Elizabeth Jeffrey: 37 books

When Anna hears her father's plans to marry her off to an old widower, she is determined to escape. Gathering together everything they own, Anna and her childhood sweetheart Jan board a boat from Holland to England. Heading for Colchester, the hub of the thriving cloth trade, life is not easy for...

Rachel Gardner's family life is far from a happy one. Her father, Stanhope, is cold and remote and her mother Nellie seems to care for nothing but housework. Then, one day, Stanhope collapses in the street and dies - and the façade he had built up carefully for so many years is revealed as a sham. Sad...

The year is 1916 and twenty-year-old Poppy Barlow is clearing the desk of her late father when she comes across a faded photograph of her father with his two sisters - aunts that Poppy never knew she had - along with their address. Poppy contacts her aunts, and is thrilled when they invite her to...

“Fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs will be captivated” by this novel of an aristocratic family at the dawn of the First World War (Booklist, starred review). August, 1914: The silver wedding celebrations of Sir George Barsham, MP, and his wife, Lady Adelaide, have been overshadowed...

After a London pub brawl, in which her beloved father is injured, thirteen-year-old Sally Stangate and her family must flee to begin a new life in the Essex village where he was born. But when they arrive, Sally has an uncanny feeling that her future in Wyford will be ill-starred. Her premonition...

When Hannah Fox's younger brother Sam is ridden down in the street by Thomas Truswell, the spoilt son of the most powerful industrialists in Sheffield, she sets off to the Truswell's estate to complain. Lady Truswell is taken with the hot-tempered young girl who has come to demand an apology of her...

The evening Rose Bentley takes a short-cut home across the marsh proves a fateful one. Panicked by the rising tide and struggling on a sprained ankle, it is no wonder she imagines seeing a dead body in a mud-drowned gully. Her rescuer Michael Dowland, the brusque but attractive son of the mill owner,...

Since they were pupils in the village school, it had been obvious that Becca the ploughman's daughter and George the blacksmith's son would one day marry. But Becca's scheming younger sister, Ellen, upsets their plans with a shocking announcement: she is pregnant with George's child. Shock...

When Ginny Appleyard's childhood sweetheart returns home after his racing season aboard the yacht Aurora, her hopes that he is bringing her an engagement ring are shattered, as Nathan disembarks with Isobel Armitage; the daughter of Aurora's owner. Instead of the hoped-for proposal, Nathan tells Ginny...

After the death of her mother, Mollie Barnes is sent to live in her aunt and uncle's house and forced to endure her aunt's simmering resentment. One day, the tension explodes, leading to a shocking revelation about Mollie's parentage. Every day, Mollie had been working by the shore, under the...

Bethany and her mother are left destitute following the scandalous death of her father. Forced to leave their beloved home with little more than the clothes they are wearing, their last hope is to prevail upon their only living relative, Bethany's Great Aunt Sarah, who runs a coaching inn and reluctantly...

When Edward Price-Carpenter arrives in Wyford, Essex, he immediately catches Cassie Jordan's eye. Handsome and persuasive, the young man has come to oversee work on his father's racing yacht, and takes lodgings in the Falcon Inn where Cassie lives with her family. As romance blossoms between...

When lovely Laura Chapman wakes up to find herself destitute in a London workhouse with all her belongings stolen, she cannot imagine how she will ever get over the shame. An orphan newly arrived from India, Laura is at the mercy of Jack Plant, the workhouse overseer, whose intentions are far from...

Abandoned as a baby, Joanna was brought up by the cruel farmer who found her and put to work on his land as soon as she could walk. Despite such hardship, Jo still keeps her spirits up, strengthened by the knowledge that she was discovered in a luxurious blue velvet cloak - evidence that her true...