1867, Richmond, Virginia: Though she wears the same low-cut purple gown that is the uniform of all the girls who work at Worsham's gambling parlor, Arabella stands apart. It's not merely her statuesque beauty and practiced charm. Even at seventeen, Arabella possesses an unyielding grit, and a resolve to escape her background of struggle and poverty. Collis Huntington, railroad baron and self-made multimillionaire, is drawn to Arabella from their first meeting. Collis is married and 30 years her senior, yet they are well-matched in temperament, and flirtation rapidly escalates into an affair.

Nell Sweeney has led an ordinary life. Every day, she walks to and from the hospital where she works as a nurse, believing that no harm can befall her. Until one day she is taken. Because someone out there has a secret. Someone out there has been watching Nell—and they’ve been watching others like her, too. Nell is the unlucky one—she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if she isn’t found soon, someone will make sure that she isn’t the last woman to be taken.

Los Angeles, 1920s: Socialite Mirielle West's days are crowded with shopping, luncheons, and prepping for the myriad glittering parties she attends with her actor husband, Charlie. She's been too busy to even notice the small patch of pale skin on the back of her hand. Other than an occasional overindulgence in gin and champagne, which helps to numb the pain of recent tragedy, Mirielle is the picture of health. But her doctor insists on more tests, and Mirielle reluctantly agrees. The diagnosis - leprosy - is devastating and unthinkable.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

Ana Kaminski is pushed through the iron gates of Auschwitz beside her frightened young friend Ester Pasternak. As they reach the front of the line, Ana steps forward and quietly declares herself a midwife--and Ester her assistant. Their arms are tattooed and they’re ordered to the maternity hut. Holding an innocent newborn baby, Ana knows the fate of so many are in her hands and vows to do everything she can to save them.

Lina Meisel, a retired librarian in Florida, is reading the newspaper one morning when she freezes. Her eyes lock on a photograph of a book she hasn’t seen in 65 years - a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II - an experience Lina remembers well - and the search to reunite people with the texts stolen from them so long ago. The book in the photograph is one of the most fascinating cases.

Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins. They loved the same things and shared a deep understanding, but Rosemary—awake to every emotion, easily moved to joy or tears—seemed to need more protection from the world. Six years after Rosemary's death from pneumonia, Sage, now sixteen, still misses her deeply. Their mother perished in a car crash, and Sage's stepfather, Alan, resents being burdened by a responsibility he never wanted.

"The dead can't hurt you. Only the living can." Effie Jones, a former slave who escaped to the Union side as a child, knows the truth of her words. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife during the War, she learned to read and write, to tolerate the sight of blood and broken bodies - and to forget what is too painful to bear. Now a young freedwoman, she has returned south to New Orleans and earns her living as an embalmer, her steady hand and skillful incisions compensating for her white employer's shortcomings.

Two women develop a groundbreaking surgery: the Cesarean section. It's a highly dangerous procedure and the research is grueling, but even worse is the vitriolic response from men. Most don't trust the findings of women, and many can choose to deny their wives medical care. Already facing resistance on all sides, Nora is shaken when she meets a patient who will die without the surgery. If the procedure is successful, her work could change the world. But a failure could cost everything: precious lives, Nora's career, and the role women will be allowed to play in medicine.

Soline Roussel is well schooled in the business of happy endings. For generations her family has kept an exclusive bridal salon in Paris, where magic is worked with needle and thread. It’s said that the bride who wears a Roussel gown is guaranteed a lifetime of joy. But devastating losses during World War II leave Soline’s world and heart in ruins and her faith in love shaken. She boxes up her memories, stowing them away, along with her broken dreams, determined to forget.

London, 1889. For Ira Adler, former rent-boy and present plaything of crime lord Cain Goddard, stealing back the statue from Goddard's blackmailer should have been a doddle. But inside the statue is evidence that could put Goddard away for a long time under the sodomy laws, and everyone's after it, including Ira's bitter ex, Dr. Timothy Lazarus.

