Emily Wroe has never known her mother. Raised in a Bristol foundling home, as a young mother she is sent to skivvy at a run-down country inn. The Thorn Tree's fortunes are about to change, for the innkeeper's wife is determined to profit from the increasing numbers of gentry travelling to Bath. She soon realises that her new maid is a bright and talented girl, and Emily finds herself with a mentor, friend, prospects - and the love of Luke Gilpin, who wishes to marry her.Then Felix ...

When rich, handsome Daniel Penhale proposes to Sophy Beardmore, she is swift to accept. The marriage seems to offer the security and respectability she has always dreamed of in a life overshadowed by her mother's feckless, radical way of living.But Daniel's wealth has not made Kildower, his Cornish house, a happy place. It is haunted by old memories, not least those of his first wife, Meraud. No one seems to know the true facts about her death, though rumours and suspicions abound,...

Francis Kerswell is an unforgiving and embittered man, and when his orphaned, penniless grandchildren, Joanna and Ben Howarth, arrive at Falconwood, his Devonshire home, he cannot bring himself to set aside the grievances he has nursed throughout the long and lonely years.For the sake of the estate, Kerswell is prepared to take in Ben, seeing in him a resemblance to his only son and heir, drowned years before. Though Ben has been brain-damaged since an accident, Kerswell feels chal...

Miranda Brehault's free and happy childhood at Moondance, a crumbling old house on the edge of Dartmoor, comes to an abrupt end when she is left orphaned and penniless at the age of ten. Moondance's new owner, Theophilus Crowe, promises to take care of her, but instead he dispatches her to a cotton mill in Derbyshire.Conditions at Crossbank Mill are harsh and pitiless; Miranda and the other pauper children are little more than prisoners. Desperate to escape, Miranda and her friend ...

1831: as England emerges from the post war depression, the country is changing, and the birth pains of the Reform Act bring it to the brink of revolution.The violent times breed violent acts, both outside and inside the Morland family. Sophie's life is shattered by a hideous crime. Rosamund learns that achieving her dreams brings as much pain as pleasure. Heloise, mourning her beloved James, lets control of Morland Place fall into chaos- Benedict has to flee his home and makes a li...

We kept our heads above the morass, stifled screaming despairs only by the exercise of Good Behaviour.Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic St Charles family is sinking into a state of decaying grace. Aroon, the unlovely daughter of the house, silently longs for affection - which she receives neither from her icy mother nor her hunting-obsessed father. The fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem stifled by the rules of good behaviour. But no crumbl...

The reimagining of Jane Eyre as a gutsy, heroic serial killer that The New York Times Book Review calls “wonderfully entertaining” and USA Today describes as “sheer mayhem meets Victorian propriety”—nominated for the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel.“Reader, I murdered him.”A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life u...

To Sir Robert Blenkinsopp, his frail, exquisite wife Amy is just another possession - to be used, misused or discarded like anything else at Newton Law, his grand estate on Northumberland's wild moore. The gamekeeper they call Duffy thinks he has never seen anything quite so brave as Amy Blenkinsopp as she faces up to her husband - and is overjoyed when the brute is found unconscious at the bottom of his own staircase, deprived of the power of speech and movement. With the help of Sir Robe...

1833: the industrial age is sweeping through England and the Stephensons are planning the greatest engineering scheme ever undertaken- a railway line from Liverpool to London.At Morland Place, Nicholas had hoped that his brother Benedict, had been banished forever, but railway fever has brought Benedict back to Yorkshire as an engineer on the Leeds & Selby line. It is a lonely life and he fears he will never be wealthy enough to marry his new love, Miss Fleetham. Nicholas fears tha...

In Victorian London, there exists no greater investigative team than master sleuth Colin Pendragon and his loyal partner, Ethan Pruitt. But it will take all their powers of deduction to determine if a fatal fall was a result of misery or murder . . .Adelaide Endicott—elderly sister of Lord Thomas Endicott, a senior member of Parliament—has plummeted to her death from the third-floor window of her bedroom at Layton Manor. Did she take her own life—or was she pushed? Althoug...

Set in Edinburgh and West Lothian at the end of the Victorian era, Light & Dark is the powerful story of the Blackwood family - Lorianna, a beautiful young woman, married at sixteen to a considerably older man; Gavin, her austere and sanctimonious husband; and Clementina, their wild and wayward daughter who grows up rebelling against everything her parents stand for. In their imposing mansion in the West Lothian countryside, the Blackwoods appear to live an affluent and normal family life....

Captain John Staple's exploits in the Peninsula had earned him the sobriquet 'Crazy' Jack amongst his fellows in the Dragoon Guards. Now home from Waterloo, life in peacetime is rather dull for the boisterous, adventure-loving Captain. But when he finds himself lost and benighted at an unmanned toll-house in the Pennines, his soldiering days suddenly pale away besides an adventure - and romance - of a lifetime.Yet again Georgette Heyer shows the qualities that made her one of the m...