As she puts the final stitches in her perfect wedding dress, Sarah Love receives dreadful news which wrecks all her future plans. Heartbroken and humiliated, she leaps at a chance to make a fresh start away from her native Tullamore.Within a week she has crossed the Irish Sea, and is lodging with other young women in a house off Newcastle city centre, just a short walk from Harrison's—the rundown knitting and sewing shop where she will work for reserved and troubled spinster, Lucy Harrison.Sarah now finds herself amongst people of different classes, religion and race, and when her Irish nationality is attacked she must discover the skills to survive.Putting the past behind her, she channels her energies into rebuilding the old-fashioned, neglected Harrison's into a thriving business and her wonderful sewing and design skills soon lead her down a new and exciting path in life.A path without love though, as she is too raw to consider romance again.Or so she thinks...

Heather and Kirsty Grace are growing up in 1950s Scotland. Promotion to a big shipping office in Glasgow heralds big changes for Heather, and Kirsty is spotted in a singing competition by a booking agent who promises glittering opportunities.In early 1956, a young woman's body is discovered, and fear and suspicion casts a dark shadow over their hometown. Just as they are starting to enjoy the world outside the girls' wings are suddenly clipped.Can the Grace girls break away from the caring, but stifling attitudes of Clayhill? Will they succumb to the glittering city lights and the pitfalls that await...

Aisling Gayle is one of life's pleasers. A young, country schoolteacher in 60s Ireland, she spends her life pleasing philandering, Jack-the-lad husband Oliver, and pious mother Maggie.She also worries about her sister Pauline, home from England with an illegitimate child, and her brother Charles who sees life differently to most other people. Aisling's wedding anniversary reveals Oliver's latest infidelity, and she decides to escape for the summer, accompanying her parents to beautiful Lake Savannah in Upstate New York.There she meets Thomas Carroll, a slow but amiable teenager and a frightening encounter introduces her to his father, reclusive artist Jameson Carroll. Soon Aisling finds herself in a once-in-a-lifetime, passionate affair.As return to Ireland and Oliver looms, can her passion overcome the obstacles awaiting her? Can Aisling Gayle find the courage, at long last, to please herself?

Tara Flynn, a village girl, befriends Madeleine, the unstable daughter of the wealthy Fitzgerald family. Redheaded Tara, beautiful and ambitious, soon attracts male interest...Meanwhile her friend Biddy Harte, a kindhearted orphan fostered by the uncaring Lizzy Lawless, has fallen into another trap.Soon heartbreaking events force the girls to leave their native Ballygrace and flee to England and Tara's hopes of romance with Gabriel are dashed.The girls' new life in Stockport, near Manchester, brings romance for Biddy. But can she rely on his love when shameful secrets loom from the past to confront her?And can Tara still hope to climb the ladder of success in her new career as an estate agent? Or is prosperous, handsome businessman Frank Kennedy the answer to both ambition and loneliness?

Maria Conti has a full and busy life in 60's Manchester. Having lost her mother at a young age, she has a close and loving relationship with her father, Leo who owns an Italian restaurant, Leonardo's. Finding first romance with Paul Spencer seems like the icing on the cake.Secretly, however, she worries over Leo's drinking and gambling binges. Then he buys a racehorse she know he cannot afford. Maria has no one to advise her as Leo's family are in Italy and her mother's family in Ireland rejected her when she married a foreigner.Having carefully guarded her father from female attention, Maria's attitude alters when the elegant Diana Freeman comes into their lives. She hopes that Diana's presence may distance Leo from his addictions.Then Leo is tragically killed. In the dark days that follow it emerges that he has left them deeply in debt and their home and her beloved Leonard's are in jeopardy. Maria has no choice but to turn to her estranged Irish Family...

Growing up in the 1950s in Kilnagree, a small village in Co Clare, Rose lives a quiet life. Working part-time in the local pub while helping her grandmother at home, Rose's only ambition is to marry a decent local lad in Kilnagree.In Offaly, Rose's pretty, precocious cousin Hannah is hiding dark secrets. Dreaming of the day she can flee her vicious-tempered mother, Hannah finds a welcome escape in Kilnagree where she is the life and soul of the party.Lenora Bentley, whose daughter lives in Kilnagree, finds peace and tranquility when she visits Co Clare. A wealthy widow, living in a large empty house in Dublin, Lenora is nursing a wound that refuses to heal.Will Rose find happiness in Clare or do her fortunes lie elsewhere? Will Hannah break free from her mother and her own dangerous behaviour? And will Lenora ever be able to let her guard down to enjoy a full life again?

Lily Grace has escaped the confines of the Scottish village where she grew up, and is at college in Newcastle. She loves her independent student life and hopes to stretch her wings even further by working on a cruise ship for the summer. The only cloud on the horizon is the blunder she made when she kissed lecturer Gerard Renée, not realising he was a married man.Then a trip to Ireland for a family funeral changes everything.There she meets student Dara Ryan and her brother Declan is smitten by the gorgeous Ava, who was abandoned at a convent as a baby. Lily and Dara fall in love but she is fearful that a long-distance love affair is doomed to fail. When her father, fuelled by drink and emotion after the funeral, makes a shocking confession, and Ava involves them all in a heartbreaking crisis, Lily realises that Gerard Renée is the least of the problems she must solve before summer's end.Perhaps everything will be clearer on a cruise ship under starry Mediterranean...