In the Alazkan Klondike, at the height of the gold-rush, respectable women were thin on the ground and the San Franciscan based Peabody Marriage Bureau did a roaring trade despatching mail-order brides to women-starved stampeders. When half-Irish Lilli Stullen boarded the S.S. Senator as a Peabody bride, she did so not because she was hungry for a gold-rich husband but because it was the only way she could remove her orphaned younger brother and sister from the clutches of their hated uncle. To Lilli, the sacrifice of marrying a man she had never met was small in comparison to ensuring Leo and Lottie's happiness – or it was until she met 'Lucky' Jack Coolidge, a professional gambler with devilry in his eyes – a man no woman had ever been able to hold. Lilli was certain that when they arrived in the Klondike, Jack Coolidge would pay off her husband-to-be and marry her himself. She had reckoned, however, without the man who...

Sweeping from the Great War, through the Jazz Age to the 1940s, this unforgettable tale follows the entwined lives of the Fentons, an aristocratic family from Yorkshire.Thea, the eldest daughter of Viscount Gilbert Fenton, flouts the unwritten rules of her class by embarking on a love affair with Hal, the fiercely socialist son of one of her father's tenant farmers. Carrie, her close childhood friend and granddaughter of the Viscount's nanny, has always been expected to marry Hal - but when she goes into service she finds herself longing for the one person she can never hope to marry.Olivia, the middle Fenton sister, follows a more conventional path, forging friendships with the British royal family and attending a finishing school in Germany. Her relationship with Count von der Schulenburg does not raise eyebrows, but as the mid-1930s approach, she finds herself in a country experiencing rapid, radical and dangerous social change. Violet, the...

Susan Carter's idyllic Bavarian holiday was rudely shattered while picnicking on the hillside by the sound of a speeding car, followed by a crash. Looking through her binoculars she saw the occupants leave their wrecked car and then take off in her own small Morris. If only Susan hadn't read the newspaper account of the murder of a German minister! If only she hadn't recognized the photograph of the car—said to have been used by the assassins! For Susan life gradually takes on the horror of a nightmare. Nor does she know which of her 'rescuers' to trust —Stephen Maitland or Gunther Cliburn.

It's not every child who is named after a motor car, and when little Daisy Ford discovers she's been abandoned by her mother, she resolves to put the name – and her unhappy years at the convent orphanage – behind her for ever. Quite unaware of her haunting beauty, frighteningly innocent of the harsh ways of the outside world, Daisy makes her way to Hollywood, determined to become an actress in the great tradition of the stars she admired as a child. Taking the name Valentina, and refusing to reveal any details of her past, she is discovered by the brilliant Hungarian director Vidal Rakoczi. Handsome, tempestuous, his devilish good looks matched by his devil-may-care temperament, Vidal is as controversial as he is talented. Instantly recognising the potential of Valentina's ethereal loveliness, he draws out her innate acting ability and casts her in his latest film. What starts as a professional relationship between the...

Four very different girls from different worlds meet on their first day of school in 1962. Artemis is the daughter of a self-made man; Geraldine is from an upper-class family; Kiki's father is a doctor and Primmie is a scholarship girl. They are inseparable, and when they leave school and move into a flat together it seems perfect. But it doesn't take long for their illusions about each other to be shattered, and they go their separate ways. Each of them has a reason for not wishing to rekindle their friendship, so, years later, when Primmie posts a message on Friends Reunited in the hope that her old friends will make contact, the results are surprising . . . 'A charming light romance, suitable for popular reading collections' Booklist 'Margaret Pemberton is one of the best saga writers around' The Bookseller

'Here she is!' Alexander was shouting. 'This is your new daughter-in-law! An Irish peasant . . . An illegitimate . . . illiterate . . . Irish peasant!' 1860: Alexander Karolyis, only son of the wealthiest entrepreneur in New York, spends most of his adolescence battling within his father. Nothing he does is considered correct. The girl he loves is highly unsuitable, his behaviour is unruly, and, in a last-ditch attempt to marry him off to a suitable Protestant aristocrat, his father packs him off on a European Grand Tour. And while Alexander was feuding with his father, beautiful Maura Sullivan, illegitimate daughter of an Irish peasant, was befriended and raised by Lord Clanmar on his idyllic Ballacharnish estate. Only when he died unexpectedly did Maura's world crash about her ears. His will left her little option but to leave Ireland and start a new life in New York. It was there, on the emigrant boat to America, that Maura and...

'The Nile, the white fountains of the Nile. . .' Her father's last words haunt Harriet Latimer long after she has been rescued from the Nubian desert which they had been attempting to cross. Her rescuer, the insolent and devastatingly handsome Raoul Beauvais, is a French explorer and geographer with the same objective – to find the source of the Nile in Africa. Despite Harriet's requests, Raoul swears that women have no place on his expedition, but he makes an exception for the beautiful Circassian Narinda. Can Harriet realise her father's dream and make the journey that no European woman has attempted before?

Alison Russell's holiday is rudely shattered by gunfire when Basque separatists try to smuggle arms into the quiet fishing village in which she is staying. Accompanied only by Miss Daventry, a tough old English eccentric who fought in the Spanish Civil war, Alison reluctantly goes to the aid of Jose and Luis Villada. It is a mission of mercy that turns into a nightmare. Miss Daventry and Luis disappear and Jose and Alison are hunted not only by the police but by the psychopathic killer, Angel Garmendia. They flee on horseback across the Pyrenees and into France, only to find that friend has turned into foe and the treachery of the war years stretches long fingers into the present. Terrified for the safety of her elderly friend, heartbroken at the death of the man she has come to love, Alison waits alone in the deserted village of Cotanes as the hunters close in.