Historical Letters

Unable to catch a break in life or love as she approaches thirty, Charli Thurman sees red lights at every crossroads. And given the Thurman family’s tumultuous history, she knows things will only get worse, unless she can break the cycle and figure out where—and when—it all went wrong. Charli is skeptical when her best friend introduces her to a “soul reader” who specializes in generational trauma. But during family constellation therapy with the guru, Charli experiences an inexplicable memory of terrible violence.

Grace is a worker in the new Industrial Revolution town, Lowell, MA. Despite only being 14 years old, she hopes to send extra money to help her poor family. To do so, she must work 12 hours a day in a factory helping machines wind thread. Learn about her life as a textile mill worker in the 1830s and the working conditions that she and her fellow workers endured in order to stay employed.

Pearl Harbor, 1941: On the morning of December 7, Ginny is flying her little yellow plane above the sparkling seas when she spots an unknown aircraft closing in on her. She recognises the red symbol of the Japanese fighter planes almost too late. Somehow, she manages to land unscathed, but the choices she is forced to make in the terrible hours that follow have tragic consequences....

1940. Cora Mayhew came to Paris to search for her birth mother and stayed to work for the resistance movement. When Cora's train is struck by Nazi bombs, the only thoughts on her mind as she staggers from the wreckage are to escape to return to her family, and to post the heart-wrenching letter clutched in her hand. Then a German soldier finds and saves Cora. Max Heller is nothing like she would have expected: kind, good-humoured and selfless. Cora can't help falling in love with him as he helps to plot her escape.

Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Miss Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation.

Lt. Mellie Blake is looking forward to beginning her training as a flight nurse. She is not looking forward to writing a letter to a man she’s never met - even if it is anonymous and part of a morale-building program. Lt. Tom MacGilliver, an officer stationed in North Africa, welcomes the idea of an anonymous correspondence - he’s been trying to escape his infamous name for years. As their letters crisscross the Atlantic, Tom and Mellie develop a unique friendship despite not knowing the other’s true identity. When both are transferred to Algeria, the two are poised to meet face-to-face for the first time.

With its winding high street lined with a greengrocer, post office, pub and church, Melstead St Mary is the perfect English village. Neighbours look out for neighbours, and few things trouble the serene surface of the community. But when residents start to receive anonymous letters containing secret information about their pasts - secrets that no one else is meant to know - life in Melstead St Mary is about to change, possibly forever....

The Letter: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! Tina Craig longs to escape her violent husband. She works all the hours God sends to save up enough money to leave him, also volunteering in a charity shop to avoid her unhappy home. Whilst going through the pockets of a second-hand suit, she comes across an old letter, the envelope firmly sealed and unfranked. Tina opens the letter and reads it - a decision that will alter the course of her life for ever....

Seven years ago, a letter left inside a tree brought Laura Bradshaw an anonymous friend who helped her navigate the tragic loss of her mother and gave her something to look forward to despite the overbearing hand of her father. Life would be far bleaker, if not for her beloved Letter Tree, her dear friend, and her secret trips to the Buffalo Zoo. But even these rays of light are threatened when her father decides to play matchmaker in order to further his business goals.

A shocking ancient secret. The origins of western civilization discovered. The Renaissance - our most fundamental age of technological and artistic advance, was built upon a secret passed down to a banking family in Florence - the Medici. 500 years ago that secret was buried. Florence, Italy, present day. A trove of letters belonging to the Medici family is discovered underground. Archaeologist Kat Cullen comes across a map that leads her to the Swiss Alps where her partner is murdered and she is left for dead.

In 1959, Hollywood ingenue Mercy Welles seems to have the world at her feet. Far removed from her Nebraska roots, she has crafted herself into a glamorous Oscar-nominated actress engaged to an up-and-coming director… Until she shockingly vanishes without a trace, just as her career is taking off. Almost sixty years later, Kit O’Neill, a junior television producer in Manhattan, is packing up her recently deceased grandmother’s attic, only to discover a long-lost box of souvenirs that reveal that the grandmother who raised her and her sister was, in fact, the mysterious Mercy Welles.

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.

Salento, Italy, June 1934: A coach stops in the main square of Lizzanello, a tight-knit village where everyone knows each other. A couple gets off: The man, Carlo, a child of the South, is happy to be back home after a long time away; the woman, Anna—his wife—is a stranger from the North. Carlo’s brother is there to meet them, and he and everyone else can’t help but notice that Anna is as beautiful as a Greek statue. But Anna is not like the other wives. She doesn’t gossip or attend church. She reads books no one else has ever heard of.

A daring WWII pilot who grew up among the clouds, Juliet Caron’s life was one of courage, adventure - and a love torn apart by war. Every nook of her Cornish cottage is alive with memories just waiting to be discovered. Katherine Henderson has escaped to Cornwall for Christmas, but she soon finds there is more to her holiday cottage than meets the eye. And on the eve of Juliet’s 100th birthday, Katherine is enlisted to make an old lady’s final Christmas wish come true....

As World War Two rages, MI5 agent Sarah Gillespie is faced with her toughest challenge yet: handling Adeline Vernier, a mysterious double agent from Paris. Adeline’s coded letters could help the Allies defeat the Germans – but, in return, she demands that her boyfriend is rescued from Nazi-occupied France. Adeline is not above threatening to double-cross MI5 to get what she wants, leaving Sarah fearful for the millions of lives at stake.

Amid the glitz and glamour of 1950s New York, Phoebe Adler pursues her dream of screenwriting. A dream that turns into a living nightmare when she is blacklisted - caught in the Red Menace that is shattering the lives of suspected Communists. Desperate to work, she escapes to London, determined to keep her dream alive and clear her good name. There, Phoebe befriends fellow American exile Hannah Wolfson, who has defied the odds to build a career as a successful television producer in England.

When Elias Byrne, the reclusive keeper of Kilbane Lighthouse, receives an anonymous letter foretelling the exact time and fate of a doomed ship, he becomes an unwilling witness to a disaster no one could stop. Days later, a cryptographer from Bletchley Park arrives with orders to investigate the impossible—messages that predict future tragedies with chilling accuracy.

1938. In the turmoil of pre-war Italy, a painting is stowed in the false bottom of a suitcase, ready to be carried across the border. But as the train draws to a violent halt and armed officers lead the passengers onto the platform, the suitcase is taken and the painting never seen again. 1963. London is on the cusp of change in the swinging 60s. Nightclubs and exclusive parties are in their heyday. But when a lowly boarding-house mistress attempts to take on the establishment, and is accused of spying for the Russians, she can save only one thing - her reputation, or the love of her life.

London, 1940. When nurse Elsie offers to send a reassuring letter to the family of a patient, she has an idea. She begins a book of last letters: messages to be sent on to wounded soldiers’ loved ones should the very worst come to pass so that no one is left without a final goodbye. London, present day. Stephanie has a lot of people she’d like to speak to: her estranged brother, to whom her last words were in anger; her nan, whose dementia means she is only occasionally lucid enough to talk.

After surviving the accident that took her mother's life, Claire Broussard worked hard to escape her small Louisiana hometown. But these days, she feels something lacking. Abruptly leaving her lucrative job in Chicago, Claire returns home to care for her ailing grandmother. There, she unearths a beautiful sculpture that her great-grandfather sent home from Paris after World War II. At her grandmother's urging, Claire travels to Paris to track down the centuries old mask-making atelier where the sculpture was created.