casablanca. Her job at the Tivoli cinema in Tiverton has been a refuge from her violent and alcoholic father, Frank. But that night, Connie disappears, not only from Charlie's life, but from her own as well.

When a beautiful piece of music stirs mega-tycoon Maximilian West, he remembers the women who have loved him and shaped his life. So begins a dazzling tale, taking us from the streets of London to the suites of New York, from the rise of Nazi Germany to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Strong, powerful, enigmatic, aloof, and adoring - many women made Maximilian the man with everything, but there is only one woman who can make him feel truly alive.

When Angelina, the black sheep of the Pagano family, meets the mysterious Mr. Russell, she has no idea that she has seen him before…in another country. And so begins Farewell My Life, a novel in three parts, which spins an operatic tale of dangerous love, obsession, and loss; of crumbling, dissolving, and nothingness. And all of this revolves around 17-year-old Grace, Angelina’s younger daughter, whose fabulous talent for the violin promises a shimmering career.

What happens to a young couple when the first flush of love fades? Alice and Amos Bell marry in 1925, when flappers and jazz prosper. Alice and her sister are ardent suffragists who live by their own rules, while their world overflows with parties, music, and dancing. But their struggle increases with the Depression years, followed by the World War II. Amos Bell does not deal with the stormy relationships with his children or his wife. As Alice’s health declines Amos’ infidelity dramas explode, with the German bombs dropping on Yorkshire being the least of their troubles.

Ordinary lovers, Dena Miller and Will Wallace, confront extraordinary obstacles in their romance. Classism in their native North Carolina threatens to end their nascent romance as it began. Then, larger and more ominous life-threatening challenges of white supremacy and World War II wreak havoc on the dreams of the young couple, forcing them apart.

As Europe goes to war a second time and Richard and Emily’s paths are wrenched apart, each must confront the ghosts of their own past, battling forces both seen and unseen as their lifelong love is tested to its limits by duty, grief, time, and betrayal.

Sunset, Missouri, 1954. As hope flourishes in postwar America, a young widow dares to dream of a second chance at a forever love . . . Clara Sinclair has learned to live one lonely day at a time. It was the only way she managed to survive her husband's death in World War II and raise their young...

It’s 1943 in Huntsville, Texas. Stephan, a German army conscript, is imprisoned in one of the first POW camps hastily built in America. The hostile community opposes the enemy on American soil, but Stephan’s greatest threat lurks inside the camp, where Nazis demand his loyalty to a cause he despises. Stephan arrives in Huntsville after his surrender in North Africa where he saves the life of his American interrogator Captain Ralph Bauer. After parting ways, a shaken Ralph discovers a family heirloom that belongs to the prisoner.

Sassy Elizabeth meets the smart, but reserved, Darcy. Their personalities don't seem to mesh together quite well. This is a 20th century modernization of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.