Miranda Lovage and her mother have a blazing row when Arabella tells her daughter that she can no longer afford their present lifestyle. Miranda goes to be angry and upset and is awoken at midnight by a strange sound, but when it is not repeated she goes back to sleep. When she awakes next morning, however, it is to find that her mother has disappeared.

1910. Sisters Mattie, Nell and Renie all managed to escape their oppressive and bullying father, but now separated, the girls must draw upon their strength and courage to build new lives for themselves.

The war is now over and people must count the cost. Three women from very different backgrounds meet when they find themselves on Bristol Temple Meads station waiting for the return of their loved ones.

East-End London, 1858. In London's twisting streets, it's hard to tell friend from foe. And for Katherine Martin, arriving back in London after years away, the city is far crueller than she remembers. Her eyes opened to the plight of London's poor, Kate is determined to do what she can to help - even if it means defying her parents. In secret, she opens a soup kitchen. But there is a world of criminals within London's poorest alleys. Catching the...

At 16 Nancy leaves her small island for the mainland, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine. Finding work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City, she feels irrepressibly drawn to the charismatic gardener Michael Egan, sparking a love affair that soon throws her into a fight for her life. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece...

Dana has escaped from her family farm on the west coast of Ireland. Victoria is running away from a debt-ridden aristocratic background. Beth is an army brat and throws in her lot with bitchy Celia Forsyth. And Pammy Tanner has come from quite the wrong side of the tracks in Liverpool. The world in which they now find themselves is complicated and deeply hierarchical, from lonely but formidable Matron down to Dessie who rules the Porter's boys with...

It's 1890, and Josie Gray is an innocent and beautiful fifteen-year-old when Adam McGuigan, the youngest son of a dangerous and influential crime family spots her singing in a Sunderland public house. Adam is handsome and charismatic, sweeping Josie off her feet with his beguiling lies and promises. He charms her into marrying him on her sixteenth birthday, but on her wedding night the fairy tale ends. Josie finds herself trapped in a living nightmare...

It is the 1950s and as the Cazalets beloved matriarch, the Duchy, passes away, she takes with her the last remnants of a world of great houses and servants, of class and tradition in which the Cazalets have thrived. Louise, now divorced, becomes entangled in a painful affair, while Polly and Clary must balance marriage and motherhood with their own ideas and ambitions.

Ruthlessly ambitious Ambrose Constantine is determined that his daughter, Annabel, shall marry into the nobility. A fish merchant and self-made man, he has only his wealth to buy his way into society. During the London season, Annabel is courted by James Lyndon, the Earl of Fairfield, whose country estate is only a few miles from her grandfather's farm. Believing herself truly loved at last, Annabel accepts his offer of marriage. It is only when she...

1935. At 36, Bella Porter is dependent on her abusive cousin, acting as an unpaid servant. When a kind relative leaves her a house in the village of Backshaw Moss, Thomas tries to take it from her, but she defies him and grasps this chance of a new start in Lancashire. The house is on the edge of a slum and in a state of disrepair, let out as flats. As kind people help her find her feet, however, her confidence grows and when she meets struggling,...