As a girl, Zorrie Underwood's modest and hardscrabble home county was the only constant in her young life. After losing both her parents, Zorrie moved in with her aunt, whose own death orphaned Zorrie all over again, casting her off into the perilous realities and sublime landscapes of rural, Depression-era Indiana. Drifting west, Zorrie survived on odd jobs, sleeping in barns and under the stars, before finding a position at a radium processing plant....

Christmas 1937. An assortment of guests, including journalist turned amateur sleuth Daphne King, have arrived at Maybridge Castle, deep in the Cumbrian countryside. Hector Hayton, once something of a fixture on the society circuit of London, has recently purchased the castle and transformed it into 'England's first and only bona fide haunted hotel'. Guests can enjoy a range of ghoulish activities, from seances with a local medium to tours of the forest...

When Tartelin Brown accepts a job as a PA to a reclusive lepidopterist, she finds herself on a wild island with a mysterious history. Tartelin has been employed by Marianne Stourbridge to hunt for butterflies, but she quickly uncovers something far more intriguing. The island and Marianne share a remarkable past, and what happened all those years ago has left its scars. The island has a strange effect on Tartelin, too, finally allowing her to confront...

1901. On board the Ormen, a whaling ship battling through the unforgiving North Sea, a woman awakes. Attacked and dragged there against her will, it's just her and the crew - and they're all owed something only she can give them. 1973. Decades later, when the ship is found still drifting across the ocean, it's deserted. Just one body is left on board, his face and feet mutilated, his cabin locked from the inside. Everyone else has vanished. Now, as...

1919. In a highland village forgotten by the world, harvest season is over and the young who remain after war and flu have ravaged the village will soon head south to make something of themselves. Moira Jean and her friends head to the forest for a last night of laughter before parting ways. Moira Jean is being left behind. She had plans to leave once - but her lover died in France and with him, her future. The friends light a fire, sing and dance....

In 'Old Rage', one of Britain's best loved actors opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood. And yet - despite age, despite rage - she finds there are always reasons for joy.

When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me. And so we meet our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose husband, a charismatic professor at the same small liberal arts college, is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life...

For the district nurses of Victory Walk, there's been little time to bask in the triumph of D-day as London is facing a new threat - the buzz bombs. Everyone is terrified, never knowing where the next one will strike. Into this tense atmosphere, new nurse, Iris, must make her mark. She's had more experience of nursing than many, but since arriving in East London from the countryside, she has struggled to fit in with the other staff. Meanwhile Alice...

The queen is Marie of Roumania: the royal granddaughter to Victoria, Empress of the British Empire, and Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A famous beauty who has single-handedly transformed Roumania from a backwater into a force to be reckoned with. The castle is Bran: an ancient structure on the border with the newly regained territory of Transylvania, a gift to Queen Marie from her people. The threat is less clear. Shadowy figures, vague whispers, dangers...

Eric Vuillard turns his forensic, darkly humorous eye to the build-up to the war in Vietnam - skewering French and later US politics to show the prelude to the end of the colonial period.