Item category 1: Family Saga

An engaging, thoroughly researched tale of youthful naivety and courage in the face of adversity, full of rich detail and imagination.

When orphaned Jake Harding is sent away from his adoptive home aged just seven, he does not understand why - especially as his adopted brother, Toby, is kept by their mother. Forced to make his own way in the world, Jake falls in with a gang of petty thieves, who make their living lifting valuabl...

Victoria is astonished when she discovers an abandoned newborn baby on her doorstep, along with a note begging her to 'take care of little Rose'. Who is the mother? Victoria, Naomi and the Churchwood bookshop organising team set about trying to identify her, concerned for her welfare and hoping t...

Three girls seem to have the world at their feet in the summer of 1914. But World War 1 is coming and things will change forever - especially for women. Lucinda McFarlane is engaged to be married to dashing Sir David Melcome, but their society wedding has to be scaled right down when war is decla...

In 1845 Annie Gibson can finally leave Salem Street. Her dreams of being able to open an elegant dressmaking salon in the High Street of Bilsden, a Lancashire mill town, have come true. She is going to take her father and his second family with her, away from the poverty. But Annie has not left t...

When Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy left London four years ago, Europe was facing war and Billy Cavendish, the man she loved, had told her he could never marry her. Now, as London stands a shell of its former self, Kick returns to volunteer with the Red Cross, determined to do what she can for the city ...

Nineteen-year old Nan Turpin is in trouble again, accused of stealing. She's guilty. Cast out by her family, she turns to the House of Help for Friendless Girls, which promises Nan a fresh start - it's the House or gaol. She and warden Hetty immediately clash, but Hetty has her own secrets to kee...

England, 1940s. Minnie has spent most of her life feeling like a plain Jane, watching things happen around her, waiting for something - just something - to happen to her. When her old best friend, the beautiful and callous Junie, unexpectedly returns to Sixteen Streets, Minnie's not quite sure ho...

Princess Grace of Monaco has invited the world-famous Forsyth Variety Company to perform at her annual high society ball. Monaco is in the heat of its preparations for the Grand Prix when the Forsyth family makes their emotional return to the city, stirring up painful memories for father Ed Forsy...

In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away. Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to...