1904: Ellen Copley is still a child when she leaves behind the sooty rail yards of Glasgow and crosses the Atlantic Ocean with a heart full of dreams. Yet within weeks of their arrival in America, her father has disappeared - leaving Ellen with resentful relatives, feeling alone and scared for her future. But then her kind Aunt Rose invites Ellen to stay with her large family in their rambling house on beautiful Amherst Island, which nestles like a jewel in the blue waters of Lake Ontario.

When Lily is called to a lawyer’s office in London, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever. There, she is told that her grandmother was born at Hope House, a home for unmarried mothers, and is given a box containing the only clues to her true heritage. Peeling back the delicate layers of paper she finds an Italian recipe and a theatre program.

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia.

When Elizabeth's husband dies, leaving her with crippling debt, the only person she can turn to is her friend, Jo. Soon Jo has called in her daughter, Lucy, to help save Elizabeth from bankruptcy. Leaving her old life behind, Lucy is determined to make the most of her fresh start. As life slowly begins to return to normal, these three women, thrown together by circumstance, become fast friends. But then Jo's world is turned upside down when she receives some shocking news. In search of solace, Jo and Elizabeth find themselves enjoying midnight dips in the freezing Irish Sea.

When Elizabeth Morton's father asks her to travel to the other side of the world to marry a man she's never met, she is stunned. It's 1920 and a woman has rights. But her choices are removed when she is raped by her brother-in-law and thrown out of her own home by her sister.

It’s 1837, and immigrating to a small New Zealand fishing village is an opportunity for Ida Lange’s family to build a better future. Yet for Ida, raised in a strict, religious, tight-knit German community, so much is still forbidden to a woman. Yearning for the poor day laborer she shared books with as a child, Ida is now trapped in a dire marriage to a man of her father’s choosing.

When the call finally comes, my life as I know it is over—my job as a teacher, my marriage, my family are all gone. In a heartbeat, I’ve lost everything that ever mattered to me. All because of one secret and what someone thinks she saw....

In mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, charming Kathleen and dashing Michael harbor secrets and dreams. Imagining a life beyond the kitchen and fields of the wealthy family they both work for, they plot to leave their homeland, marry, and raise the child Kathleen is secretly carrying. The luck of the Irish, however, is not on their side. Soon, they find themselves swept up in circumstances they never could have fathomed. Kathleen is forced to marry against her will and immigrate to New Zealand.

Sisters Laura and Penny were once close, bonded together after the early death of their mother. Laura always had her younger sister’s back until one day everything changed and Penny disappeared. Twenty years later Laura finds herself alone and at a crossroad in her life; questioning her marriage and her future. Meanwhile Penny has spent her whole life running away from her problems until one day she is forced to stop and face the shocking truth. When Penny turns up on Laura’s doorstep late one stormy night, Laura is immediately suspicious of her sister’s motives.

Funny, charismatic and generous; angry, vicious and hurt; in pub lounges all over Cork City, Noelle McCarthy’s mother Carol rages against her life and everything she’s lost. As soon as she can, Noelle runs away. All the way to New Zealand, to make a new, different kind of life. But then Mammy gets sick, and it’s time to face everything that’s waiting back home.

Born on a farm outside Edinburgh in the mid-19th century, Agnes Watt is embraced by family, community, and tradition. Her youthful hopes and dreams are quashed but she falls in love and marries William Miller, a Gordon Highlander. Life spirals into dark places as the couple become ensnared in the nightmare that descended on the Scottish working class during the industrial revolution. The triumphs of the great Victorian era came at an appalling human cost and Agnes fights against disease and grinding poverty.

The sudden death of a pupil in Fleat House at St Stephen’s—a small private boarding school in deepest Norfolk—is a shocking event that the headmaster is very keen to call a tragic accident. But the local police cannot rule out foul play and the case prompts the return of high-flying Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz’ Hunter to the force. Jazz has her own private reasons for stepping away from her police career in London, and reluctantly agrees to front the investigation as a favour to her old boss.

England, 1939: When Alice marries twinkly-eyed, kind-hearted vicar David, it means leaving everything from her old life behind and moving into the draughty vicarage in the beautiful but remote village of Goswell, Cumbria. Though homesick, she's determined to make a new life there for herself and her husband. But soon tragedy strikes, and Alice is devastated when war breaks out and David chooses to sign up to fight. But everything changes when she's asked to take in a child evacuee, and she makes a promise to protect this girl, no matter what it costs her…

On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.

In the chaos of World War II, Polish teenagers Helena and Luzyna Grabowski have lost everything. Without parents or a home, they are shipped to a refugee camp in Persia, where the days ahead hold only darkness. When they hear that orphans are being selected for relocation to New Zealand, Helena is filled with hope - until the officials say they have a place only for her younger sister. On the morning she is to be transported, Luzyna fails to join the chosen group, and Helena takes her place.