When a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand New York apartment house the Dakota, leads to a job offer for Sara Smythe, her world is suddenly awash in possibility - no mean feat for a servant in 1884. The opportunity to move to America. The opportunity to be the female manager of the Dakota. And the opportunity to see more of Theo, who understands Sara like no one else...and is living in the Dakota with his wife and three young children.

Dublin, 1952. When Mary Kate Ryan receives a surprise inheritance from the woman who abandoned her as a tiny baby, she’s stunned. All her life, she has longed to know why her mother disappeared, and now she’s devastated to realize that every lonely night she spent without a home or family of her own, her mother knew exactly where she was.

In Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, novelist Jennifer Chiaverini presents a stunning account of the friendship that blossomed between Mary Todd Lincoln and her seamstress, Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Keckley, a former slave who gained her professional reputation in Washington, D.C. by outfitting the city’s elite. Keckley made history by sewing for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln within the White House, a trusted witness to many private moments between the President and his wife, two of the most compelling figures in American history.

London, 1889. For Ira Adler, former rent-boy and present plaything of crime lord Cain Goddard, stealing back the statue from Goddard's blackmailer should have been a doddle. But inside the statue is evidence that could put Goddard away for a long time under the sodomy laws, and everyone's after it, including Ira's bitter ex, Dr. Timothy Lazarus.

Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be a slave to his family's interest or to be committed to a witches' asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn't leave his past behind. The war between Aeland and Laneer leaves men changed, strangers to their friends and family. Even after faking his own death and reinventing himself as a doctor at a cash-strapped veteran's hospital, Miles can't hide what he truly is.

1830s London is rich with promise ... and fraught with peril. Rachel Dunne and James Edmunds are about to discover that love is too. Rachel Dunne has always been a healer ... until she’s accused of causing the death of a child under her care. Acquitted but shunned, she flees Ireland in search of a new life, convinced that she’ll be fine so long as no one in London learns of her disgrace - or forces her to ever sit at another sickbed.

Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill. Cover Her Face is P. D. James' electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.

In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the naked body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. The young victim was pregnant when she died. Detective William Murdoch soon discovers that many of those connected with the girl's life have secrets to hide. Was her death on attempt to cover up a scandal in one of the city's influential families?

A team of unlikely friends - an orphaned street musician, a hard-working girl from the tenements, and a talented clockmaker's apprentice - discover that together they can overcome even the darkest of fears.

Wrongfully accused of murder, Dr. Catherine Bennett is destined to hang...unless she can disappear. With the untamed territory of Colorado as her most likely refuge, she packs her physician's kit and heads West. But even with a new life and name, a female doctor with a bounty on her head can hide for only so long.

Aida Palmer performs a spirit medium show onstage at Chinatown's illustrious Gris-Gris speakeasy. However, her ability to summon (and expel) the dead is more than just an act. Winter Magnusson is a notorious bootlegger who's more comfortable with guns than ghosts. Unfortunately for him, he's the recent target of a malevolent hex that renders him a magnet for hauntings. After Aida's supernatural assistance is enlisted to banish the ghosts, her spirit-chilled aura heats up as the charming bootlegger casts a different sort of spell on her.

Cornwall, 1940. Back in England after the harrowing evacuation at Dunkirk, WWII Red Cross nurse Anna Trenowyth is shocked to learn her adoptive parents, Graham and Prue Handley, have been killed in an air raid. She desperately needs their advice, as she's been assigned to the military hospital that has set up camp inside her biological mother's childhood home - Nanreath Hall. Anna was just six years old when her mother, Lady Katherine Trenowyth, died. All she has left are vague memories that tease her with clues she can't unravel.

Saddled with a man's name, the captivating Billy Jack Tate makes no apologies for taking on a man's profession. As a doctor at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, she is one step closer to having her very own medical practice - until Hunter Scott asks her to give it all up to become his wife.

Amsterdam, May 1943. As the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or - for a chance at survival - join the camp brothel. On the other side of the barbed wire, SS Officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to meet his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, their lives change forever.

After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, 17-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boardinghouse. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house's mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.

