Showing results for "F" in Sagas

1979. Behsad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid. 1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behsad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.

1944 - The Isle of Wight: 16 year-old Constance’s life on the island is sheltered until the death of her brother, brings the reality of war crashing down around her. He leaves behind his pregnant widow, Ginny. When Constance meets a handsome Canadian airforce man, she’s eager to escape her grief and be swept up by first love. It’s a love which has ramifications she could never envisage. Present day: When young British backpacker, Isabel Stark happens across a car accident on a lonely stretch of road in the South Island of New Zealand her life changes forever.

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army.

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story. Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. 

Stories tucked away on every floor. No. 10 Luckenbooth Close is an archetypal Edinburgh tenement. The devil’s daughter rows to the shores of Leith in a coffin. The year is 1910, and she has been sent to a tenement building in Edinburgh by her recently deceased father to bear a child for a wealthy man and his fiancée. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents - a curse that will last for the rest of the century.

The daughter and granddaughter of prominent Manhattan lawyers, Meredith McKenzie is destined for the best of everything: top schools, elite social circles, the perfect marriage. Spending her childhood in Germany as her father prosecutes war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, Meredith soaks up the conflict between good and evil.

They call them the custard tarts - the girls who work at Pearce Duff's custard powder factory in Bermondsey before the First World War. Conditions are hard but nothing can quench the spirit of humour and friendship. But the shadow of the coming war looms over them; it will pull London's East End together as never before - even while it tears the world apart.

1971. As Ted Heath's government presides over the collapse of Rolls Royce, and Britain goes over to decimalisation, Brian Oldman is locked up in Brixton Prison. Joseph Oldman pulls every corrupt string in a desperate attempt to get him released; yet no sooner is Brian out than he finds himself back inside. Joseph, however, is on the up: expanding his business through dodgy deals with a Colombian drug cartel and making friends in high places, including Lord Goodman and Margaret Thatcher. Entering the murky world of politics, he becomes an MP and reverts to his old surname, Olinska.

1991. Britain and the US are waging war in Iraq, the Soviet Union is breaking up - and Brian Oldman is banged up in Parkhurst, his 30-year sentence restarted. Set on proving his innocence, he studies law from his cell in a bid to win justice at last. But will he ever be released from prison? Joseph Olinska, meanwhile, seems unstoppable. Now ennobled and on the board of Lehman Brothers, he plans to extend his business interests into Russia - with a little help from Boris Yeltsin and his cronies. 

1470. England is in turmoil as the battle between supporters of the Yorkist king, Edward IV, and the old Lancastrian king, Henry VI, escalates. And for Isobel Fenton, the war is personal. Her father's death made her heiress to Beaumoncote Manor, a desirable estate in the midlands. But as conflict threatens England's unstable peace, Isobel and her lands become the focus of bitter tensions and a long-held feud. Taken from her manor, Isobel becomes the unwilling mistress of an indomitable Earl. She sees her only chance of happiness in the Earl's brother, Robert Langton.

When gentleman farmer Harold Crow dies after routine surgery in rural Tasmania, his death exposes a web of forbidden love, secret offspring, and devastating betrayals that will tear two families apart. Local GP Dr David Boyd fears his secret affair with Harold will surface at the inquest. His wife Morven hides her own hurtful truth…Nurse Nathan Wentworth fears his malpractice may have killed Harold. But he's not the only one with blood on his hands.

Bedi and Sushma's marriage is arranged. When they first meet, they stumble through a faltering conversation about happiness and hope and agree to go in search of these things together. But even after their children Selena, Tara and Rohan are grown up and have their own families, Bedi and Sushma are still searching. Years later, the siblings attempt to navigate life without their parents. As they travel to the Ganges to unite their father's ashes with the opaque water, it becomes clear that each of them has inherited the same desire to understand what makes a life happy.

When hard-up Diane Jenner's husband is injured in a helicopter crash, she discovers a secret that generates them money. James North knows that money doesn't buy happiness. He's always been there for his wayward wife and daughter - but that doesn't stop him wanting Diane. James and Diane always put family first - which means that what happened in the back of James's Mercedes is a really bad idea. Or is it?

In Edinburgh’s rain-swept streets, Grace thought she had found her forever in Jamie—until a devastating betrayal shatters their marriage and forces her to question everything she believed about love.

1890: When Katharine and her husband, Anselmo, set sail to Brazil to reap the spoils of the rubber boom, it seems as if they cannot fail. But when Anselmo dies suddenly on the treacherous waters of the Amazon, a pregnant Katharine must decide whether or not to continue her husband's dream, alone. Meanwhile her sister, Mabel, is struggling to support their family back in London. Navigating new worlds in the upper class, she discovers that life as a housemaid has its own dangers, and Mabel soon learns that the whims of men can prove deadly.

Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can with that same breath, shatter and destroy it.

1941. The midst of the Blitz. Bombs are raining down on the city. In one terrifying moment, trainee nurse Pippa Luscombe’s life is turned upside-down when her hospital takes a direct hit. As Pippa comes to terms with the full extent of the tragedy, she must pick up the pieces of her life. But the incident has left lasting scars. She determines to dedicate her life to her nursing career, and forget about finding love of her own. Until one day she discovers she has an unexpected admirer. A patient hands her a piece of paper. A heartfelt note to his butterfly girl.

El Paso pits the legendary Pancho Villa, a much-feared outlaw and revolutionary, against a thrill-seeking railroad tycoon known as the Colonel. But when Villa kidnaps the Colonel's grandchildren in the midst of a cattle drive, the aging New England patriarch and his adopted son head to El Paso, hoping to find a group of cowboys brave enough to hunt the Generalissimo down. El Paso becomes an indelible portrait of the American Southwest in the waning days of the frontier.

The house has soft, purple wisteria twining around the door. You step inside. The hall is cool after the hot summer’s day. The welcome is kind, and always warm. Yet something makes you suspect life here can’t be as perfect as it seems. After all, the brightest smile can hide the darkest secret. But wouldn’t you pay any price to have a glorious place like this?

Dan Ranscombe is clever and good-looking, but he resents the wealth and easy savoir faire of fellow guest Paul Latimer. Surely a shrewd girl like Meg Slater would see through that, wouldn't she? And what about Diana, Paul's beautiful sister; Charles Asher, the Jewish outsider; Madeleine, the children's nanny; and artist Henry Haddon? As these guests gather at a country house party, none has any inkling that the choices they make will have fateful consequences lasting through the war and beyond.