Sixteen years ago, Lizzie Armitage woke to find her newborn baby gone. Just days later, Lizzie was dead. Her sister Paula swore she would do everything she could to find the child. If she hadn’t promised to keep Lizzie's pregnancy secret, maybe the baby wouldn’t have disappeared. And maybe Lizzie would still be alive. But, in nearly a decade, Paula’s never found any trace. Until now...

As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything - beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses - but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets.

Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson lives on the Terminal Ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital. Though the teenager has been told she’s dying, she still has plenty of living to do. Joining the hospital’s arts and crafts class, she meets the magnificent Margot, an 83-year-old, purple-pajama-wearing, fruitcake-eating rebel, who transforms Lenni in ways she never imagined. As their friendship blooms, a world of stories opens for these unlikely companions who, between them, have been alive for one hundred years.

Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: She is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor.

When Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother’s death, she’s focused only on saying goodbye to that dark and dismal part of her life. Her childhood home is packed solid with useless junk, her mother’s presence already fading. But within this mess, she discovers a small stash of letters — and ultimately, the truth. Forty years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet except for the constant wind that encircles her as she hurries deeper into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea.

On the beautiful beaches of Crete, an old woman is handing out scraps of paper. Sofia, eighty-five years old, unable to speak, is desperate to find a daughter she has never known. After a tragic childhood in Athens and a soaring career as a singer, the brutal treatment of the man she loved by a tyrannical regime forced her to give up her daughter mere days after her birth. Now she longs to be reunited with her child before it's too late. Meanwhile in London, Zoe is searching too. In the months since the disappearance of her teenage daughter, Zoe's life has crumbled apart.

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.

Bristol, 1939. School leaver Maisie Miles suspects her father, a small-time crook, has an ulterior motive for insisting she gets a job at the W. D. & H. O. Wills tobacco factory but keeps it to herself. She's befriended by effervescent Phyllis Mason and kind-hearted Bridget Milligan who take pity on her and take Maisie under their wing. But beneath their happy-go-lucky exteriors, they all harbour dreams and worries about what the future holds.

Barbara was 12 when she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital Aston Hall in 1971. From a troubled home, she'd hoped she would find sanctuary there. But during her stay, Barbara was systematically drugged and abused by its head physician, Dr Kenneth Milner. Somehow, eventually, she started to campaign for answers. This is a shocking account of how vulnerable children were preyed upon by the doctor entrusted with their care.

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.

England, 1943: Home is no longer safe for eight-year-old twins Molly and Jacob. Night after night, wailing bombs and screeching planes skim the rooftops overhead. They cradle each other, shivering in terror, not knowing if they'll live to see dawn. Their mother, Martha, has no choice but to evacuate them to the safety of the countryside. At the train station, Martha bites back tears as she says good-bye to her precious children. Knowing she might never see them again, she gives Jacob a letter, pressing the envelope into his hands and telling him to only read it if they are in danger.

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred unpicks the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

Isabel Delancey, a classical violinist, has always taken her comfortable life for granted. But when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of debt, she and her two children are forced to abandon their home and move to the Spanish House, a now-dilapidated manor Isabel inherited in the English countryside. With the house falling down around them, and the last of her savings disappearing fast, Isabel turns to her neighbors for help, not knowing that her mere presence there has stirred up long-standing obsessions.

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.

England, 1941: Life has always been cruel to Ethel. Raised in an orphanage by a merciless mistress, she never knew the meaning of love. And now she has fallen for the one man who is forbidden to her - Karl, a German held captive in the local prisoner-of-war camp. He might be the enemy, but he has her heart. When Ethel discovers she’s pregnant, she is labelled a traitor and shunned by all. The love of her life is torn away from her, but she vows to protect their precious daughter. But the unthinkable happens....