In the mid-19th century, an impoverished orphan flees Ireland and travels alone to America in search of her only family; an estranged, rich uncle. However, when the handsome Master of her uncle's mansion takes a dark interest in the lonely orphan, she becomes trapped in a life of servitude and must again fight for her freedom. Will the orphan fulfill her dreams of a better life in a new country, or will America be worse than Ireland?

In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

Growing up in New York City in the 1910s, Luella and Effie Tildon realize that even as wealthy young women, their freedoms come with limits. But when the sisters discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen elder sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases. Her rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning Luella is mysteriously gone.

London, 1935. Ruby is always hungry, but she will go without if it means her young brothers can eat. 1930s Bermondsey might be called the larder of London, with its pie, pickle and jam factories, but for the poor working classes, starvation is often only a heartbeat away. When Ruby's neighbour suggests she ought to go to the Methodist Mission for free food, Ruby knows her father will be furious, but she has no other option.

In this prequel to the Exit Unicorns series, we join the Riordan boys in the rough and tumble world of Belfast, Northern Ireland, during a summer of change and promise. Casey Riordan is on the cusp on manhood, and is learning just how high the price of that transition can be. Tagging along on this adventure is his brother, Pat, who is both shadow and conscience to Casey. Their father, Brian, is simply trying to keep his sons safe - a tall order in the gritty streets of this particular city.

Ireland, 1959: Young Christopher Hurley is a tinker, a Pavee gypsy, who roams with his father and extended family from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons. Christy carries with him a burden of guilt as well, haunted by the story of his mother’s death in childbirth. The wandering life is the only one Christy has ever known, but when his grandfather dies, everything changes. His father decides to settle briefly, in a town, where Christy and his cousin can receive proper schooling and prepare for their first communions.

Abandoned by her father and neglected by her self-centered, unstable mother, Sheila McGee cannot wait to escape the drudgery of her mill village life in Northern Ireland. Her classic Irish beauty helps her win the 1941 Linen Queen competition, and the prize money that goes with it finally gives her the opportunity she's been dreaming of. But Sheila does not count on the impact of the Belfast blitz which brings World War II to her doorstep. Now even her good looks are useless in the face of travel restrictions, and her earlier resolve is eroded by her ma's fear of being left alone.

Since his debut novel, the modern classic The Ghosts of Belfast, was published a decade ago, Stuart Neville has published eight other critically acclaimed novels and achieved international recognition as one of crime fictions great living writers. Now for the first time Neville offers listeners a collection of his short fiction - 12 chilling stories that traverse and blend the genres of noir, horror, and speculative fiction and which bring the history and lore of Neville's native Northern Ireland to glittering life.

December 1940. As German bombs fall on Southampton, England, the city's residents flee to the surrounding villages. In Upton village, amid the chaos, newly married Ellen Parr finds a girl asleep, unclaimed at the back of an empty bus. Little Pamela, it seems, is entirely alone. Ellen has always believed she does not want children, but when she takes Pamela into her home, the child cracks open the past Ellen thought she had escaped and the future she and her husband, Selwyn, had dreamed for themselves. As the war rages on, love grows where it was least expected, surprising them all.

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a stranger arrives on their shore. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa.

For more than two centuries, Winterbourne Hall has stood atop a bluff overseeing the English countryside of Cornwall and the sea beyond. In 1947, Londoner Alice Miller accepts a post as governess at Winterbourne, looking after Captain Jonathan de Grey’s twin children. Falling under the de Greys’ spell, Alice believes the family will heal her own past sorrows. But then, the twins’ adoration becomes deceitful and taunting. Their father, ever distant, turns spiteful and cruel. The manor itself seems to lash out. Alice finds her surroundings subtly altered, her air slightly chilled.

Beyond the Pale is an anthology of 11 dark fantasy and paranormal stories that skirt the border between our world and others. Was that my imagination, or did I hear something under my bed? What was that blurred movement in my darkened closet? There is but a thin veil separating the real and the fantastic and therein dwell the inhabitants of these stories.

How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn’s best-selling - and timeless - classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn’s characters fight, love, laugh, and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people. Richard Llewellyn (1906–1983), a Welsh novelist, was born in Hendon, England, in the county of Middlesex.

Twelve-year-old Sora and her family live under an iron set of rules: No travel without a permit. No criticism of the government. No absences from Communist meetings. Wear red. Hang pictures of the Great Leader. Don't trust your neighbors. Don't speak your mind. You are being watched. But war is coming, war between North and South Korea, between the Soviets and the Americans. War causes chaos - so war is the perfect time to escape. The plan is simple: Sora and her family will walk for weeks from their tiny northern village to the South Korean city of Busan.

