Historical Women

When the dowager receives an unexpected invitation from Queen Victoria herself to attend a grand concert at the Royal Albert Hall, she suspects there’s more at stake than music. A foreign dignitary’s sudden death soon confirms it. Confined to bed after a health scare, a very pregnant Tabitha...

Survival means fighting back. Set across Sunderland and New York in the late 19th century, A Woman of Courage is a heartwarming saga by Rita Bradshaw, author of the bestselling Believing in Tomorrow. It's 1890, and Josie Gray is an innocent and beautiful fifteen-year old when Adam McGuigan, the...

Take a tour of the past and uncover stories of the women whose lives and achievements have shaped our modern world. In Life Lessons from Historical Women, Eleanor Morton celebrates the ordinary women whose decisions and accomplishments in their everyday lives resonate with us today. Whether it's what we can learn from the first woman to summit Everest or the trailblazing ladies who confirm that pockets have always been must-have in women's clothing, Eleanor writes with humour and a sincere respect for our history, and imparts valuable lessons for the modern female.

On a brisk February morning while walking to work, Ruth Foster is stopped by the local sheriff. He insists she accompany him to a health clinic, threatening to arrest her if she doesn't undergo testing in order to preserve decency and prevent the spread of sexual disease. Though Ruth has never shared more than a kiss with a man, by day's end she is one of dozens of women held at the State Industrial Farm Colony for Women. Some are there because they were reported for promiscuity by neighbors, husbands, strangers. Some were accused of prostitution.

Tabitha and Wolf have been invited to historic Salisbury for a scholarly lecture celebrating their recent discovery at Pembroke Castle. However, the occasion takes a dark turn when the lecturer is found dead beneath the towering ruins of Old Sarum. As the couple begins to investigate, they are drawn into a labyrinth of ancient Druidic rites, shadowy Church intrigues, and secrets buried beneath the chalky plains. An excavation near Stonehenge uncovers more than bones, awakening old rivalries and new dangers.

1950 - Seven year old Carol Martin lies encased in an iron lung, struck down by the killer disease, polio. Distraught at her side, her mother, Violet, wonders if this is her punishment - for Carol is the love child who should not have been born . . . Family of Women is the story of three...

Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura's prearranged marriage to the son of her father's business associate would secure her family's status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man - an American sailor, a gaijin - and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it's learned Naoko carries the sailor's child, she's cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.

This audio edition includes an exclusive conversation between narrator Paula Masterton and author Kate Foster. 'A masterpiece. A thrilling historical murder tale but so much more. Vivid, evocative and full of humanity' – Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal and The Twyford Code...

Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.

Brought to you by Penguin. A remarkable performance... As gripping as The Collector and The Magus' Observer Charles Smithson, a respectable engaged man, meets Sarah Woodruff as she stands on the Cobb at Lyme Regis, staring out to sea. Charles falls in love, but Sarah is a disgraced woman, and...

London, 1898. The age of the motor-car has dawned, and Wolf is determined to embrace it. When he acquires one of the new mechanical marvels and enters one of England’s first great motor-car runs from London to Brighton, Tabitha is less than enthusiastic—particularly as she has other reasons to proceed with caution.

An estate on the line. A marriage of convenience. A bride with a hidden past… Read the spellbinding new Regency novel from multi-award-winning author Sally Gardner. AN ESTATE ON THE LINE. 1796. Duval Harlington, recently released from prison in France, is on his way home. Memories of the...

Brought to you by Penguin. Following her bestselling, critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker continues her extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest myths. Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors - all they need is a good...

A history of peasants in the Middle Ages, the story takes the listener into the life of Marion, the carpenter's wife, and her extended family as they struggle to survive through hardship, featuring a year in their lives at the mercy of the weather and the Lord of the Manor. Existing without soap, paper or glass and only with the most basic of tools, we learn how they survive starvation, sickness, fire and natural disaster in their home on the edge of the Weald.

When art teacher Walter Hartright meets a frightened woman dressed entirely in white, her cryptic warnings hint at a hidden conspiracy. Soon after, Walter arrives at a country estate where he becomes entangled in the lives of two sisters—one gentle and trusting, the other sharp and perceptive—both surrounded by secrets they don't fully understand. As strange events unfold and powerful enemies begin to close in, a web of deception, identity theft, and betrayal slowly emerges.

In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to "read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content," but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realize that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive.

When Grace, April, and Poppy join the US Army Nurse Corps, they see it as little more than an adventure, one made all the better by their first station: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Joined at the hip, idealistic Grace, exuberant Poppy, and brave but haunted April frolic in the sun, attending parties, flirting with the handsome soldiers, and becoming fast friends with seasoned nurse Eva. Like the Hawaiian sun, their future seems warm and bright - until the infamous morning of December 7.

Tabitha, Lady Chesterton, the Countess of Pembroke, is newly widowed at only 22 years of age. With no son to inherit the title, it falls to a dashing, distant cousin of her husband's, Jeremy Chesterton, known as Wolf. It quickly becomes apparent that Wolf had consorted with some of London's most dangerous citizens before inheriting the title. Can he leave this world behind, or will shadowy figures from his past follow him into his new aristocratic life in Mayfair? And can Tabitha avoid being caught up in Wolf's dubious activities?

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of The Woman in the Wood by Lesley Pearse, read by Rosie Jones. Fifteen-year-old Maisy Mitcham and her twin brother Duncan watch their mother being sent away one night in 1960. The twins are sent to their grandmother's country house...

'Unputdownable' JOSEPH O'CONNOR 'A roller coaster read' LIZ NUGENT THEY WERE BEST FRIENDS. NOW THEY ARE MURDERER AND WITNESS. At the heart of the classic novel Rebecca lies a mystery ... Pearl Day has always lived in the background - companion to her childhood friend, the dazzling and...