Cleaner Janice knows that it is in people's stories that you really get to know them. From recently-widowed Fiona and her son Adam; to opera-singing Geordie; and the awful Mrs 'YeahYeahYeah' and her fox terrier, Decius, Janice has a unique insight into the community around her. When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B - a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties - she finally meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the...

Miss Gertrude Cadwalader hoped her position as the paid companion to Mrs. Davenport would be easy. But as she becomes acquainted with her employer, she realizes the wealthy Mrs. Davenport has a strange tendency to be a bit light-fingered with other people's trinkets. Gertrude is relieved when Mrs. Davenport decides to have a quiet summer away from the social scene--until the woman changes her mind in order to help a young socialite launch into society....

A country girl is forced to sin against her will.

Tess, a simple country girl in nineteenth-century England, is sent by her family to meet her supposed kin, but is destroyed by her father's continued and determined efforts to use her in order to regain the family's former social standing.

"Chambermaid Faris Shayhan escapes from Tremeshton Manor to work for Lady Rockrimmon at Loch Loland Castle and encounters the rogue Highwayman of Tanglewood who steals her heart. When Lochlan Rockrimmon returns to the castle and protects her from Kade Tremshton, Faris must reconcile her love for the Highwayman with her growing attraction for the heir of Rockrimmon"--

Is prisoner Ruth Butterham mad or a murderer? Victim or villain? Dorothea and Ruth. Prison visitor and prisoner. Powerful and powerless. Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor and awaiting trial for murder. When Dorothea's charitable work leads her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted with the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person's skull can cast...

"The well-educated daughter of a lawyer, Trudy Bauer arrives at the St. Louis based Mail-Order Brides of the West agency full of excitement for the adventure of a lifetime. She befriends the agency's maid, Evie Davenport, and the two form a strong and lasting friendship. Trudy and Evie vow to stay in contact through letters when Evie takes hold of her destiny and arranges a marriage on the sly. Each brave young woman is ready to face whatever an unknown...

1760s, Spitalfields. Esther Thorel, wife of a master silk weaver, rescues Sara Kemp from a brothel thinking she is doing God's will, but her good deed is not returned. Sara, realizing the Thorel household is built on hypocrisy and lies, tires of the drudgery of life as Esther's maid. Esther yearned to be a silk designer, but her water colors are dismissed by her husband, Elias, as the daubs of a foolish girl. Bisby Lambert is brought in by Elias to...

"When a young married couple hire a middle-aged widow during the wife's, Nora's, difficult pregnancy, they don't realize the dominating force she will become in their small family. Signora A--maid, nanny, and confidante--becomes the glue in their household, and over time, the steady and loving presence whose benign influence allows them to negotiate the complexities of married life. But the delicate fabric of the young family comes undone when Signora...