Wiltshire, December 1915. Olivia Hanbury is widowed and has been persuaded by her cousin Donald to move in with his meek little wife while he is serving in France. When he's wounded, he returns home to convalesce. Tensions rise between him and lively Olivia. Her friend Babs involves her in starting the new Women's Institutes and introduces her to Alex, an antiques dealer. Meanwhile, Phoebe Latimer is holding the fort at Greyladies, an ancient manor house, while her husband is away at war. But someone is attempting to rid Greyladies of the German internees based there. Their nasty tricks put Phoebe's life and that of her unborn child at risk. A chance meeting brings Olivia to Greyladies, and she feels as though she's finally come home. Alex joins her there. Will these three help one another through these troubled times? Or will violent men destroy Greyladies and all it stands for?

During WWI, Greyladies - an ancient manor house in rural Wiltshire - is requisitioned for a hospital. Its mistress, Harriet, Joseph and their sons are allowed to stay in the rear part of the house, but when tragedy strikes Joseph's brothers, his future at Greyladies is at risk. Latimer family legend says a new mistress will be found to look after the house, yet how does this happen? In Swindon, Phoebe Sinclair is unaware of her connection to Greyladies and the Latimers. When her German employers are interned because of the war, she loses her job. Even worse, her brutish step-cousin Frank tries to force her to marry him. Phoebe flees to London.

1900. The death of her father forces Harriet out of her home to escape the advances of her stepbrother, the rule of her stepmother and into service at Dalton House. Over time Harriet develops a friendship with the Dalton's crippled son Joseph but her life is changed completely when she inherits Greyladies, an old and possibly haunted house.

Wiltshire, December 1915. Olivia Hanbury is widowed and has been persuaded by her cousin Donald to move in with his meek little wife while he is serving in France. When he's wounded, he returns home to convalesce. Tensions rise between him and lively Olivia. Her friend Babs involves her in starting the new Women's Institutes and introduces her to Alex, an antiques dealer. Meanwhile, Phoebe Latimer is holding the fort at Greyladies, an ancient manor house, while her husband is away at war. But someone is attempting to rid Greyladies of the German internees based there. Their nasty tricks put Phoebe's life and that of her unborn child at risk. A chance meeting brings Olivia to Greyladies, and she feels as though she's finally come home. Alex joins her there. Will these three help one another through these troubled times? Or will violent men destroy Greyladies and all it stands for?

This beloved account about an intrepid young Englishman on the first leg of his walk from London to Constantinople is simply one of the best works of travel literature ever written. At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the heart of London on an epic journey—to walk to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the rich account of his adventures as far as Hungary, after which Between the Woods and the Water continues the story to the Iron Gates that divide the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. Acclaimed for its sweep and intelligence, Leigh Fermor’s book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed—through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire; up the Rhine, and down to the Danube. At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.

A women’s chapter of the KKK in the early twentieth-century Midwest is uncovered in this fascinating and meticulously researched social history. In the xenophobic atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, Ku Klux Klan activity spiked in Wisconsin and gave rise to Women’s Klan no. 14, also known as the Grey Eagles of Chippewa Falls. Against a national backdrop that saw the Klan hurl its collective might into influencing presidential elections and federal legislation, quotidian matters often stole the attention of the Grey Eagles. Drawing on never-before-seen materials, author John E. Kinville unfolds their complex legacy. For every minute spent upholding Prohibition and blocking Catholic Al Smith’s path to the White House, the Grey Eagles spent two raising funds for their order and helping neighbors in need. What unfolds in Kinville’s work is the complex legacy of these Chippewa Falls women who struggled to balance care for their community against the malicious ideology of the Klan.

In this challenging book, written as a series of open letters to an American friend, Pierre Berton reaches into his profound knowledge of the country’s history and geography to dissect, praise, explain and occasionally criticize the national character. He does so, not with abstract opinions but with apt and colourful examples taken from the past and the present: Sam Steele’s gold rush censorship of the Turkish Whirlwind Danseuse; Ontario’s grudging acceptance of beer in three Toronto ballparks; New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade; Lorne Greene’s rueful return to Toronto; William Van Horne’s tirade against winter carnivals; the role of Kentucky in the War of 1812; W.A.C. Bennett’s surprising takeover of the B.C. Electric Company on the day of its president’s funeral. All these apparently disconnected incidents are woven into a carefully thought-out dissection of the national character, a distillation of more than thirty years of Berton research.