Emma Garrett is eagerly anticipating the arrival of spring, when her family plans to reunite in Candlewood. Together they will celebrate her birthday at Hill House, the boardinghouse she oversees. Though anxious to introduce her sons to Zachary Breckenwith, the man she's been courting, her sons' own problems--and wounds deeply hidden since childhood--soon overshadow her joy. As Zachary presses Emma for an answer to his marriage proposal, her initial...

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

With America's entrance into the Second World War, the town of Blackberry Springs, Alabama, has exploded virtually overnight. Workers from all over are coming south for jobs in Uncle Sam's munitions plants--and they're bringing their pasts with them, right into Dolly Chandler's grand but fading family home turned boardinghouse.

"When their father's death leaves them impoverished, the Summers sisters open their home to guests to provide for their ailing mother. But instead of the elderly invalids they expect, they find themselves hosting eligible gentlemen. Sarah must confront her growing attraction to a mysterious widower, and Viola learns to heal her deep-hidden scars"--

In 1957, on England's Suffolk coast, Margery Paxton, the owner of Mersea House, the town's only lodging, is informed she has a new ward, the eleven-year-old orphaned daughter of her first love, while her lodgers find the past is never far behind and looming secrets may destroy the friendships they've created.