Historical fiction

Bella is born into a life of comfort and privilege, with parents who adore her. They encourage her to travel and to speak her mind. But when she falls in love it reveals a long-buried secret at the very centre of her family. The layers of deception lead to tragedy, destroying all she holds so dea...

1966: In London, Jackie Collins's racy 'The World is Full of Married Men' hits bookshops and launches her career. In New York, Jacqueline Susann's debut novel 'Valley of the Dolls' is published, and she's desperate for it to be a bestseller. But neither author is prepared for the price they will ...

Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor. One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A 37-...

May 1945 and at long last, Rosamund Caradon is feeling optimistic. As she returns the last few evacuees to London from her Devonshire manor, she vows to protect dance-obsessed daughter Jasmine from further peril. But a chance meeting with a Sadler's Wells ballet dancer changes everything. When th...

It's 1945, and Corporal Valentine Vere-Thissett, aged 23, is on his way home. But 'home' is Dimperley, built in the 1500s, vast and dilapidated, up to its eaves in debt and half-full of fly-blown taxidermy and dependent relatives, the latter clinging to a way of life that has gone forever. And wo...

As snow falls outside Abbotsford vicarage on Christmas Eve, Rose Northwood finds a child lying destitute in the manger of the town's nativity display. Reminded of her younger brother, who died at Christmastime, she is determined to nurse the young boy back to health. But the child has lost his me...

This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives - all connected by a single drop of water. In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Victorian London, an e...

Against his natural instincts, Harry must campaign to be voted permanently as coroner by the local people. But the death of a pioneering schoolteacher is soon revealed to be not the accident it first seemed. Harry's determination to uncover the truth threatens to undermine his campaign and his fu...

Yorkshire, 1819. Laura is the only daughter of self-made man Obadiah Pennington. Proud of his success, Obadiah is keen to see his daughter secured in marriage to an eligible suitor. And he has his sights set on local mill owner Daniel Tranton. Wilful and headstrong, Laura is reluctant to have her...

Bordeaux, 1367. Having angered the bloodthirsty Don Pedro, King of Castile, Sir Thomas Blackstone is thoroughly sick of his mission for the Prince of Wales, but must remain true to his oath. But this is the Hundred Years' War, and tensions are rising once more. With the Prince of Wales deeply unp...