Historical Homes

October 1940. Twenty-three-year-old Bobby Bancroft is working as a typist for a city newspaper, but she longs to be breaking the news herself. When she successfully applies for a junior reporter role at The Tyke, a magazine serving the Yorkshire Dales, she's thrilled – even if she only gets the position because so many men are away fighting. Bobby moves to the sleepy village of Silverdale, but she quickly discovers life in the countryside is a different world.

A story of homecoming, this engrossing novel opens with a young, city-based lawyer setting out on her first visit to ancestral country. Candice arrives at ‘the place where the rivers meet’, the camp of the Eualeyai where in 1918 her grandmother Garibooli was abducted. As Garibooli takes up the story of Candice’s Aboriginal family, the twentieth century falls away. Garibooli, now renamed Elizabeth, is sent to work as a housemaid, but marriage soon offers escape from the terror of the master’s night-time visits.

Chicago, 1861 After years of painful separation, Justin Young finally locates his orphaned siblings—on opposite sides of the Civil War. Setting aside his budding romance, he brings his widowed sister and younger brothers home to Chicago, determined that the ties of the same blood are strong enough to bring them together despite the secrets they each carry from their pasts. But faced with his inadequacies as a provider and leader, Justin discovers that real love is the hard work of granting grace and second chances to imperfect, hurting people with whom he has nothing in common.

In 1895, a Northumbrian island welcomes two new residents. Clara and Jimmy are born on the same night, to families poles apart. Clara is an islander through and through; content to live among the rhythms and barren beauty of Holy Island. Jimmy's future is set in stone; fishing with the father he despises on the family boat. When tragedy forces them from their island and each other, they join the herring season in a bid to survive. Jimmy strikes out for Seahouses, where he joins a Scots herring crew.

Born a Native American but brought up Amish, Hester Zug, at age 20, flees her Amish home. Her father's too-tender care of her has made her stepmother wildly jealous, and so Hester sets off, knowing only that she can't stay. Hester's natural instincts for navigating the forests in colonial Pennsylvania, along with the book of medicines and remedies given to her by an aged Native American woman, allow her to survive until she gets sick from drinking river water.

All she wants is somewhere to call home... Frances Sweet can’t really remember her real parents. Brought up by her uncle, her cousins Ruby and Mary have always treated her like their little sister. As the war continues to keep her cousins separated from the men they love – Frances is growing...

Brought to you by Penguin. THE TWENTYSECOND CLIFFEHAVEN NOVEL BY SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR ELLIE DEAN Cliffehaven, 1947 In the wake of heartbreaking loss, Roisin Reilly makes a promise to her granddaughter Bella that they will cross the Wye Valley and travel to Cliffehaven to find the...

The wonderfully nostalgic and heartwarming new novel from the Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling author of The Beggar Maid. Born out of wedlock when her mother was only fourteen, Lucy Pocket has spent all her life in the care of her disreputable but charming grandmother, Eva. They dodge from one...

‘You want to risk everything – for a country that’s never cared if you live or die?’ 1941: In a segregated Florida town, three young Black men enlist to fight for a freedom they’ve never known at home. Before they leave, Cora marries in haste to secure her future – but her heart...

'A great book, truly hard to put down. Fast paced, brilliantly plotted and desperately sad at times - all hallmarks of a bestseller' Lesley Pearse on The Girl in the Letter 'I was gripped by The Girl in the Letter. The story is compelling, twisty, heart-wrenching and thought-provoking. A novel...

A thousand unwanted children live in The Homes, a village of orphans in the Scottish Lowlands on the outskirts of Glasgow. Lesley was six before she learned that most children live with their parents. Now Lesley is 12, and she and her best friend Jonesy live in Cottage 5; Jonesy the irrepressible spirit to Lesley's quiet thoughtfulness. Life is often cruel at The Homes, and suddenly it becomes much crueller. 

The African sun beats down on Salisbury as Livy Johnston, an up-and-coming artist, steps into a world of colonial propriety and unspoken rules. After a shipboard romance with wealthy widower Crispin Dane, she is forced to face the reality of her hastily arranged future with Jeremy Crookshank, a struggling farm assistant with dreams of his own tobacco fields.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of A Place to Call Home by Val Wood, read by Anne Dover. Ellen thought she’d always live in the remote, pretty coastal village where she grew up. After all, her husband, Harry, works on a farm where he’s guaranteed a job and home for life. But when...

It's nearly Christmas at Longbourn. Elizabeth Bennet's beloved sister Jane has just wed Charles Bingley, mere weeks after the Netherfield Ball. Elizabeth's best friend Charlotte has married Mr. Collins. Elizabeth's nemesis, Mr. Darcy, has departed the county, while her favorite relations, the Gardiners, have come up from London. She ought to be overjoyed. Instead, she's miserable.

In equal measure gritty and tender, Coming Home to the Four Streets is the fourth instalment in the Four Streets saga, from Sunday Times bestseller Nadine Dorries. Summer is coming to the four streets - but so is trouble, especially for its redoubtable women, who've struggled through a bitter...

January 1916. Britain is on the brink of enforcing conscription. Eligible young men who have not yet signed up to fight are despised as ‘conchies’ and ‘shirkers’, subjected to hatred and verbal abuse. Cyril Ablatt, leader of Shoreditch’s group of conscientious objectors, makes a rousing speech at a meeting of the No-Conscription Fellowship, refusing to be ‘an instrument of slaughter in a khaki uniform’.

August 1941: As war sweeps across Britain and millions of men enlist, women must fight the battle on the home front. Fran always thought she would marry her childhood sweetheart and live in Massingham, the beloved pit village she has always called home. But the opening of a munitions factory in the north-east of England presents a new opportunity. Against her father's wishes and with best friends Sarah and Beth by her side, Fran signs up to join the ranks of women at the factory. It's dangerous work, but the friends discover that their lives are only just beginning.

1940, Great Paxford, Cheshire: In Britain's darkest hour, an extraordinary community of women strive to protect the Home Front. When a plane crashes in the village, every one of their lives will change forever. The women of Great Paxford are no strangers to hardship and the extraordinary power...

Discover Lynette Rees' heartwarming sagas, perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Katie Flynn Destined to a life of poverty, this little girl has bigger plans for her future . . . After the death of her father in a mining accident, Megan and her family had no choice but to move to the local...

Don't miss the next instalment in the emotional Nightingale Family series from bestselling author, Fenella J Miller A future free of peril? After the death of her husband, Sarah Cooper becomes betrothed to Robert Billings and moves her family back to Colchester. But with Robert away on-board...