Sir Godfrey Tallboys was a knight-errant, famous for his success at tourneys, but far from wealthy. In an attempt to make his fortune he left his wife Sybilla and travelled to Spain to fight a minor rusade against the Moors. But treachery lurked in that far distant land and soon Sir Godfrey became a prisoner, a helpless slave in a hostile country. Back in quiet Suffolk he was reported dead. And so it fell to Sybilla to fend for the whole family.

For the Spender family, the ancient, beautifully kept house had seemed a godsend, an incredible bargain, almost a gift from its owner - a kindly man who merely wanted someone to protect the family homestead, to make Gad’s come alive again. And it did. Soon a strong-willed, sensible woman would be overtaken by irrational feelings she could not control, all because of the unspeakable secret kept by the women who had lived at Gad’s Hall more than a century ago.…

"It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me… the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father…” So began the story of Martin Reed - a serf whose resentment of the automatic rule of his feudal lord finally flared into open defiance.

When William the Conqueror wished to reward his armourer, he made him a grant of land - land worked by freemen and already belonging to a Saxon lord. But the men of the Conquest had no time for the niceties of land tenure and legal possession. Rolf, the armourer, hacked his way through the Saxon defiance and savagely claimed his royal bequest.

When, at the Pollards Harvest Supper of 1817, Araminta Glover was seduced by Jan Honeywood, the outcome seemed inevitable. Araminta, like so many servant girls, would marry her poor suitor and prepare to raise a large family on nine shillings a week. But 17-year-old Araminta was determined enough to rebel against the pattern of impoverished rural life, and, putting marriage and Jan firmly behind her, she accepted the post of dairymaid in the house of the strange Mrs Stancy.

She was the daughter of a preacher and a gypsy. A strange and elusive child with powers of prophecy, she grew into an even stranger woman. From those around her she inspired love and admiration or furious hatred. Nothing in between. And somehow Jassy could transform even those who loved her into her enemies. Barney Hatton, the dispossessed heir of Mortiboys, loved her but not enough. Lindy, a girl who worked there, loved her too much.

Forced to flee Revolutionary France after the brutal guillotining of her beloved father, Isabella de Savigny arrives at Nethergate, the Suffolk house of her cousin, hoping for sympathy and succour. Instead, as a poor relation, she is forced to live the life of a servant and suffer the casual cruelty of lady’s maid Martha Pratt. When she is seduced and abandoned by the son of the house, Isabella is forced to marry Martha’s brother, and her struggle to survive truly begins. However, her misery is lessened when her daughter is born....

In the autumn of 1817, the arrival of the Ipswich coach and its occupants – a strange, ill-assorted company – changed the lives of those who lived at the Fleece Inn forever…. Will Oakley, landlord and host, with his two daughters, beautiful Myrtle, and the repellent Harriet, waited to receive his guests. Along with the usual farmers, merchants and the “quality”, there were others who fitted into none of these categories.

When young John Vincent died, the outward respectability of the Cornwall household was undermined. Strangers pried, asked too many questions and pointed accusing fingers at Charlotte - herself eager to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of her father's home.

Pargeting is a highly skilled trade. And Pargeters is the name given to the Suffolk home of John Mercer in honour of Adam Woodley, the craftsman who had decorated it so lovingly. Over two generations, and throughout the turbulent years of the Civil War, Pargeters comes to stand as a symbol of unity for a household divided by conflicting political loyalties and abandoned by its menfolk. And it is the mistress of Pargeters, Sarah Woodley-Mercer, who holds the small household together in this troubled time.

“All eyes and hair” a courtier had said disparagingly of her – and certainly the younger daughter of Tom Boleyn lacked the bounteous charms of most ladies of Court. Black-haired, black eyes, she had a wild-sprite quality that was to prove more effective, more dangerous than conventional feminine appeal. The King first noticed her when she was sixteen – and with imperial greed he smashed her youthful love-affair with Harry Percy and began the process of royal seduction.

Out of the courts of 12th-century England strode the legendary figure of Richard of England leading his knights onto the Saracen battlefields, inspired by a vision of the Holy Land. Here is the story of the Soldier-King and the Third Crusade - of his strange, ill-fated union with Berengaria, Princess of Navarre; and of his mother, the She-Wolf, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who loved her son with a frantic, possessive pride. And, above all, here is the story of the minstrel whose life was linked with that of the King - the story of Blondel, the Lute Player....

The house was built in the Old Queen's time: built for an Elizabethan pirate who was knighted for the plunder he brought home. It survived many eras, many reigns: it saw the passing of Cromwell and the Civil War. It became rich with an Indian Nabob and poor with a 20th century innkeeper. It saw wars, and lovers, and death. Children were born there, both heirs and bastards. It had ghosts and legends and a history that grew stranger with every generation.

With all of the pluck and charm of its eponymous young hero, Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, Spotlight, Midnight in Paris) delivers a spectacular reading of Montgomery's beloved bildungsroman. In moments both funny and bittersweet, McAdams' voice is imbued with the spark that has made Anne a much-loved symbol of individualism and cheer for over a century.

When Edward de Salis travels to America after the death of his first wife, he is astonished to find himself falling in love with Marguerite, a young woman many years his junior. Full of hope for the future, he returns to his Irish estate, Cashelmara, but in 19th-century Ireland - a country racked by poverty and famine - his family eventually becomes trapped in a sinister spiral of violence that Edward could never have foreseen.