Showing titles in 20th Century

Constance Duncan has more important things on her mind than finding a husband - for herself, at any rate. Constance connects lonely hearts, and nothing will distract her from it - until she finds herself irresistibly drawn to a man of disastrously different views. Max Ensor is a politician whose outmoded attitudes outrage her - even as his powerful presence intrigues her. Clearly there is only one thing to do with such an exasperating man: convert him! Little does Constance know that Max has the same plan in mind for her....

As Hitler’s troops sweep into Vienna, Austrian Max Dornbach promises to help his Jewish friends hide their most valuable possessions from the Nazis, smuggling them to his family’s summer estate near the picturesque village of Hallstatt. He enlists the help of Annika Knopf, his childhood friend and the caretaker’s daughter. Eighty years later, Callie Randall is mostly content with her quiet life, running a bookstore with her sister and reaching out into the world through her blog. Then she finds a cryptic list in an old edition of Bambi that connects her to Annika’s story.

London,1925. Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Devenand Hunter finds himself in the middle of a series of upper-class deaths in London. Bright young people are being extinguished in their favorite night spots, from a sleazy private jazz club to the Savoy ballroom. Dev knows just the person to help him navigate the treacherous society waters: Lady Adelaide Compton, a marquess's daughter and widow of a Great War hero. Unfortunately, he has put her in jeopardy once before, nearly leading him to turn in his warrant card.

Anna is distraught when her beloved mother, Ines, passes away. She inherits a box of papers, handwritten in Italian and yellowed with age, and a tantalizing promise that the truth about what happened during the war lies within. The diaries lead Anna to the small village of Rofelle, where she slowly starts to heal as she explores sun-kissed olive groves, and pieces together her mother’s past: happy days spent herding sheep across Tuscan meadows cruelly interrupted when World War Two erupted and the Nazis arrived....

It's 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, Gaunt signs up immediately.

When Jane is caught in a deadly love triangle between rival spies Ellis and Jean-Pierre, she becomes entangled in a web of lust, hatred and deception, which sweeps all three of them from terrorist conspiracies in Paris to all-out guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan. Jean-Pierre and Jane marry and go to work as doctors in the Valley of the Five Lions to help the rebels fighting for their freedom against the Russians. Confronted by extreme violence and danger, Jane desperately tries to get out of the line of fire. Then help comes, unexpectedly, in the form of her husband's greatest enemy....

Verna Lind expects Christmas of 1952 to be the best holiday she’s had since the war ended. But as she’s leaving the bank, a frigid wind off Lake Erie catches her hard-earned Christmas club savings, whisking the bills into the busy streets of downtown Cleveland and devastating her plans. Strangers come to her aid, though no one anticipates the power of their chance encounter or the seeds of happiness Verna’s lost money will sow.

At the height of World War II, the British Air Transport Auxiliary need help. A group of young women volunteer for action, but the perils of their new job don’t end on the tarmac. Things are tough in the air, but on the ground their abilities as pilots are constantly questioned. There is friction from the start between the new recruits. Spirited American Lizzie turns heads with her audacity, but few can deny her flying skills. She couldn’t be more different from shy, petite Ruby, who is far from diminutive in the sky. It falls to pragmatic pilot May to bring the women together.

Sweden, 1913. Having petitioned the court for independence from her aristocratic family, the young and vibrant Agneta Lejongård takes control of her destiny. In Stockholm, she explores her bohemian passions in art and free love, joins the suffragette movement with her best friend, and defiantly resists the expectations of women in high society. Then comes news of a tragic accident and an urgent summons to return to the family’s manor house in the country. As for Agneta’s forward path in life, she must now follow it back home.

Rome, 1953: Hal, an itinerant journalist flailing in the postwar darkness, has come to the Eternal City to lose himself and to seek absolution for the thing that haunts him. One evening he finds himself on the steps of a palazzo, walking into a world of privilege and light. Here, on a rooftop above the city, he meets the mysterious Stella. Hal and Stella are from different worlds, but their connection is magnetic. Together they escape the crowded party and imagine a different life, even if it's just for a night.

1924. Ginger Kelly wakes up in tranquil Cocoa Beach, Florida, having fled south to safety in the company of disgraced Prohibition agent Oliver Anson Marshall and her newly-orphaned young sister, Patsy. But paradise is short-lived. Marshall is reinstated to the agency with suspicious haste and put to work patrolling for rumrunners on the high seas, from which he promptly disappears. Gin hurries north to rescue him, only to be trapped in an agonizing moral quandary by Marshall’s desperate mother.

When French perfumer Danielle Bretancourt steps aboard a luxury ocean liner, leaving her son behind in Poland with his grandmother, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever. The year is 1939, and the declaration of war on the European continent soon threatens her beloved family, scattered across many countries. Traveling through London and Paris into occupied Poland, Danielle searches desperately for her the remains of her family.

In wars eighty years apart, two young women living on the same Appalachian estate determine to aid soldiers dear to them and fight for justice, no matter the cost.

It is 1941, and America teeters on the brink of war. Outgoing naval officer Ensign Jim Avery escorts British convoys across the North Atlantic in a brand-new destroyer, the USS Atwood. Back on shore, Boston Navy Yard secretary Mary Stirling does her work quietly and efficiently, happy to be out of the limelight.

In the tradition of his beloved first novel, The Notebook, number-one New York Times best-selling author Nicholas Sparks brings listeners the remarkable story of two couples whose lives intersect in profound and surprising ways.

When the skeletal remains of a dismembered infant are found in an elderly couple’s garden, Quinn is called in to investigate the circumstances of the child’s death. As the case unfolds, she finds herself overwhelmed both by the tragedy she’s forced to witness and a devastating betrayal in her own life. Blindsided, Quinn must examine her own choices before she loses everything she holds dear.

For plucky Lillian Avery, America's entry into World War II means a chance to prove herself as a pharmacist in Boston. The challenges of her new job energize her. But society boy Ensign Archer Vandenberg's attentions only annoy-even if he is her brother's best friend.

The third installment in the Wild Isles series from Sunday Times bestselling author Karen Swan. Flora MacQueen has always dreamt of more than life on the small Scottish island of St Kilda. So, when she catches the eye of visiting adventurer and wealthy businessman James Callaghan, her future seems brighter. Winter seas separate the lovers, but the island’s evacuation the following summer promises to reunite them – until tragedy strikes.

Australia, 1906: Orphan Jane Piper is nine years old when philanthropist siblings Michael and Elizabeth Quinn take her into their home to further her schooling. The Quinns are no strangers to hardship. Having arrived in Australia as penniless immigrants, they now care for others as lost as they once were. Despite Jane’s mysterious past, her remarkable aptitude for mathematics takes her far over the next seven years, and her relationship with Elizabeth and Michael flourishes as she plays an increasingly prominent part in their business.

In this third and final book in the Edwardian Brides series, listeners are swept away to England and France in 1915. At this time the Ramsey family, their staff, and their friends face the dramatic challenges and losses of World War One, yet they also experience the hope and triumph that comes as they put their trust in God to carry them through. Penny Ramsey helps the family welcome a group of orphaned children to Highland Hall, but she soon discovers that caring for them is more difficult than she'd expected.