Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge - until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents - but they quickly realize the dark truth.

Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white Lavinia arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate slave daughter. Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family. In time Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master's opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous yet protective son. She attempts to straddle the worlds of the kitchen and big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart.

Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed mother and her distant, slave-owning father.

When Kate Bowman temporarily moves to her grandmother’s Missouri farm with her husband and baby son, she learns that the lessons that most enrich our lives often come unexpectedly. The family has given Kate the job of convincing Grandma Rose, who's become increasingly stubborn and forgetful, to move off her beloved land and into a nursing home. But Kate knows such a change would break her grandmother’s heart.

Eleven-year-old Mandie Shaw is nervous about her trip to visit her Cherokee relatives. The journey through a North Carolina mountain forest is full of dangers like stalking panthers, and she wonders if her dead father’s kinspeople will even like her once she arrives. But the trip to the Indian reservation is only the beginning of Mandie’s many adventures. When Mandie and her friends get lost in a secret cave, they discover a pile of gold left behind by a legendary Cherokee chief. Is it really cursed, as legend insists?

Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a big favor to ask her hairdresser, Dorrie. She wants the black single mother to drop everything and drive her from Texas to a funeral in Ohio - tomorrow. Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious about Isabelle’s past, agrees, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives. Isabelle confesses that, as a teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family’s housekeeper - in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences just might help Dorrie find her own way.

In the summer of 1916, Private Daniel Baker marches into battle with the boys of Nova Scotia's 25th Battalion. Out of brutal necessity, Danny has steeled himself against the trials and horrors of war, but he is completely unprepared to meet the love of his life in war-torn France. Audrey Poulin has the soul of an artist. She lives alone with her grandmother in the quiet French countryside, where her only joy is in her brush and palette. When by chance she encounters Danny, the handsome young soldier captures her heart and inspires her painting.

The Lady: After her father's accidental death, it was up to young Fancy Cranson to keep her small family together. But to survive in the pristine woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, she had to use her brains or her body. With no other choice, Fancy vowed she'd work herself to the bone before selling herself to any timberman – even one as handsome, virile, and arrogant as Chance Dawson.

Chase Logan lives by no man’s leave, a solitary drifter who closed off his heart long ago - until the day he impulsively does a kindness for a beautiful young widow, and everything changes. For two years, Jessie Strong has dreamt of the day she could bring little Sarah home from the orphanage and call the child her own. But when her husband dies, Jessie fears the family she’s longed for is slipping away - until Chase Logan unexpectedly comes to her rescue. By pretending to be her husband, Chase can make all of her dreams come true.

This charming, old-fashioned story of a girl growing up during the depression will convince you that anything is possible. Against a backdrop of authentic hardship and despair, 13-year-old Virginia Eade discovers the true source of happiness. A doctor's daughter, Virginia spends her days dreaming of romance with "the two Charlies" - Charles Lindburgh and Charlie Chaplin. Soon Virginia is forced to give up her room to less fortunate relatives, and failed banks, closed shops, and breadlines crop up in her insulated world.

Award-winning author of A Room of My Own and A Place Called Morning, Ann Tatlock delivers a soul-searching inspirational story of faith and friendship.

In the waning years of the 19th century, Bessie Daniels grows up in the small town of Hot Springs in western North Carolina. Secure in the love of her father, resistant to her mother's desire that she be a proper Southern belle, Bessie is determined to forge her own way in life. Or, as her Cherokee great-grandmother Elisi puts it, to be a whistling woman. Life, however, has a few surprises in store for Bessie....

Jonathan Garrett lost everything. He and his two best friends, Caleb and Aryl, operated one of the top brokerages in New York City when the unthinkable happened; the stock market crash of '29. And now, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, these men must start over. But starting over has never been more difficult. The jobs become fewer and danger lurks around every corner. And then when a business rival threatens their existence, despair looms overhead as the men struggle to find a way out.

In 1945, when Billy May was 14 years old and alone, three local boys witnessed an incident in which Billy May's sexuality was called into question. Determined to teach her a lesson she would never forget, they orchestrated a brutal attack that changed the dynamics of the tiny coal mining village of Cedar Hollow, West Virginia forever. Thirty years after the brutal attack, living in solitude on top of Crutcher Mountain, Billy May discovers the hideout of a young girl - a girl who just happens to be the daughter of one of the boys who attacked Billy May so long ago.

1891... Spinster librarian Olive Wilkins is shocked to learn of her brother's violent death at a saloon gaming table and her sister-in-law's subsequent murder, traveling far from her staid life to rescue her niece and nephew, now orphans. She arrives to find the circumstances of her brother's life deplorable and her long held beliefs of family and tradition, shaken.

