When Arlette Blaise sees a German plane fly over the family farm in 1940, she’s comforted by the fact that the occupying forces are far away in the north of the country. Surely the war will not reach her family in the idyllic French countryside near to the small town of Oradour-sur-Glane? But then Saul Epstein, a young Jewish man driven from his home by the Nazis, arrives at the farm, and Arlette begins to realise that her peaceful existence might be gone for good.... 

When widow Millie Sanger finds injured enemy pilot Lukas Schiller on her farm, the distant war is suddenly at her doorstep. Compassionate Millie knows he’ll be killed if discovered and makes the dangerous decision to offer him shelter from the storm. On opposite sides of the inescapable conflict, the two strangers forge an unexpected and passionate bond. But as the snow thaws, the relentless fury of World War Two forces them apart, leaving only the haunting memories of what they shared and an understanding that their secret must never see light.

1932. Ernie and Lily Hass and their daughter, Girlie, have lost almost everything in the Depression; all they have keeping their small family together are their secrets. Abandoning their failing wheat farm and small-town gossip, they make a new start on the west coast of Australia, where they begin to build a summer guesthouse. But forming new alliances with the locals isn't easy. Into the Hasses' new life wanders Lily's shell-shocked brother, Tommy, after three harrowing years on the road following his incarceration.

He straightened his spine, raised his head, and extended his gun arm towards me in a slow, vertical arc. I saw then what he was, and stood still in front of him, for he was here on business. He was a small, serious, stone-eyed angel of mercy. Janet is a skeptic, a journalist; Maxine revels in New Age fantasies; and Ray, a drifter, is a born-again Christian. The common ground is the house they share. But their fragile domestic balance is about to explode amid the smashing of ukeleles, the unexpected ascension of an angel and a sudden shower of jonquils.

1957: within a year of arriving at an American airbase in Suffolk, the loving, law-abiding Delaney family is destroyed. Did they know something they weren't allowed to know? Did they find something they weren't supposed to find? Hedy is the only one left standing, a rebellious girl cast adrift in a world of postwar anxiety - a girl who has the courage to question what really went on behind military closed doors. 

It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new start. But here, at just 13, she is thrust into an unrelenting adult world, and the walls begin to come tumbling down, with deadly consequences.

Irene Gut was just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it.

Mavis Gaunt spent time in the village of Shipleigh, as a wartime evacuee, finding it a heavenly retreat. But it is not until her 20s that she decides to head back. Frances, Tom and Robert Upcott are reclusive siblings from a local farm. When Mavis returns to the village, she and Frances strike up an unlikely friendship. But a tragic sequence of events is set to turn her heaven into a living hell. Mavis is 70 when Eve and her young son, Archie, turn up in the village. In revealing the truth about what happened, she is able to answer Eve’s questions about her own family and, in summoning them, Mavis can finally begin to lay her own ghosts to rest.

Connie Granger has escaped the devastation of her bombed out city home. She has found work in the Women's Timber Corps, and for her, this remote community must now serve a secret purpose. Seppe, an Italian prisoner of war, is haunted by his memories. But in the forest camp, he finds a strange kind of freedom. In each other they find the means to imagine their own lives anew, and to face that which each fears the most. But outside their haven, the world is ravaged by war and old certainties are crumbling.

Born into hardship in a Northumbrian mining village, Annie Manon needs all her strength to survive the bleak years following the First World War. As her family fractures around her, she longs to make something of her life. Through hard work and determination Annie eventually leaves the poverty and despair of her childhood behind her. But then war breaks out once more, taking her further away from her dreams and those she loves most. And it is all Annie can do to keep hope alive....

Inspired by extraordinary true events, this remarkable debut novel reveals the enduring power of love and the strength of the human spirit in one woman's quest to find her son, and a little boy's dream to be found.

Davinsky Labour Camp, Siberia, 1933: Sofia Morozova knows she has to escape. Only two things have sustained her through the bitter cold, aching hunger and hard labour: the prospect of one day walking free; and the stories told by her friend Anna, beguiling tales of a charmed upbringing in Petrograd - and of Anna’s fervent love for a passionate revolutionary, Vasily. So, when Anna falls gravely ill, Sofia makes a promise to escape the camp and find Vasily....

Bravery, courage, fear, and love in a time of war. Despite their differences sisters Viann and Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann is content with life in the French countryside with her husband, Antoine, and their daughter. But when the Second World War strikes, Antoine is sent off to fight, and Viann finds herself isolated, so Isabelle is sent by their father to help her. As the war progresses, the sisters' relationship and strength are tested.

The story of a young mother who discovers old buried secrets as she goes through her mother's things, all whilst staying in a cottage that centuries before was a silk factory. A beautiful, eerie story of love and memory. If you try to pick up the pieces, sometimes that's when they fall into place. When young mother Rosie gets the news that her mother has died she decides to leave London and head back to her home village.

In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler's fist, the Klein family are gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their 15-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a new life in England. Charged with the task of securing a safe passage for her family, she vows that she will not rest until they are safe. But as war breaks out and she loses contact with her parents, Rosa finds herself wondering if there are some vows that can't be kept....