Softly Grow the Poppies

Softly Grow the Poppies

Audrey Howard

Romance / Historical Fiction

SynopsisRose Beechworth is mistress of a charming country house - her own, left to her by her wealthy father. In the summer of 1914, she is not even looking for love. Alice Weatherly turns Rose's world upside down. The loveable young heiress longs to kiss Captain Charlie Summers goodbye - she takes Rose to Liverpool's Lime Street station and into the heart of Charlie's brother Harry. Even though they are neighbours, they have never met, for Rose ignores the social round, while Harry's time is taken up desperately attempting to keep his father's ramshackle estate together. He becomes the master of Summer Place, a magnificent mansion with a proud history. He is only too glad when it becomes a hospital for wounded soldiers. As the war takes its terrible toll and Charlie disappears into the fog of battle, Alice - the spoilt runaway heiress - becomes a heroine, while Rose finds herself running two great houses. It seems impossible that any of them can ever find happiness again . . .
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The Flight of Swallows

The Flight of Swallows

Audrey Howard

Romance / Historical Fiction

Charlotte Drummond knows she has a duty to obey her father. Girls, especially well-bred upper-class ones, are expected to be submissive to the men in their lives. But Charlotte’s father is a cruel man, viciously beating her and her brothers for the slightest reason. He even wants to marry her off, at just sixteen years old, to a man she does not love. Lion-hearted Charlotte wants to defy him – but to protect her brothers from his fury she agrees to become the wife of Brooke Armstrong. Charlotte does not understand that Brooke adores her, and that he would never have forced his enchanting new wife to agree to the match. As they begin their ill-starred marriage, Brooke welcomes her brothers into his home and sets out to make her love him. And when Charlotte turns her back on her social duties to turn the Dower House into a home for Wakefield’s fallen women his patience is tested to the limit. Only when tragedy strikes will she will be able to admit that she loved him from the moment they met. But will it be too late?
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Angel Meadow

Angel Meadow

Audrey Howard

Romance / Historical Fiction

SynopsisNancy Brody is different from the rest of the folk in Angel Meadow, the appalling slum where her drunken mother Kitty was a prostitute . . . Only nine years old, Nancy decides to save her sisters Mary and Rose from the workhouse. She gets work for them all at the Monarch Cotton Manufacturing Mill - and then sets out to better herself and her sisters. Saving every penny, working every waking hour, Nancy succeeds, becoming a manufacturer herself. But happiness seems as elusive for Nancy as it was when she was a mistreated child. Though he once said he loved her, Mick O'Rourke has become Nancy's worst enemy, and seems destined to take a terrible revenge on her and her sisters. And Josh Hayes, the man who truly loves Nancy, seems destined to be parted from her.
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Shining Threads

Shining Threads

Audrey Howard

Romance / Historical Fiction

SynopsisWhen beautiful Tessa Harrison and her twin cousins take over their parents' Lancashire cotton mill, their luxurious upbringing has left them unprepared for their new responsibilities. For Tessa, there is an added but forbidden attraction at the mill. Foreman Will Broadbent, with his genuine understanding of the business and its workers, could not be more different from the dashing cousins. Yet, like the twins, he is hopelessly in love with this untameable girl. Their love for Tessa will lead one to death, one to the arms of another woman, a thrid too faint-hearted to take up his inheritance. And Tessa, the girl who could choose any man she wanted, is forced to shoulder more burdens than she could have imagined before she can be united with the one man she truly needs.
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Between Friends

Between Friends

Audrey Howard

Romance / Historical Fiction

SynopsisBrought together by friendship, torn apart by love... Meg Hughes, Tom Fraser and Martin Hunter were friends who had grown up together in the grinding poverty of a Liverpool orphanage. Their prospects looked bleak until the friends were sent to help out at Hemingway Shipping Line's emigrant lodging house. Then their youthful high spirits blossomed into their plans for the future. But the First World War brought an end to those plans, and threatened to separate them. As time passes, Meg grows more and more beautiful, and the love the two men feel for her becomes passionately possessive. Meg, in different ways, is in love with both Tom and Martin . . . and is to bear a child by one of them. Grief and suffering, as well as happiness and hope, must all play their part before the childhood friends' deep and complex relationships are finally and tragically resolved.
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