The year is 1729, and Resolute Talbot and her siblings are captured by pirates, taken from their family in Jamaica and brought to the New World. Resolute and her sister are sold into slavery in colonial New England and taught the trade of spinning and weaving. When Resolute finds herself alone in Lexington, Massachusetts, she struggles to find her way in a society that is quick to judge a young woman without a family. As the seeds of rebellion against England grow, Resolute is torn between following the rules and breaking free.

It’s 1835 in Utica, New York, and newlywed Helen Galway discovers a secret: Two runaway slaves are hiding in the shack behind her husband’s house. Suddenly, she is at the center of not only the era’s greatest moral dilemma, but her own, as well. Should she be a “good wife” and report the fugitives to her husband? Or will she defy convention and come to their aid? Within her home, Helen is haunted by the previous Mrs. Galway, recently deceased but still an oppressive presence.

Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss' struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets. Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn't long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a bookbinder - a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born.

A heartbreaking, enthralling and utterly unforgettable World War 2 story of two young sisters cruelly abandoned by their mother at an orphanage. 1929: four-year-old Etty and eight-year-old Dorothy are abandoned at Blakely Hall orphanage by their mother, never to see her again. With no other family to speak of, the sisters worship their beloved mam - and they are confused and heartbroken to be deserted by her when they need her the most.

Orphaned as a young child, Mirin O'Malley has been brought up by her grandparents on their isolated, rambling estate Hob's Hallow. Long ago her family prospered due to a deal struck with the mer, the terrifying creatures who live in the depths of the sea: safety for their merchant ships in return for a child of each generation. But for many years the family have been unable to keep their side of the bargain and their fortunes have suffered as a result. When Mirin's grandfather dies, her grandmother puts in train a plan to restore their glory - but at the price of Mirin's freedom.

Asher Todd comes to live with the mysterious Morwood family as a governess to their children. Asher knows little about being a governess but she is skilled in botany and herbcraft, and perhaps more than that. And she has secrets of her own, dark and terrible—and Morwood is a house that eats secrets. With a monstrous revenge in mind, Asher plans to make it choke. However, she becomes fond of her charges, of the people of the Tarn, and she begins to wonder if she will be able to execute her plan—and who will suffer most if she does.

In the tradition of Jane Eyre and Rebecca - The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea in which a young woman follows her new husband to his remote home on the Icelandic coast in the 1680s, where she faces dark secrets surrounding the death of his first wife amidst a foreboding landscape and the superstitions of the local villagers.

A Christmas collection to warm the heart. Grab a warm cup of tea and watch as romance is kindled and joy is restored to broken lives during six bygone-era Christmas celebrations.

Ian Cameron, a Boston cabinetmaker turned frontier trapper, has come to Mountain Laurel hoping to remake himself yet again - into his planter uncle’s heir. No matter how uneasily the role of slave owner rests upon his shoulders. Then he meets Seona - beautiful, artistic, and enslaved to his kin. Seona has a secret: She’s been drawing for years, ever since that day she picked up a broken slate to sketch a portrait. When Ian catches her at it, he offers her opportunity to let her talent flourish, still secretly, in his cabinetmaking shop.

Lise’s father is dead, and the life of plenty and freedom that she has known as the daughter of the King’s Huntsman is gone. She must now live a life of duty to her mother and sisters, helping them to cope in their altered circumstances. But where her mother would have her wed a childhood friend to secure their future, Lise knows that is not what she longs for.

Lucy Clairmont's family treasured the magic of the past, and her childhood fascination with stories of the high seas led her to become a marine archaeologist. But when tragedy strikes, it's Dashel, an American forensic astronomer, and his knowledge of the stars that may help her unearth the truth behind the puzzle she's discovered in her family home.

Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner.

Jesse Morgan is a man hiding from the pain of his past, a man who has vowed never to give his heart again. Keeper of a remote lighthouse along a rocky and dangerous coast, he has locked himself away from everything but his bitter memories. A beautiful stranger washes ashore, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. Penniless and pregnant, Mary Dare is a woman who carries painful memories of her own.

Anna O’Shea has failed at marriage, shed her job at a law firm, and she’s trying to re-create herself when she and her recalcitrant nephew are summoned to the past in a manner that nearly destroys them. Her twenty-first-century skills pale as she struggles to find her nephew in nineteenth-century Ireland. For one of them, the past is brutally difficult, filled with hunger and struggle. For the other, the past is filled with privilege, status, and a reprieve from the crushing pain of present-day life. For both Anna and her nephew, the past offers them a chance at love.