After his train is robbed at gunpoint, Remington Frost awakens from a blow to find the bandits gone - along with the woman he was shadowing for protection. No stranger to risk, Remington will do what it takes to bring Phoebe Apple to safety and her kidnappers to justice. But ransoming Phoebe is just the start of trouble....

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.

Twelve-year-old Ren doesn't know who his parents were. He doesn't know who left him at St. Anthony's orphanage, or how he lost his left hand when still an infant. He is resigned to life without a family to call his own and terrified of the future. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents is enough to persuade the monks at the orphanage to release the boy. But is Benjamin really who he says he is?

"The dead can't hurt you. Only the living can." Effie Jones, a former slave who escaped to the Union side as a child, knows the truth of her words. Taken in by an army surgeon and his wife during the War, she learned to read and write, to tolerate the sight of blood and broken bodies - and to forget what is too painful to bear. Now a young freedwoman, she has returned south to New Orleans and earns her living as an embalmer, her steady hand and skillful incisions compensating for her white employer's shortcomings.

Los Angeles, 1920s: Socialite Mirielle West's days are crowded with shopping, luncheons, and prepping for the myriad glittering parties she attends with her actor husband, Charlie. She's been too busy to even notice the small patch of pale skin on the back of her hand. Other than an occasional overindulgence in gin and champagne, which helps to numb the pain of recent tragedy, Mirielle is the picture of health. But her doctor insists on more tests, and Mirielle reluctantly agrees. The diagnosis - leprosy - is devastating and unthinkable.

In Amanda Skenandore's provocative and profoundly moving debut, set in the tragic intersection between white and Native American culture, a young girl learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging. Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma's childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.

During the Great Depression, labor camps crop up in remote areas throughout the American South. Destitute workers live under terrible conditions. Trapped in these isolated locations, workers are entirely dependent on the often greedy, abusive camp owners who provide food and housing at grossly inflated prices. But for the most desperate among America's vast unemployed, these camps are often the last and only option.

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....

Madeleine Talmage Force is just 17 when she attracts the attention of John Jacob "Jack" Astor. Jack's mother was the Mrs. Astor, American royalty and New York's most formidable socialite. Despite their 29-year age difference and the scandal of Jack's recent divorce, Madeleine falls headlong into love. On their honeymoon in Egypt, the newlyweds finally find a measure of peace away from photographers and journalists. Madeleine feels truly alive for the first time - and is happily pregnant. The couple plans to return home in the spring of 1912, aboard an opulent new ocean liner.

Once a trailblazer in the field of medicine, Dr. Tucia Hatherley hasn't touched a scalpel or stethoscope since she made a fatal mistake in the operating theater. Instead, she works in a corset factory, striving to earn enough to support her disabled son. When even that livelihood is threatened, Tucia is left with one option-to join a wily, charismatic showman named Huey and become part of his traveling medicine show.

On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom. Lilly isn't allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She's never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it's for Lilly's own protection, that people would be afraid if they saw her. But on this unforgettable night, Lilly is taken outside for the first time - and sold to the circus sideshow.

My name is Sarah Shaw. I’m a nurse. I’m working at the hospital on my usual night shift when I receive an urgent call from the nurse’s station. As I rush down the brightly lit corridor, I see two police officers. And I know it’s terrible news.... The words blur together as the officer standing in front of me tells me that my husband, William, is dead. We were only married for a few short months. Our life together hadn’t even started. Now I’m 30 years old and a widow. As the investigation begins, all eyes are on me: the young wife.

Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to Jessie Sasser's daddy, but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she's concerned, moonshine caused her mother's death a dozen years ago. Her father refuses to speak about her mama, or about the day she died. But Jessie has a gnawing hunger for the truth - one that compels her to seek comfort in food.

Ellis Island, 1902. Francesca arrives on the shores of America, her sights set on a better life than the one she left in Italy. That same day, aspiring linguist Alma reports to her first day of work at the immigrant processing center. Ellis, though, is not the refuge it first appears thanks to President Roosevelt's attempts to deter crime. Francesca and Alma will have to rely on each other to escape its corruption and claim the American dreams they were promised.