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.

The Civil War left its mark on Dr. John Turner. He turns his back on medicine and sees his unexpected inheritance in England as an opportunity to start over. But he never imagines how God intends to use his new role as lord of Ashford Hall or the beautiful woman he finds there to ease his troubled soul. A tragic loss led Penelope Howard to bury her heart and dreams in her work for the Hall and the village of Woodley. But the arrival of the new heir stirs not only her discarded longings but her compassion as well.

In 1944, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II. Tess’s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows no interest in making love. Tess quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.

At 97 years old, Winnifred Ellis knows she doesn’t have much time left, and it is almost a relief to realize that once she is gone, the truth about her shameful past will die with her. But when her great-grandson Jamie, the spitting image of her dear late husband, asks about his family tree, Winnifred can’t lie any longer, even if it means breaking a promise she made so long ago....

In the fall of 1918, 13-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia's overcrowded streets and slums, and from the anti-German sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the US Army, hoping to prove his loyalty. But an even more urgent threat has arrived. Spanish influenza is spreading through the city. Soon, dead and dying are everywhere. With no food at home, Pia must venture out in search of supplies, leaving her infant twin brothers alone....

Charlotte Gleason embarks from England in 1886 with mixed feelings. Although she’s never met her fiancé, she's headed for New York to marry one of America’s wealthiest heirs. Filled with doubts and hoping for a chance at “real life”, she swaps identities with her maid Dora. For Dora, it’s the chance of a lifetime. But for Charlotte, what begins as the whim of a spoiled rich girl becomes a test of survival beyond her darkest dreams.

Gracie Glick is known for being the helpful one, always available for a relative in need. But now that she’s longing for a home and family of her own, it’s time to help herself. With few eligible men in Pontotoc, Gracie’s choices, and her time, are limited. So she takes a bold leap of faith: She proposes to Matthew Byler, a handsome, recently widowed, father of five. It’s not until after they’re married that Gracie learns Matthew doesn’t want more children.

California, 1938—When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret, however—Rosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she’d never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by her loneliness she not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment lets down her guard and ends up pregnant.

In 1933 Louisville, Kentucky, even the ongoing economic depression cannot keep Piper Danson's parents from insisting on a debut party. After all, their fortune came through the market crash intact, and they've picked out the perfect suitor for their daughter. Braxton Crandall can give her the kind of life to which she's accustomed. The only problem? This is not the man - or the life - she really wants.

It's 1864, and civil war is devastating the country. When a speaker at the church shows sisters Eliza and Maggie a copy of Matrimonial News and tells them of the opportunities for women as brides in the west, Eliza sees a glimmer of hope in a world of widows and spinsters. But she’s skeptical. Maggie is excited, and with their mother enthusiastic about a brighter future for her daughters, the sisters set off to the west to start a new life.

When Laura McAllister, a young lady's maid, learns her three siblings have been taken from their mother and emigrated to Canada without her mother's knowledge, she becomes determined to search for them and reunite the family. But a lack of funds and resistance from authorities push her to use a false name and take a position with a child emigration society to gain passage to Canada.

England 1922. It’s been four years since Rudy’s brother Edgar went missing in war-torn France. Still deep in mourning and grappling with unanswered questions, Rudy and his mother struggle to move on. When the enigmatic Mariette arrives unexpectedly at the family’s manor claiming to be Edgar’s widow, and the mother of his child, Rudy urges her to stay, hoping she’ll shed light on the missing pieces.

When Donaldina Cameron arrives at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895, she intends to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants, but, within days, she discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization - the criminal tong - brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Donaldina becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade.

It's 1922 in the Manhattan of gin, jazz and prosperity. Women wear makeup and hitched hemlines - and enjoy a new freedom to vote and work. Not so for Evelyn Lockhart, who is forbidden from pursuing her passion to become one of the first female doctors. Chasing her dream will mean turning her back on her family: her competitive sister, Viola; her conservative parents; and the childhood best friend she is expected to marry, Charlie.

In the aftermath of WWI, Grace Abernathy is determined to reunite with her family, crossing an ocean to convince her widowed sister to return home to England. But Toronto holds more tragedy and her nephew, Christian, is now in the custody of his paternal relatives, the formidable Easton family, who rejected Grace's sister because of her low social status. Unconvinced that the Eastons can be fitting caretakers, Grace jumps at the chance to become Christian's nanny and to observe the family up close. But she is shocked to discover herself falling for Andrew Easton, the boy's guardian.

When Laura McAllister, a young lady's maid, learns her three siblings have been taken from their mother and emigrated to Canada without her mother's knowledge, she becomes determined to search for them and reunite the family. But a lack of funds and resistance from authorities push her to use a false name and take a position with a child emigration society to gain passage to Canada.

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.

Six years ago, a shocking secret sent Agnes Pratt running in search of a new start. She found it in Penance, a rugged town of miners and lumberjacks in the Dakota Territory, where she became Miss Aggie, respected schoolteacher and confirmed old maid. But the past has a way of catching up with people. When childhood friend and former sweetheart James Harris accepts a position as the town doctor, Aggie's pleasantly predictable days suddenly become anything but.

Sixteen-year-old Lorena Leland’s dreams of a rich and fulfilling life as a writer are dashed when the stock market crashes in 1929. Seven years into the Great Depression, Rena’s banker father has retreated into the bottle, her sister is married to a lazy charlatan and gambler, and Rena is an unemployed newspaper reporter. Eager for any writing job, Rena accepts a position interviewing former slaves for the Federal Writers’ Project. There, she meets Frankie Washington, a 101-year-old woman whose honest yet tragic past captivates Rena.

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.

This book is for listeners of true crime podcasts and audiences of both fiction and true-crime nonfiction. It's the true story of first-generation Irish-American nurse Jane Toppan, born as Honora Kelley. Jane Toppan was absolutely a monster, but she did not start out that way. When Jane was a young child, her father abandoned her and her sister to the Boston Female Asylum. From there, Jane was indentured to a wealthy family who changed her name, never adopted her, and wrote her out of the will.

In the home where Arabella Godwin was raised it is forbidden to speak her name, and her picture is turned to the wall. But in the turbulent America of the 1850s, everyone knows her as "Belle Cora", madam of San Francisco's finest bordello. Judges and senators do her bidding; a vicious newspaper editor plots her downfall; a preacher looks at her from across his pulpit and tries to forget that once she was his wife. Merchant's daughter, farm girl, prostitute, mother - the only thing that never changes is her tireless pursuit of the one man who can see her for who she really is.

The glimmering Huguenot cross she so innocently wears leads her deep into the shadows. When Gabriella Madison arrives in the French village of Castelnau in 1961 to continue her university studies, she doesn’t anticipate being drawn into the secretive world behind the Algerian war for independence from France. And the further she delves into the war efforts, the more her faith is challenged. The people who surround her bring a whirlwind of transforming forces.

When American heiress Gwen Barton aids an injured gentleman in an opera box in London, she shares a kiss with the stranger that changes her life. More determined than ever to be herself, in spite of the limp she's sustained since childhood, she will marry for love and not a title. She also resolves to learn the identity of the man she helped - and kissed. Surely he can't be the irritating Avery Winfield though. But as circumstances continue to throw Gwen and Avery together, she begins to wonder if there is more to this man than she first thought.