National Network for Equitable Library Service

From Italy in 1733 to Edinburgh in 1831 to a series of chilling murders in London in 1870 and a lethal game of revenge decades later, a watch touches lives with misfortune-until it comes into the hands of one young woman who might be able to stop it for good. This outstanding collaboration between four outstanding novelists follows characters who are irrevocably linked by fate, each one playing a key role in breaking the curse once and for all.

Ada Byron is rich and clever, but she longs to be free. Free to explore all the amazing ideas that come to her imagination, like flying mechanical horses and stories inspired by her travels. Free to find love and passion beyond the watchful gaze of her mother and governesses. And free to learn the full truth about her father, the notorious Lord Byron. Then Ada meets a man whose invention might just change the world-and he needs her visionary brilliance to bring it to life...

It is the summer of 1955. Alexander, Tom, and his sister Lennie discover the body of their childhood friend Danny Masters in the river that runs through Starome, a village on the Richmond estate in North Yorkshire. His death is a mystery. Did he jump, or was it just an accident? Lady Venetia Richmond has no time to dwell on the death. Newly widowed, she is busy trying to keep the estate together, while struggling with death duties and crippling taxation.Alexander, her son and sole heir to Richmond Hall, is of little help.

When a dolphin takes up residence in Carrig Cove, Emer and her best friend, Fee, feel like they have an instant connection with it. Then Dog Cullen and his sidekick, Kit, turn up, and the four friends begin to sneak out at midnight to go down to the beach, daring each other to swim closer and closer to the creature... But the fame and fortune the dolphin brings to their small village builds resentment amongst their neighbours across the bay. As the summer days get longer and hotter, something wild and intense simmers in the air.

In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep-sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, she urges her mother to allow her to make their annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade sea delicacies for pork. A sea-village girl, Junja has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth, and it is there she falls in love with mountain-boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey.

Jenny Gwyn has proven herself a survivor. Faced with destitution after the death of her father, she toughens her skin to become a highwaywoman in order to support her impoverished family. But one fatal mistake leads to her arrest, and the king's justice demands her death. Rather than beg for mercy, Jenny condemns the system that would have her choose between obeying the law and dying and breaking it for a chance to live.

Hanna Tillich cherishes her work as an archaeologist for the Third Reich, searching for the Holy Grail and other artifacts to bolster evidence of a master Aryan race. But when she is reassigned to work as a museum curator in Nuremberg, then forced to marry an SS officer and adopt a young girl, she begins to see behind the Nazi facade. A prayer labyrinth becomes a storehouse for her secrets, but as she comes to love Lilly as her own daughter, she fears that what she's hiding - and what she begins to uncover - could put them both in mortal danger.

«C'est un de ces soirs où je trayais les vaches dans la lumière du soleil couchant que je l'ai vu pour la première fois. Un canot est apparu, descendant en silence la rivière. Un homme torse nu, à la peau cuivrée, ramait sans se presser, se laissant pousser par le courant. Il paraissait à peine plus âgé que moi. Nos regards se sont croisés. Il n'a pas souri. Et je n'ai pas eu peur.» Ce roman raconte l'histoire d'Almanda Siméon, une orpheline amoureuse qui va partager la vie des Innus de Pekuakami.

« Promettez-moi de ne jamais vous marier, de ne jamais choisir d'époux ou d'épouse qui risque de vous abandonner ou de vous briser le coeur, ni d'avoir d'enfants. » Nous sommes dans les Hautes-Laurentides, en 1922. Rose rend l'âme en insistant pour que chacun des quatre enfants qu'elle a élevés seule fasse ce serment inusité. Sauront-ils honorer les dernières volontés de leur mère ?

Years before the Great War summoned Bess Crawford to serve as a battlefield nurse, the indomitable heroine spent her childhood in India under the watchful eye of her friend and confidant, the young soldier Simon Brandon. The two formed an inseparable bond on the dangerous Northwest Frontier where her father's Regiment held the Khyber Pass against all intruders.