"Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman's only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she...

Maisie Dobbs' first assignment for the British Secret Service takes her undercover to Cambridge as a professor, and leads to the investigation of a murderous web of activities being conducted by the up-and-coming Nazi party.

1932. After the Great War took both her beloved brother and her fiancé, Violet Speedwell has become a "surplus woman," one of a generation doomed to a life of spinsterhood after the war killed so many young men. Yet Violet cannot reconcile herself to a life spent caring for her grieving, embittered mother. After countless meals of boiled eggs and dry toast, she saves enough to move out of her mother's place and into the town of Winchester, home to...

"Spring, 1935 finds the little Alabama town of Darling excited about their new local radio station, WDAR. But there are problems brewing at the newspaper, where a trio of new hires causes headaches for editor Charlie Dickens.That's not the worst of it, though, as the Dahlias discover when the newest resident at Bessie Bloodworth's Magnolia Manor is found dead. She had overindulged in a large and very rich chocolate cake - but was something else baked...

"Hercule Poirot is traveling by luxury passenger coach from London to the exclusive Kingfisher Hill estate. Richard Devonport has summoned the renowned detective to prove that his fiancée, Helen, is innocent of the murder of his brother, Frank. Poirot will have only days to investigate before Helen is hanged, but there is one strange condition attached: he must conceal his true reason for being there from the rest of the Devonport family. The coach...

In 1939 London, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged governess who finds herself once again unfairly dismissed from her job. Now she must seize the day if she wants a job. She does this by intercepting an employment assignment outside of her comfort level as social secretary. Arriving at a penthouse apartment for the interview, Miss Pettigrew is catapulted into the glamorous world and dizzying social whirl of an American actress and singer, Delysia...

"Addie Cowherd dreamt of being a novelist and offering readers the escape that books gave her during her tragic childhood. But it's the Great Depression, and when her adoptive father loses his job, Addie is forced to leave college and take the only employment she can find: delivering books on horseback to poor coal mining families in the hills of Kentucky. The community of Boone's Hollow is suspicious of outsiders and steeped in superstitions that...

"It's December 19, 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are looking forward to a much-needed, restful Christmas holiday, when they are called upon to investigate the murder of a man in a Norfolk hospital ward. Cynthia Catchpool, Edward's mother, insists that Poirot stay with her in a crumbling mansion by the coast, so that they can all be together for the festive period while he solves the case. As Poirot digs into the mystery, he discovers...

"In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a daughter of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions about the Ichiyanagis around the village. Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiniyagi family are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie...

Bernard Wasserstein presents a disturbing interpretation of the collapse of European Jewish civilization even before the Nazi onslaught. Wasserstein shows how the harsh realities of the age devastated the lives of communities and individuals. By 1939, the Jews faced an existential crisis that was as much the result of internal decay as of external attack.