There's no way to soften this, so I'll say it outright. I already have a wife.' In a single sentence, Walter Radcliffe destroyed everything Kate Sullivan had lived for up to their wedding day. Conventional family life in 1920s rural Somerset left her totally unprepared for the shame and disgrace of being jilted. Desperate to escape, she accepts the insulting gifts of Walter's money and his sham wedding ring and flees to the honeymoon hotel in Bournemouth to try and forget.

The Golden Dragon, ancient banner of the Saxons, was never carried through a more turbulent era than the years preceding the Norman Conquest. While the greedy tore at England's bleeding heart, eight kings assumed the heavy crown, and many died contesting it. This was a dark time of battle, royal family quarrels and marriages of convenience, or treachery and brutal murder. Through the years of turmoil lived Princess Aelfgifu: though sent into exile she was never far from the intrigues of her homeland. Behind the scenes she played a dangerous game and tasted a forbidden love....

1899 - As the rumblings of dissent and racial resentment began to erupt into a savage war between Boer and Briton, so three young men found their lives drawn together. Matthew Paget, son of an archdeacon. Will Marriott, his cousin and an officer, and Hendon Bashford, an upstart social climber, a swindler and a cheat. As the passage of war unfolded, so the lives of these three young men, and the women they loved, moved towards a tumultuous climax.

Grace O'Malley commanded the obedience of thousands of men. Feared and loved on land and at sea, her empire stretched from Connaught on the Irish coast to the cobalt waters of Africa. Through the daring of her piracy, Grace nearly bankrupted the English treasury; she caused nothing but trouble for Elizabeth I. Yet the lives of these two amazing women were inextricably intertwined.

Set more than a thousand years ago in the soft green hills of Ireland, in a shifting time when enchanted beasts, strange creatures, and the Fairy Kind still flickered in and out of the lives of men, the ancient stories of Finn MacCool and the Fianna shimmer with magic. Rosemary Sutcliffe breathes new life into the classic tales of Finn and the grey dog, of Dearmid and Grania, of Oisin - Finn's son - and all the other high deeds of the Fianna.

Scandal at the court of James I. Katharine Leslie, young, ambitious, and scornful of her role as scholar's wife, is drawn irresistibly to the glamour of the Stuart court. Alan Carr, brother of the king's favourite, has long desired her - and makes no secret of his intention to possess her. Frances Howard, beautiful and sinister Countess of Essex, uses Katharine's weakness to further her romantic intrigue - a plot which results in one of the most treacherous murders of history.

In turn-of-the-century Tyneside, money doesn't grow on trees. With Ma dead, Da often at sea and sister Fanny getting into trouble with the lads, Jane Ridley's life isn't easy. Beautiful, innocent, uncertain of the future, Jane wants more than marriage and countless children. So she takes a job in George Beattie's flower shop, cared for by his gentle wife Adeline. Torn between affections for the shy Ronnie Wilson, and the more exciting advances of Jack Purvis, Jane is forced to grow up overnight when the conflict ends in tragedy....

The story of a woman born to rule a nation - and the glorious pageant of love and tragedy that followed in her wake. Mary's beauty inspired poetry - yet her birthright generated hideous treachery and terrible, bloody murder.

Dark Waters': Kendra Hollis has been left destitute by her father's death, and has taken employment as a companion to a difficult, elderly lady. Then she meets attractive, daring Pel Devereux and, with nothing to lose, she impulsively marries him and sets sail for America where she will help him run his Mississippi steam boat. But when the civil war breaks out, Kendra's happiness is marred by the suspicion that Pel is a spy. And when he puts her up as a stake in a card game, she is outraged and leaves him. Is Pel her best friend, or her worst enemy? 'The Breathless Summer': London, 1851, and the Crystal Palace is to be opened in Hyde Park by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Seventeen year old Erica and her two brothers are treated to a visit there by their uncle, and come home filled with inspiration at the delights they have seen. Erica is especially taken with the trinket and tobacco boxes she has seen, decorated with fretwork, and cajoles her parents into changing the family business from making clay pipes to boxes like these....

The time is 1948; the town is Los Angeles; the hero is Easy Rawlins, an out of work black war veteran. The mortgage payment's coming due, so Easy accepts the assignment of finding Daphne Monet, blonde torch singer. In his search through a sleazy, fearful city he is lucky to be under the protection of the murderous mouse.....