Showing titles in 20th Century

'Another brilliant, hard-to-put-down book' - 5 STARS, reader review Livia Blake has lost her husband far too soon and faces a crossroads. It's her friend Pearl Grayson, head of Bristol's nursing school, who suggests she would make an excellent district nurse. With training completed and no ties...

When the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic leaves thirteen-year-old Olivia Davenport orphaned, she’s sent to live with her guardians, the Fairchilds, in their huge Jacobean mansion – Merriford Manor. But the Fairchilds have more to worry about than a grieving young girl – with war in Europe imminent and four sons to protect. Olivia feels alone and friendless. That is, until she hears a voice from behind the wall in her tower bedroom.

As a 13-year-old World War Two evacuee, Edie’s mother was chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family. In the grand and glorious Milderhurst Castle, a new world opened up for Edie’s mother. She discovered the joys of books and fantasy and writing, but also, ultimately, their dangers. Fifty years later, as Edie chases the answers to her mother’s riddle, she too is drawn to Milderhurst Castle and the eccentric Blythe sisters. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past.

Cilka was only 16 years old when she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, in 1942. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, noticed her long beautiful hair, and forced her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka did what she had to in order to survive Auschwitz. And yet after Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz in 1945, Cilka was charged as a collaborator and sentenced to serve a 15-year sentence for 'sleeping with the enemy'. Once again, she found herself on a brutal train journey, crammed into a carriage with many desperate women and children.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE EMOTIONAL CONCLUSION TO THE ROWNTREES GIRL SERIES! January 1945. The end of the war at last feels within reach, and the Rowntrees workers dream of returning to work on chocolate rather than munitions. Within the Freeman household, there are also dreams of a...

August, 1940. The war is raging in Europe, but on the home front conflict still seems far away. Dot, living with her mother-in-law and dreading the day that her thuggish husband comes home on leave, is fighting her own battle to contribute to the war effort. Peggy has found confidence as an Air Raid Precaution Warden, despite the jeers of the men she works with - but beneath her pluck she fears for her close-knit family, scattered by the war. And glamorous Vivian, the former debutante, is running away from her own heart and into danger as a volunteer ambulance driver.

The compelling new bestseller from the author of The Mersey Daughter and Winter on the Mersey. Alice Lake and her friend Edith have had everything thrown at them in their first year as district nurses in London’s East End. From babies born out of wedlock to battered wives, they’ve had plenty...

Annie, Rose, Pearl and Millie carry on making matches for the British Army, with bombs raining down around them. Inspired by the Dig for Victory campaign, Annie persuades the owners to start Bryant & May allotment in the factory grounds. With plenty of sweat and toil, the girls eventually carve out a corner of the yard into a green plot full of life and colour. In the darkest of times, the girls find their allotment a tranquil, happy escape.

Auschwitz, 1942: This unforgettable novel, based on a true story, brings to life history’s most powerful tale of forbidden love. Set within the barbed wire of Auschwitz, a man and a woman fall in love against unimaginable odds. What happens next will restore your faith in humanity and make you believe in hope even where hope should not exist.

Heartbroken and hoping for a new start, Abi Howes takes a summer job in rural France at the Château Bellevue. The old château echoes with voices from the past, and soon Abi finds herself drawn to one remarkable woman’s story, a story that could change the course of her summer - and her life. In 1938, Eliane Martin tends beehives in the garden of the beautiful Château Bellevue. In its shadow she meets Mathieu Dubosq and falls in love for the first time, daring to hope that a happy future awaits.

In 1944, newly married Copper Reilly arrives in Paris soon after the liberation. While the city celebrates its freedom, she's stuck in the prison of an unhappy marriage. When her husband commits one betrayal too many, Copper demands a separation. Alone in Paris, she finds an unlikely new friend: an obscure, middle-aged designer from the back rooms of a decaying fashion house whose timid nature and reluctance for fame clash with the bold brilliance of his designs. His name is Christian Dior.

1950. In the wake of the war, Audrey Clarkson leaves her manor house in England for a fresh start in America with her young son. As a widowed war bride, Audrey needs the support of her American in-laws, whom she has never met. But she arrives to find that her longtime friend Eve Dawson has been impersonating her for the past four years. Unraveling this deception will force Audrey and Eve’s secrets - and the complicated history of their friendship - to the surface.

Brought to you by Penguin. A page-turning and evocative novel set in 1950s London from the author of That Green Eyed Girl. West London, 1958. 73 Dove Street is a shabby house in a shabby street. But this boarding house’s attic room suits newcomer Edie Budd very well. It’s somewhere to hide...

Eleni has been coming to Crete her entire life, swapping her English home for cherished sun-baked summers with her grandfather in his idyllic shoreside villa. When she arrives in 1936, she believes the long, hot weeks ahead will be no different to so many that have gone before. But someone else is visiting the island that year too: a young German man called Otto. And so begins a summer of innocence lost, and love discovered; one that is finite, but not the end.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Bomb Girl Brides by Daisy Styles, read by Anne Dover. The life of a Bomb Girl isn't usually glamourous. But Maggie is getting married, so she is going to make sure her wedding day is - even if she does have to spend every other day slaving on the...

The Teashop Girls is a warm and moving tale of friendship and love in wartime, by the bestselling author of the Woolworths series, Elaine Everest. It is early 1940 and World War Two has already taken a hold on the country. Rose Neville works as a Lyon’s Teashop Nippy on the Kent coast...

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.

Brought to you by Penguin. AN IMMERSIVE AND HEARTFELT EXPLORATION OF FAMILY AND LOVE 'A beautiful bittersweet story of love, loss and families all set in the most irresistible of locations. Tears were shed!' Graham Norton 'A moving and powerful novel from one of Ireland's finest new writers'...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Noonday by Pat Barker, read by Juliet Stevenson, Stephen Boxer, John Sackville, Anne Reid & Finlay Robertson From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls The final novel in Pat...

Its 1943 and the war continues on in Ambridge. But the minds of the villagers are focused a little closer to home… For many centuries, a local tradition has told of a mystic living in a hermit’s cave just outside the village. Legend tells that she has hidden her prophecies around the area...