Home travels with us whether we invite it along or not, tucked into a suitcase or buried beneath the floorboards of memory. Uprooted by war, drought, family secrets, and forbidden love, each of our four heroines discovers that the past always keeps pace, however far they run. Occupied Paris, the Texas dust, a convict's river and a New England island are a set of postmarks. Pull your chair closer to the fire and settle down for a great escape!
Ellen Feldman, 'A Bookshop in Paris' - Paris, 1944: bookseller Charlotte Foret accepts help from an unlikely source to save her sick daughter. Ten years on in New York, that choice still shapes everything she cannot say.
Kristin Hannah, 'The Four Winds' - As drought and dust storms ruin the Texas plains, Elsa Martinelli takes her children west to California, where the promised land offers hardship of a different kind and tests her resolve.
Kate Grenville, 'Sarah Thornhill' - Sarah Thornhill, daughter of a Hawkesbury convict settler, loves part-Aboriginal Jack Langland but a family secret forbids the match and she must reckon with her father's past.
Santa Montefiore, 'The Beekeeper's Daughter' - In 1930s England, a beekeeper's daughter gives up her first love; in 1973 Massachusetts, her own daughter falls for a British musician, and an old secret comes to light.
