The year is 1912. Nineteen-year-old Maisie Porter watches from the deck of the SS Oceanic as England fades from view. Her destination is Buccaneer Bay in Australia's far northwest. Her fate: marriage to distant cousin Maitland Sinclair, a man she has never met.

In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.

Week after week the postcards arrive, addressed to a name Ellie does not know, with no return address, each signed with an initial: A. With their bright skies, blue seas and alluring images of Greece, these cartes postales brighten her life. After six months, to her disappointment, they cease. But the montage she has created on the wall of her flat has cast a spell. She must see this country for herself.

1942: Saba Tarcan is a talented young singer with big dreams. So when an opportunity arises to entertain the troops in the Middle East, she jumps at the chance, cutting short a burgeoning love affair with a young RAF pilot, Dom. It soon becomes clear that entertaining won’t be Saba’s only mission. It's a move that will jeopardize not only her own safety, but also the love of her life.

Lamorna Cove - a tiny bay in Cornwall, picturesque, unspoilt. A hundred years ago it was the haunt of a colony of artists. Today, Mel Pentreath hopes it is a place where she can escape the pain of her mother's death and a broken love affair, and gradually put her life back together.