Rosie Thomas Books

From the bestselling author of The Kashmir Shawl

What happens when you fall in love with the one person you shouldn't? In the aftermath of a family tragedy, Jess Arrowsmith is powerless to resist her attraction to Rob, twenty years her junior, and the person she has reason to hate most in the world. As their love affair threatens to blow her family apart, Jess finds herself in a desperate struggle to defuse a crisis that puts at risk all she holds dear.

1919. The Great War is over and London lies on the brink of an uncertain future. With the misery and horror of war in the past, hope begins to emerge for the women who have waited at home, as for the first time, they have taken steps towards political, economic and personal independence. But the men who fought and survived the trenches believe the future is theirs by right, and any woman who has celebrated her freedom must now redouble her efforts to keep it.

"Newlywed Nerys Watkins leaves rural Wales to accompany her husband on a missionary posting to India. High up in the heart of Kashmir she discovers the lakeside city of Srinagar, where the British live on carved wooden houseboats and dance, flirt and gossip as if there is no war. But life becomes less frivolous when the men are sent away to fight. Nerys is caught up in a dangerous friendship, and by the time she is reunited with her husband the innocent Welsh bride has become a different woman. Years later, when Mair Ellis clears out her father's house, she finds an exquisite antique shawl and a lock of a child's hair. Tracing her grandparents back to Kashmir, Mair embarks on a quest that will change her life for ever."--Publisher.

One Love. One Chance. Once Sacrifice. For Sam McGrath a brief encounter with a young woman, on a turbulent flight, changes his life. On impulse, crazily attracted to her, her vows to follow her - all the way to Nepal. Finch Buchanan is flying out as doctor to an expedition. But when she reaches the Himalayas she will be reunited with a man she has never been able to forget. Al Hood has made a promise to his daughter. Once he has conquered this last peak, he will leave the mountains behind forever. Everest towers over the group, silent and beautiful. And the passionate relationship between Finch, Al and Sam - two men driven by their own demons, and a woman with a dream of her own - begins to play itself out, with tragic consequences...

The first international motor rally from Peking to Paris took place in the summer of 1907. Only five cars were involved and the crews wrote their agreed code of conduct on the back of a menu the night before the start. Their only navigational aids were the sun and telegraph poles. Ninety years later the race was re-enacted when 110 vintage cars gathered in Peking. Their goal was the finishing line in Paris, 45 days and 16,000 kilometres away. In this book, one of the competitors - novelist Rosie Thomas - describes the excitement of the daily time challenge, the strange camaraderie, the test of sleeping outdoors or in flea-pit hotels in foreign lands and her own internal journey, including a near-death experience high in the Himalayas.

Jake, Clio and Julius Hirsh and their cousin Lady Grace Stretton formed a charmed circle in those lost innocent days before the Great War - united against the world. Here, Clio recounts their story for her biographer: Jake's wartime experiences; and the music that drowned for Julius the crash of jackboots in thirties Berlin.

A story of love, loss and the distance between three generations of one family, this novel centres on Iris and Ruby - a grandmother and her granddaughter - as they try and make sense of their respective lives.

It was a love forbidden but never forgotten. When Harry Cotton returned to Wales, Angharad Owain found paradise - despite her father's violent warnings against the Cottons of Llyn Fair. For she and Harry were in love, untouchable, until a shocking revelation drives Angharad to flee, pregnant and penniless, to London.