In the 1840s to '50s America, both photography and embalming the dead came into standard practice. On the autism spectrum, Osborn Roche is a well-respected postmortem and battlefield photographer during the civil war. He and his nephew Ray travel with the Union army, photographing battlefields and doing portraits for the soldiers.

The war might be over, but their battle has just begun. After losing her husband and only child to the ravages of the Civil War, 25-year-old Portia McAllister is drowning in grief. When she sees an ad for a live-in tutor in another town, she leaves everything behind in hopes of making a fresh start. But as a Confederate widow in a Union household, she is met with resentment from her new charge and her employer, war veteran Beau Stanford.

Jessica Pratt is only 10 when her world is destroyed. After witnessing unspeakable acts of violence, she flees for her life, becoming lost in the untamed California wilderness. Terrified and alone, she fights for survival as each step takes her further away from everything she has ever known. For nearly a decade Jessica calls the mountain home until tragedy strikes once again. Forced to reenter a world that is controlled by men, Jessica transforms into Jesse for her own protection. 

Well-mannered Samuel and his mischievous younger brother, Joshua, are free black boys living in an orphanage during the end of the Civil War. Samuel takes the blame for Joshua's latest prank, and the consequence is worse than he could ever imagine. He's taken from the orphanage to the South, given a new name - Friday - and sold into slavery. What follows is a heartbreaking but hopeful account of Samuel's journey from freedom to captivity and back again.

Deep in the heart of Australia's high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly's children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection - but it can be harder when Joe's around. 

Born into slavery, Dahlia never knew her mother - or what happened to her. When Dahlia’s father, the owner of Vesterville plantation, takes her to work in his home as a servant, she’s desperately lonely. Forced to leave behind her best friend, Bo, she lives in a world between black and white, belonging to neither. Ten years later, Dahlia meets Timothy Ross, an Englishman in need of a wife. Reinventing herself as Lily Dove, Dahlia allows Timothy to believe she’s white, with no family to speak of, and agrees to marry him. 

A Christmas collection to warm the heart. Grab a warm cup of tea and watch as romance is kindled and joy is restored to broken lives during six bygone-era Christmas celebrations.

It’s the summer of 1907, and the sun is scorching down on Mary Pearl in the Arizona Territory. Mary Pearl and her sister Esther take their minds off the heat by sneaking banned Jane Austen novels from Aunt Sarah Elliot’s lively bookshelf. Whispered read-alouds preoccupy their nights, and reveries of getting hitched to their own Mr. Darcy à la Pride and Prejudice swirl through their daydreams. In walks old-fashioned old-money suitor Aubrey Hanna, here to whisk 17-year-old Mary Pearl off her feet with a forbidden kiss and hasty engagement.

Alone in an unfamiliar country where her noble title is useless. Everything she believes in is shattered. Driven by desperation, she risks it all to return to the one man whose love promises to be true. Lady Victoria Haverwood, beloved daughter of a widowed Earl, has spent years at a fashionable boarding school longing for the day she can come home to finally take her place as mistress of Wrenbrooke. But when she becomes the target of a murderous plot, her idyllic plan is swiftly turned upside down.

Mary Thomson is no ordinary woman. She works alongside her husband William cutting firewood to sell in the city, earning the nickname “The Woodcutter’s Wife”. The one thing she cannot seem to handle is the melancholy that has enveloped her...Her world flies apart when William disappears, leaving her with the arduous task of tending their farm by herself...she finds help in the form of a freed slave who offers his help. But fate throws her another dramatic curve, forcing her to make the most difficult choice of her life.

Meg Michaels, a bookstore owner, has already walked away from two cheating exes. She's learned her lesson and has her mind set on success - until she gets knocked up. Embarrassed and unwilling to discuss her situation with friends and family, she wears layers to hide the pregnancy.

Debut novelist Erin Bartels takes listeners on an emotional journey through time - from the volatile streets of 1960s Detroit to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War - to uncover the past, confront the seeds of hatred, and discover where love goes to hide. 

Renowned author Yoel Blum reluctantly agrees to visit his birthplace of Amsterdam to promote his books, despite promising his late mother that he would never return to that city. While touring the Jewish Historical Museum with his wife, Yoel stumbles upon footage portraying prewar Dutch Jewry and is astonished to see the youthful face of his beloved mother staring back at him, posing with his father, his older sister…and an infant he doesn’t recognize. 

Georgeanna “Georgey” Woolsey isn’t meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. In proving them wrong, she and her sister Eliza venture from New York to Washington, DC, to Gettysburg and witness the unparalleled horrors of slavery as they become involved in the war effort.

As a young girl, Lillian Walsh lost both her parents and a younger sister. Now in her 20s, after enduring the death of her adoptive mother, Lillian must find her place in the world. Just as her adoptive father is leaving for an extended trip to his native Wales, a lawyer appears at the door to inform Lillian that she has inherited a small estate from her birth parents - and that the sister she had long believed dead is likely alive.