From a working-class family, Scotsman Andrew Cunningham stewards for wealthy travelers aboard elegant cruise ships of the early 20th century, but he resents those who flaunt their inherited wealth. New Yorkers Florence and Bradley Cumings, first-class passengers traveling aboard Titanic, are the exception, and the three discover an ancestral connection. As the ship sinks on the fateful morning of April 15, 1912, Florence watches in horror from her lifeboat.

1943. Lidia De Angelis has kept a low profile since Mussolini’s laws wrenched her from her childhood sweetheart. But when the Germans occupy Venice, she must flee the city to save her life. Lidia joins the partisans in the Venetian mountains, where she meets David, an English soldier fighting for the same cause. As she grows closer to him, harsh German reprisals and her own ardent patriotic activities threaten to tear them apart.

Beginning in the summer of 1939, 14-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and the locals hold the family in high esteem. On days when they aren't playing with friends, Jacob and Edwin help their uncle Martin on his fishing boat in the North Sea, where German ships have become a common sight. When war breaks out, Jacob's world is thrown into chaos.

At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager, fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was the designated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and his students would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate. Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unruly children, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed to the limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punching his fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wanting to give up and walk away.

1944 - When an air raid strikes the hospital she’s been working in, Carrie’s life irrevocably changes. But as a nurse in the middle of wartime, she has no time to grieve, as she has too many people relying on her. For resistance fighter Vito, nothing is more important than seeking vengeance for the atrocities his fellow comrades have suffered. But when he liberates a convent, finding a group of Jewish children in hiding, he suddenly has even more to fight for. Little Mimi is injured, scared and alone. Together Carrie and Vito vow to find her parents, a loving home.

London, 1914: one ordinary day, three girls arrive for work at London's renowned Foyles bookshop. But when war with Germany is declared, their lives will never be the same again.... Alice has always been the 'sensible' one in her family - especially in comparison with her suffrage-supporting sister! But decidedly against her father's wishes, she accepts a job at Foyles Bookshop; and for bookworm Alice it's a dream come true. But with the country at war, Alice's happy world is shattered in an instant.

Austria, 1938. After years of hardship, Ella is full of hope for a better future for Austrians, and when Hitler marches into Linz, she can’t help but become swept up in the euphoria of her boyfriend, Max. But she soon realises her mistake. When she witnesses a woman being shot in the street and a childhood friend’s Jewish department store is closed down, she knows she must do something. It’s a dangerous time to be a resistor, especially when her fascist boyfriend proposes to her.

June 1941. Hitler's armies race toward vulnerable Leningrad. In a matter of weeks, the Nazis surround the city, cut off the food supply, and launch a vicious bombardment. Widowed violinist Sofya Karavayeva and her teenage granddaughter, Yelena, are cornered in the crumbling city.

From the editor of the award-winning Children of Manzanar, Heather C. Lindquist, and Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara comes a nuanced account of the “Resettlement”: the relatively unexamined period when ordinary people of Japanese ancestry, having been unjustly imprisoned during World War II, were finally released from custody. Given $25 and a one-way bus ticket to make a new life, some ventured east to Denver and Chicago to start over, while others returned to Southern California only to face discrimination and an alarming scarcity of housing and jobs. 

Maeve Maloney may be nearing 80, but she keeps Sea View Lodge as shipshape as her parents did during Morecambe's heyday. But now only her employees recognise the heartbreak hidden beneath her spikiness. Until, that is, Vincent shows up. He is the only man alive to have known her twin sister, Edie. If only Maeve could confront the secret past she shares with Vincent, she might finally see what it means to love and be loved - a lesson that her twin may have been trying to teach her all along.

1868. Elspeth Thompson is the middle daughter in a family with tightly held secrets. While she loves her family, she longs to break out from their overprotective hold, to find herself, to be noticed for who she is rather than as chaperone to her beautiful younger sister, Kirsty, or underling to her elder sister, Muireall. A chance meeting under scandalous circumstances offers her the opportunity to be seen for herself, but the repercussions could lead to the downfall of her family.

When World War II began, seventeen-year-old Letty from a rigid Orthodox Jewish family in Belgium is trapped in a resort nestled in the French Pyrenees with her mother and two sisters. Her oldest sister disowns the family to save herself as her mother’s distress turns into violent panic attacks. Ahead of Letty lay razzias, the French police round-ups of Jews, Nazi aircraft, young love, and uncertainty about who to trust or where to go in a country hell-bent on capturing her. Now her family’s fate, whether triumph or catastrophe, hinges on Letty’s escape plan.

When her tinsmith father and brothers head West, Polish immigrant Marie Kotlarczyk has no choice but to go along. Family, after all, is family. The Dakota Territories are anything but welcoming to the Kotlarczyks, and as the months trip by, Marie must pick up the hammers she’s secretly desired but also feared. When she faces the skeptical people of Flats Town, the demands of the local Army commander, and her public failures, her inner voice grows destructively, forcing Marie to decide exactly who she is and what it means to be a woman smith.

A sassy woman who will do anything for her charity. A former Special Ops captain with nothing left to live for. Paired together against impossible odds, they will discover if love is strong enough to conquer the most difficult test of all. Brylee Auburn, a spunky sweetheart from rural Texas, works to keep immigrant children safe from traffickers. When offered a chance to earn a million dollars for her charity, she enters a reality TV show planning to pretend she’s brave and use her sense of humor to get through the intimidating challenges.

In 1066, 16-year-old Saxon Cerdic lives with his elder brother, Unferth, and his father, Rothgar, Earl of Ripon, in Swaledale. As the younger brother, he studies for the priesthood while Unferth trains to take on the mantle of earl one day. When news arrives that the King of Norway, Harald Hardraada, is invading northern England with the treacherous Tostig Godwinson, Earl Rothgar joins the northern nobles to repel them.