Farleigh Hall
(2026)(The first book in the Farleigh Saga series)
A novel by Phillipa Vincent-Connolly
You won’t be able to put down this historical saga filled with family secrets, aristocratic legacy and drama! Perfect for fans of Penny Vincenzi, Judith Krantz, Kate Morton, and Lucinda Riley, with the generational depth of John Galsworthy
One girl. One boy. One secret. One unstoppable ascent.
In 1905, Ella Holt leaves Farleigh Hall before dawn—pregnant, penniless, and already marked by a secret that will shape the course of her life.
She is young. She is alone. And she is already dangerous.
This rags-to-riches novel traces the extraordinary rise of an impoverished ladies’ maid—first through survival, then through two marriages, and ultimately into a legacy shaped by ambition, power, and bitter family rivalry.
Her second marriage is the most unlikely of all.
He is a man far beyond her reach—by birth, by class, by every rule that governs their world. And yet she marries him. What follows is not acceptance but resistance: a quiet war waged by Ella and her husband, against his family, between past and present, even within her own household, where blood heirs stand divided, family loyalties strained, alliances fragile.
But Ella does not yield.
Through instinct, calculation, and relentless will, she rises—beyond Wimborne, beyond England—building an empire that stretches from the fields of Dorset to the glittering capital cities of the world.
By 1979, she and her husband stand among the richest, most powerful figures in the world.
But power does not erase the past.
It contains it.
Behind the fortune lies a history carefully buried—of sacrifice, ambition, betrayal… and a feud that has never ended.
Now, as old fractures begin to surface and those closest to her begin, quietly, to circle for control, the question is no longer how far Ella Holt can rise—
—but what it has cost her and her husband to get there.
And whether the family they built will be the very thing that brings them down.
Genre: Literary Fiction
One girl. One boy. One secret. One unstoppable ascent.
In 1905, Ella Holt leaves Farleigh Hall before dawn—pregnant, penniless, and already marked by a secret that will shape the course of her life.
She is young. She is alone. And she is already dangerous.
This rags-to-riches novel traces the extraordinary rise of an impoverished ladies’ maid—first through survival, then through two marriages, and ultimately into a legacy shaped by ambition, power, and bitter family rivalry.
Her second marriage is the most unlikely of all.
He is a man far beyond her reach—by birth, by class, by every rule that governs their world. And yet she marries him. What follows is not acceptance but resistance: a quiet war waged by Ella and her husband, against his family, between past and present, even within her own household, where blood heirs stand divided, family loyalties strained, alliances fragile.
But Ella does not yield.
Through instinct, calculation, and relentless will, she rises—beyond Wimborne, beyond England—building an empire that stretches from the fields of Dorset to the glittering capital cities of the world.
By 1979, she and her husband stand among the richest, most powerful figures in the world.
But power does not erase the past.
It contains it.
Behind the fortune lies a history carefully buried—of sacrifice, ambition, betrayal… and a feud that has never ended.
Now, as old fractures begin to surface and those closest to her begin, quietly, to circle for control, the question is no longer how far Ella Holt can rise—
—but what it has cost her and her husband to get there.
And whether the family they built will be the very thing that brings them down.
Genre: Literary Fiction