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The classic kitchen maid's memoir that inspired the series "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey" is back--the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman who, though her position was lowly, never stopped aiming high.

With more than one hundred colorful and charming illustrations of the period, the author weaves together the memories of children from all social backgrounds to produce a magical picture of childhood in Edwardian Britain.

In the years before the First World War, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Together, they presided over the last years of dynastic Europe and the outbreak of the most destructive war the world had ever seen, a war that set twentieth-century Europe on course to be the most violent continent in the history of the world.

Before the Great War tore England apart and changed the way people lived forever, there was the glorious summer of 1911, when the country seemed full of promise and blissfully unaware of the coming storm.

Powell tells the true story of Rose, the under-parlourmaid to the Wardham Family at Redlands, who eloped with the family's only son.

Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts', suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.

The novel opens at the height of the 1876 racing season in Saratoga, New York, where mothers with "new money" assess their daughters' competition in the marriage market. It moves to London, where the St. George and Elmsworth girls go because the rigid guardians of American Society will not accept them. The dukes, lords, and marquesses of England, on the other hand, are delighted not only with the girls' beauty but with their fathers' bounty - just what is needed to revitalize impoverished British estates.

A Duty to the Dead, the first book of an exciting new series, is set in England during World War I, and features a spectacular female protagonist.

The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.

Richard Fiennders and Mary Bowden, devoted friends as children, belong within those dreams. As they grow older, however, their affection for each other begins to stir uneasiness in their parents. Anne Fiennders would never allow her son to wed the gamekeeper's daughter, and Mary's mother, all too aware of her family's dependence upon the Fiennders estate, will do anything to remain in that family's favor. With the passing years, progress invades the small town, and all of England is awakened. Richard and Mary face the end of an era of rigidly ordered living and the collapse of class barriers as they struggle to break free from their families' expectations and create the life they desire.

The three novels which make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920.

From the award-winning novelist and writer of "Upstairs Downstairs," the launch of a brilliant new trilogy about what life was really like for masters and servants before the world of "Downton Abbey."

The House at Riverton is a gorgeous debut novel set in England between the wars. It is the story of an aristocratic family, a house, a mysterious death and a way of life that vanished forever, told in flashback by a woman who witnessed it all and kept a secret for decades.

When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked, some very funny, some very tragic, that results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards End, the Wilcoxes' charming country home.

From the award-winning writer of the original "Upstairs Downstairs"--the second novel in an irresistible trilogy about an Earl's family and his servants at the turn of the 20th century.

She started as a maid in an aristocratic London household; studied her way into prestigious Girton College at Cambridge; then became a front-line nurse in World War I. There she found - and lost - an important part of herself. Now she has set up on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful. And Fate brings her a case that will force her to confront the ghost that has haunted her for over ten years.

A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England.

They had built their lives in this grand old house, its walls encompassing their family and their secrets. Nestled in the sweeping hills they have always known, the house is part of their history, their heritage. But these four walls also hold a secret...

A Londoner of lower class befriends and begins a romantic relationship with an aristocrat that becomes complicated when the aristocrat introduces his new friend to his sister.

Explores financial troubles of aristocratic families owning English castles.

An adaptation of the classic John Galsworthy novel about Soames Forsyte, his reluctant wife Irene, and their tortured marriage as unrequited love deteriorates with disastrous consequences.

Multiple storylined drama set in 1932, showing the lives of upstairs guests and downstairs servants at a party in a country house in England.

Television Series.
Depicts country life in late nineteenth-century Oxfordshire through a young woman's experiences in the contrasting communities of Lark Rise, the small hamlet of her childhood, and Candleford, a progressive market town.

Explores the lives of the upper class British country dwellers during the early twentieth century and the changes that brought about the decline of their social system.

The saga of the aristocratic Bellamy family and their loyal and lively servants.