In the midst of war, she knew her place was not at home.... The most ambitious of three sisters, Lorraine ‘Raine’ Linfoot always dreamed of becoming a pilot. As a spirited 17-year-old, she persuades her hero Doug Williams to teach her to fly. When war breaks out in 1939, Raine is determined to put her skills to good use. She enlists i...

Her duty is to keep smiling through....  When World War II breaks out, Suzanne’s dream of attending the Royal Academy of Music crumbles. Determined to do her bit, she joins a swing band that entertains troops in some of the worst-hit cities of Europe. Through singing, Suzanne finds a confidence she never knew she had, and she soon win...

Britain, 1943  Ronnie Linfoot may be the youngest of three sisters, but she’s determined to do her bit....  Against her strict mother’s wishes, Ronnie signs up to join the Grand Union Canal Company, where she’ll be working on a narrowboat taking critical supplies between London and Birmingham. But with no experience o...

What happens when your darkest secret is exposed? Winnie Berry had been the landlady for the Battersea Tavern for over 25 years and loved every minute of it. Her husband Brian preferred the quiet of the upstairs, but Winnie liked to be in the thick of it: the atmosphere and the company.  While her son has taken after his father in more ways...

The compelling new family drama from the nation's favourite storyteller. Florence Stanville is a woman with a past. When she moves to Guisethorpe on the east coast of England, the townsfolk are intrigued by the glamorous and mysterious stranger, with her flame-red hair and abrupt manners. Florence doesn't care about the gossips – she's drawn...

Present dayFor the last twenty years, Summer has lived a solitary life, focusing on her career as a vet and trying not to think of the past. Every year she escapes for a few weeks to beautiful Greek islands, losing herself in photography and wreck diving.When the junk room of her clifftop cottage is cleared to accommodate a carer for her father, Su...

When her beloved father is killed in the Blitz, trainee nurse April Harvey is all alone in the world. Desperate to find the family she craves, she heads to Truro, her mother's home town.But danger and heartbreak lurk even in Cornwall, and when the American G. I.s arrive, April finds her life turned upside down as she discovers that some people are...

Liverpool, 1925. Fourteen-year-old Lillian Taylor has spent her childhood in a loveless orphanage after the death of her mother. When a well-dressed young woman claiming to be her aunt arrives and whisks her away to her large townhouse, Lillian hopes it signals a change in her fortunes. However there's more to Aunt Joan than meets the eye, and when...

The compelling new best seller from the author of The Mersey Daughter and Winter on the Mersey. Alice Lake and her friend Edith have had everything thrown at them in their first year as district nurses in London’s East End. From babies born out of wedlock to battered wives, they’ve had plenty to keep them occupied. As r...

The compelling new best seller from the author of The Mersey Daughter and Winter on the Mersey. Alice Lake has arrived in London from Liverpool to start her training as a District Nurse, but her journey has been far from easy. Her parents think that she should settle down and get married, but she has already had her heart broken onc...

Taking deep breaths of the cold city air, Katherine whispered, 'This isn't the London I know.' East-End London, 1858. In London's twisting streets, it's hard to tell friend from foe. And for Katherine Martin, arriving back in London after years away, the city is far crueller than she remembers. Her eyes opened to the plight of London's poor, Kate i...

Jo Melling has arrived in Birch End from Australia, still grieving her father's recent death. She's not intending to stay long, but after tracking down her distant family, Jo becomes more involved in village life than she could ever have imagined - and suddenly in danger, too. Jo also finds herself drawn to Nick, a handsome newcomer to the village....

Arethusa Clayton has always been formidable, used to getting her own way.    On her death, she leaves unexpected instructions. Instead of being buried in America, on the wealthy East Coast where she and her late husband raised their two children, Arethusa has decreed that her ashes be scattered in a remote corner of Ireland, on the...

Crippled by polio, Winnie has little to look forward to. She's sent to an orphanage after her father is reported 'missing presumed dead', and her mother dies while on a drinking spree. Will her life improve at last or will she always be alone?

Eight-year-old Casey's mother Ruth is a cruel woman, with a weakness for other women's husbands. Casey's father is gentle and hard-working and, though Tom Denton has long suspected his wife of having sordid affairs, he has chosen to turn a blind eye to keep the peace. But then,Tom's world is cruelly shattered when he receives two bits of devastatin...

Edward Carter is a bully of a man, who inspires fear in the hearts of all who meet him.Adam Carter is 12 years old. His father's reign of terror over his family has Adam's mother Peggy too cowed to protect her son, so Adam's only support comes in the shape of Phil Wallis, the school bus driver. Then one afternoon, Phil makes a life-changing decisio...

Geraldine Glover. A machinist at Rubins clothing factory in the East End, she dreams of a more glamorous life. When she meets Tony Hanford, the young and handsome proprietor of a small jeweller's shop in Bond Street, Geraldine is propelled into a new world - but it comes at a heavy price ...

Newly married to the caring RAF pilot Jonathan Reece, Emma thinks that life couldn't be better. But her happiness is short-lived: within months, Jon's plane is shot down over France and he is declared missing, presumed dead. Alone and with two children to care for, Emma's first thought is how to support her family. But when she makes a new friend i...

Ruby and Grace had grown up in the slums of Middle Court, the poorest place in Hull. Friends since early childhood, they had supported each other in bad times and good. Ruby's ma, Bess, addicted to the opium which dulled the pain of her miserable existence, tried hard to be a good mother, but without too much success, while Grace's parents, Bob and...

It was a small Lancashire town on the eve of the General Strike. A town where the gap between the rich and the poor was about to erupt into a bloody field of battle. Libby and Carrie were more than sisters. Mirror images, they were different sides of the same heart, impossible to separate or divide. Until they both fell in love with Tom.

Set in the ruggedly wild countryside of West Cork, Ireland, in the early part of the twentieth century, Songs of Love and War is an epic tale of three very different women all born in the year 1900: Kitty Deverill, the flame-haired Anglo-Irish daughter of the castle, Bridie Doyle, the daughter of the cook and Celia Deverill, Kitty's flamboyant Engl...