The Lady: After her father's accidental death, it was up to young Fancy Cranson to keep her small family together. But to survive in the pristine woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, she had to use her brains or her body. With no other choice, Fancy vowed she'd work herself to the bone before selling herself to any timberman – even one as handsome, virile, and arrogant as Chance Dawson.

Sweetgrass is a historic tract of land in South Carolina that has been home to the Blakely family for eight generations. But Sweetgrass — named for the indigenous grass that grows in the area — is in trouble. Taxes are skyrocketing. Bulldozers are leveling the surrounding properties. And the Blakelys could be forced to sell the one thing that continues to hold their disintegrating family together.

Patience Cavanaugh has lost hope in romance. The man she yearned to marry is dead, and her dreams are gone with him. Now she is consumed with restoring a dilapidated boardinghouse in order to support herself. Despite Patience's desire for solitude, Jedediah Jones, the local marshal with a reputation for hanging criminals, becomes an ever-looming part of her life.

As the year 1928 begins, 14-year-old Lanie Belle Freeman of Fairhope, Arkansas, has bright hopes for the future. Her father has launched a new business, and her mother is expecting her fifth baby. Lanie has dreams of going to college and being a writer. Then tragedy strikes.

A long-forgotten secret, a scandalous attraction and a place where two women's lives are changed forever. 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No-one could have predicted what would unfold.

Six award-winning authors have contributed brand new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: Winter Collection. A collection unlike any other, listeners will love this compilation of six sweet historical romance novellas, set in varying eras, yet all with one thing in common: Romance.

Seven years ago, orphaned and alone, Em finally arrived at a new home in Iowa after riding the orphan train. But secrets from her past haunt her, and her new life in the Western wilderness is a rough one. When her guardian is shot and killed, Em, now 19, finally has the chance to search for her long-lost sister, but she won't be able to do it alone.

Evangeline Keating came West because she had to: after her husband's passing, she needed to build a new life for her young daughter, and marrying a stranger from Montana Territory was her best chance. After a difficult winter journey, she arrives at an isolated outpost called Springwater Station. But the handsome man who's come for her is not her husband-to-be, and Evangeline soon finds herself thrust into a most inconvenient - and highly improper - arrangement.

No one knows where the Tufa came from or how they ended up in the mountains of east Tennessee. When the first Europeans came to the Smoky Mountains, the Tufa were already there. Dark-haired and enigmatic, they live quietly in the hills and valleys of Cloud County, their origins lost to history. But there are clues in their music, hidden in the songs they have passed down for generations.

Liverpool, 1941. Troubled by a dark family history and the pain of seeing her country torn apart by war, young June Lavender finds new hope when she takes a job at the Dr Barnardo's children's home. There she meets Lizzie McRae, a little girl who is the spitting image of June's sister, who died tragically years before. Against the matron's wishes, the two girls form an unexpected bond as June tries to get the traumatised orphan to speak.

In sleepy Salty Creek, Georgia, strangers are rare. When a quiet, unassuming stranger arrives - a Japanese man with a secret history of his own - he becomes the talk of the town and a new beginning for lonely Sophie, who lost her first love during World War I. Middle-aged Sophie had resigned herself to a passionless existence. That all begins to change as she finds herself drawn to the mysterious Mr. Oto.

Caretta Rutledge thought she’d left her Southern roots and troubled family far behind. But an unusual request from her mother – coming just as her own life is spinning out of control – has Cara heading back to the scenic Lowcountry of her childhood summers. Before long, the rhythms of the island open her heart in wonderful ways as she repairs the family beach house, becomes a bona fide “turtle lady” and renews old acquaintances long thought lost.

When a 70-year-old woman finds a five-year-old girl abandoned on her doorstep, she is thrust into a sorrowful past that can only be conquered with the help of the girl who opened her memory - the very girl she is trying to save. This first novel, according to author Jacquelyn Mitchard, is one of "exquisite power, honesty, and conviction...quite nearly without flaws."

Despite being raised in a traditional Old Order Amish family, 17-year-old Hannah Lapp desires to break with custom, forgo baptism into the faith, and marry outside the cloistered community. She's been in love with Mennonite Paul Waddell for three years, and before returning to college for his senior year, Paul asks Hannah to be his wife. Hannah accepts, aware that her marriage will change her relationship with her family forever.

There was trouble in Haven, Arizona, and Ranger Sam O'Ballivan was determined to sort it all out. He arrived posing as the new schoolteacher, and his first order of business was to bring the rough ranchers' children under control. To that end, he called on Maddie Chancelor, the local postmistress, whose younger brother was in firm need of discipline. Sam wasn't sure what to expect - but it was definitely not this graceful woman whose prim, proper stance was so at odds with the fire in her eyes.