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.

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.

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.…

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....

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....

“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.

England, 1364: When married off at aged twelve to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it won’t matter what she says or does, God is not on her side—or any poor woman’s for that matter. But then again, Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars, making her both a lover and a fighter.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold. Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire....

Married at 19, Katherine had four years of happiness with her beloved Gerald. When he dies, she is left on her own to bring up a stepson, Simon, and her own little twins. She has known what it is to be loved and cherished, and without Gerald, all she wants is independence, and the freedom to bring up his children as he would have liked. When an unexpected letter arrives for Simon, offering him a very different life, Katherine is concerned that he makes the right choice.

England, 1835. London is awash with thrilling new ingredients, from rare spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them. When Eliza Acton is told by her publisher to write a cookery book instead of the poetry she loves, she refuses - until her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country. As a woman, Eliza has few options. Although she’s never set foot in a kitchen, she begins collecting recipes and teaching herself to cook. Much to her surprise, she discovers a talent - and a passion - for the culinary arts.

The saga begins in tribal, pre-Christian Ireland during the reign of the fierce and mighty High Kings at Tara, with the tale of two lovers whose travails cleverly echo the ancient Celtic legend of Cuchulainn. From that stirring beginning, Rutherfurd takes the listener on a powerfully imagined journey through the centuries. Through the interlocking stories of a memorable cast of characters we see Ireland through the lens of its greatest city.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding, Lucrezia is thrust into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must make her way in a court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed.