1792. Uprooted from their quiet Dorset village to the riotous streets of London, young Jem Kellaway and his family feel very far from home. They struggle to find their place in this tumultuous city, still alive with the repercussions of the blood-splattered French Revolution. Luckily, streetwise Maggie Butterfield is on hand to show Jem the ropes. Together they encounter the neighbour they've been warned about: radical poet and artist William Blake. Jem and Maggie's passage from innocence to experience becomes the very stuff of poetic inspiration…
“One in ten trees comes up sweet…” In the inhospitable Black Swamp of Ohio, the Goodenough family are barely scratching out a living. Life there is harsh, tempered only by the apples they grow for eating and for the cider that dulls their pain ➤ подробнее about At the Edge of the Orchard.
When Griet becomes a maid in the household of the painter Johannes Vermeer, she thinks she knows her role: housework, laundry and the care of his six children ➤ подробнее about Girl with a Pearl earring.
Honor Bright is a sheltered Quaker who has rarely ventured out of 1850s Dorset when she impulsively emigrates to America. Opposed to the slavery that defines and divides the country, she finds her principles tested to the limit when a runaway slave appears at the farm of her new family ➤ подробнее about The Last Runaway.
Violet is 38. The First World War took everything from her. Her brother, her fiance – and her future. She is now considered a ‘surplus woman’. But Violet is also fiercely independent and determined ➤ подробнее about A Single Thread.
She was called Isabelle, and when she was a small girl her hair changed colour in the time it takes a bird to call to its mate… Midwife Isabelle du Moulin is marked as different, by both her red hair and her love for the Virgin Mary in her rich blue robes ➤ подробнее about The Virgin Blue.
A collection of short stories celebrating Charlotte Bronte, published in the year of her bicentenary and stemming from the now immortal words from her great work Jane Eyre ➤ подробнее about Reader, I Married Him.