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As a last resort, Helena Reynolds answers an advertisement for marriage to a complete stranger. She is desperate for the security of a husband’s name and the safety of living in a remote estate in Devon.
Justin Thornhill is a former soldier still recovering from the tragedy and torture of his last assignment in India. He didn’t place the ad for a wife, but is drawn to Helena’s beauty and refinement. Something about her also draws out his prospective instinct.
These two strangers marry, but their complicated pasts will prove a challenge they must overcome before they can find love.
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Finella Mayfield hates two things: liars and thieves. And she’s determined to marry a man who’s neither. Chasing her dead father’s dreams, the twenty-year-old English bride arrives in Australia in 1875 for an arranged marriage. Anticipating her future as village preacher’s wife, she records her thoughts in her Everlasting journal.
After watching the 1994 version starring Winona Ryder again recently, I decided it was high time I finally read the book for myself. Especially since my strategy for reading more classics is to tackle the novels of film adaptations I really enjoy. And that is how I finally found myself reading Little Women.
All her life, Valancy Stirling lived on a quiet little street in an ugly little house and never dared to contradict her domineering mother and her unforgiving aunt. Then she gets a letter—and decides that very day things need to change. For the first time in her life, she does exactly what she wants to and says exactly what she feels.
Escaping the constraints of life as a village schoolmistress, Lilia Brooke bursts into London and into Paul Harris’s orderly life, shattering his belief that women are gentle creatures who need protection. Lilia wants to change women’s lives by advocating for the vote, free unions, and contraception. Paul, an Anglican priest, has a big ambition of his own: to become the youngest dean of St. John’s Cathedral. Lilia doesn’t believe in God, but she’s attracted to Paul’s intellect, ethics, and dazzling smile.
After the tragic death of her husband, Aven Norgaard is beckoned to give up her life in Norway to become a housekeeper in the rugged hills of nineteenth-century Appalachia. Upon arrival, she finds herself in the home of her late husband’s cousins—three brothers who make a living by brewing hard cider on their three-hundred-acre farm. Yet even as a stranger in a foreign land, Aven has hope to build a new life in this tight-knit family.
The year is 1792 and the French Revolution is in full swing. In Paris, the guillotine claims scores of aristocratic victims every day. However, one brave man known only as the Scarlet Pimpernel somehow continues to rescue a small percentage of the victims right out from under the watchful eyes of the bloodthirsty French citizens. Other than his mysterious moniker, nothing much is known of him, other than that he is an Englishman of means.
World War II is over. Juliet’s war time series has been turned into a book with great success. Her editor and close friend Sydney is pushing her for new content to publish. But Juliet is lacking inspiration. Her imagination is as worn and grey as her flat in London.
Isabella Grayson is the daughter of a self-made newspaper magnate. Her parents are pushing her to marry in order to increase her family’s social standing. But Isabella has no interest in the old money, aristocratic young men that her parents prefer. In fact, she has little interest in marriage at all. Bella has a secret dream of publishing as a journalist in one of her father’s papers. She has a particular interest in the brand new field of aviation.
