Showing titles in 20th Century

When Naomi's daughter, Perle, starts to have nightmares about smokestacks and creepy doctors, Naomi is struck with terror—the terror of a mother who fears her daughter is in mortal danger. Naomi believes dreams are glimpses into the future. She, too, has had dreams of foreign soldiers with a strange flag invading her tiny village. She knows in her heart that evil is brewing.

Julia Esdaile is hired to restore the historic gardens at Havenworth Manor—the grounds of which are now an abandoned snarl of bramble and weeds—to their original splendor. For the enigmatic lady of the manor, ninety-two-year-old Margaret Clarke, the reason for the restoration is the deeply private story of a promise made a lifetime ago, and a vow to keep it before she dies.

Dover 1940 As firebombs fall on Dover, Edie Castle's life is thrown into turmoil when the garage where she lives and works is damaged and her beloved boss is arrested. With no job and nowhere else to go, Edie returns to Castle's Café and her formidable mother, Nellie. Living with her mother is never easy, but tensions reach boiling point when an old friend of Nellie's arrives looking for a place to stay. Meanwhile, desperate to clear her boss's name, Edie turns to his nephew for help.

Great Plumstead is buzzing with news that the American GIs have arrived on the nearby aerodrome. However, when a serious accident forces Thea to step back from her work, she must focus her full attention on Rookery House. There is an impossible amount to get done - and a new arrival to accommodate. Will she manage to keep things afloat? Prue is as busy as ever, finding homes for evacuees while worrying about her sons, Jack and Edwin, who are involved in key Allied battles overseas...

Peace has finally been declared in the Far East, but for those living at Beach View Boarding House, the news brings mixed emotions. Peggy Reilly is devastated that her husband, Jim, will not be coming home for Christmas. And Sarah and Jane, who have lived at Beach View throughout much of the conflict, dread what they will find when they go back to Singapore. Life in Cliffehaven is in a whirlwind of change as the men return from the war and Peggy’s evacuee chicks begin to spread their wings and start new lives in different corners of the world.

Malta, 1943. The war in the air above Malta is over, but the battle for Europe is about to begin. Margarita, a young singer in a Valletta nightclub, has not seen her former lover Henry Dunn since breaking off their affair. His wife Vera, an enigmatic archaeologist, arrives at the club to tell her that Henry has disappeared, presumed dead. While investigating, Margarita stumbles upon the hunt for a notorious and dangerous spy: Nero. As an unlikely bond develops between the two women, and strange secrets emerge, an urgent quest to unmask Nero starts.

London, 1969: The Kray twins, the nemeses of Charles Holborne, barrister, are finally convicted of multiple murders and sent away for the longest prison terms ever imposed by a British court. But with London in the grip of a housing crisis and unscrupulous landlords hiking rents, there are new ruthless enforcers terrorizing destitute East Enders. When a tenant dies during a violent altercation with bailiffs, Charles is instructed to represent the businessmen charged with conspiracy to murder.

It's September 1940, and British intelligence is desperately worried: the Nazi invasion of Britain is imminent. A sinister organisation called The Group, a collection of British and Irish Nazi collaborators, is at work trying to support Hitler's plans. But that is not the only concern for the spy chiefs: the search for double agent 'Archie'–the Soviet spy and British traitor–is proving fruitless, and now they know there’s a second traitor, Bertie, also in play.

Recruited as a codebreaker of enemy ciphers, ex-debutante Osla Kendall spends her days translating Axis military messages and her nights reading mystery novels. When Osla gets her hands on Agatha Christie's most recent work, N or M?, a mysterious signal within its pages catches her eye, and she and her eccentric book club get in touch with the famous but reclusive writer. Osla's outreach is a welcome distraction for Agatha, who feels restless and underestimated toiling away in a London pharmacy.

1940. Aiyi Shao is a young heiress and the owner of a formerly popular and glamorous Shanghai nightclub. Ernest Reismann is a penniless Jewish refugee driven out of Germany, an outsider searching for shelter in a city wary of strangers. He loses nearly all hope until he crosses paths with Aiyi. When she hires Ernest to play piano at her club, her defiance of custom causes a sensation. His instant fame makes Aiyi’s club once again the hottest spot in Shanghai. Soon they realize they share more than a passion for jazz - but their differences seem insurmountable....

Violet Ellis is living in the shadows of her father’s ruined reputation. So, when wealthy widower James Atherton offers her employment, she immediately begins the treacherous journey to his home on the remote Cornish island of Aoife’s Bay – despite the bone-chilling allegations surrounding his late wife Elizabeth’s death. In James’s company, Violet begins to feel the love that has been missing all her life. But when anonymous letters start to plague the bay’s residents, threatening to expose what really happened to Elizabeth, Violet feels the hostility towards her grow.

Cerdeña, 1917. Mallena no nació en Norolani, pero el pueblo la siente como suya. Llegó dieciséis años atrás junto a Jubanne, quien la desposó para protegerla de un destino oscuro. En Norolani ha sido la comadrona que asiste cada parto, sin cobrar, sin juzgar. Todo cambia cuando su esposo regresa herido del frente. Desde el continente llega Angelica Ferrari, joven, instruida y decidida, que ha desafiado a su familia y las normas sociales. Pero en Norolani, su título no vale nada: sigue siendo una forastera. Deberían enfrentarse, pero el verdadero enemigo está en otro lado.

The Safekeep meets Portrait of a Lady on Fire in a gripping debut following a young Jewish painter in 1930s Berlin whose work is tampered with and exhibited under a man’s name, reckoning with art forgery, desire, suspicion, and resistance In raucous 1928 Berlin, Hannah Sherman has deviated...

Question everything in this philosophical tale by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, introduced by John Gray A Penguin Classic Sammy Mountjoy is an artist who has risen from poverty to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War II, he is captured as...

From a New York Times bestselling author Lauren Grodstein, a story inspired by a little-known piece of history in the lives of Jewish occupants of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II. Called a "masterpiece", and as seen on The Today Show with Jenna pick (Madeline Miller). On a November day in 1940...

The unforgettable, heartbreaking love story from a New York Times bestselling author about a young socialite and the boy who once stole her heart—now an iconic motion picture starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. At thirty-one, Noah Calhoun, back in coastal North Carolina after World War...

France, 1942. At the end of the day, the schoolteacher releases her pupils. She checks they have their identity passes and warns them not to stop until the German guards have let them through the barrier that separates occupied France from Free France. As the little ones fly across the border and into their mothers' arms, she breathes a sigh of relief. No one is safe now. Not even the children.

D-Day. June 6th, 1944. The trajectory of the Second World War – and with it the course of modern history – is changed forever. For three young former schoolmates from South Wales, their war is only just beginning. These young men, and thousands of others, will soon be a part of one of the bloodiest and most brutal parts of the Normandy campaign: the battle for Hill 112. The horror, the fear, the filth; the savage fighting; the sheer exhilaration and moments of farce and laughter: those who come through the carnage will never be the same again.

From the New York Times bestselling 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...

Trixie and her fellow lumberjills are back in Scotland, newly stationed at the MacKay estate. When they arrive, they are shocked to find the place dilapidated and neglected and the taciturn and secretive Noah MacKay not at all happy to be meeting them. It quickly becomes apparent that MacKay was expecting men from the forestry commission to take charge, rather than four young women. Trixie, Jo, Hen and Vi decide he needs to be proven wrong - after all, don't they have stamina, skill and strength?