Bertie White, quiet and conservative, dreams of getting married and having children. In 1951, their childhood worlds collide in Atlantic City. Keeping in touch as pen pals, they reunite over the years ... always near the ocean.Powerful and moving, this novel follows Cee Cee and Bertie's extraordinary friendship over the course of thirty years as they transform from adolescents into adults. A bestselling novel that became a hugely successful film, Beaches is funny, heartbreaking, and a tale that should be a part of every woman's library.

    With a delicate wife and their unborn child, he has no choice but to leave Ireland and set out for England in search of work. But from the moment Patrick and Mary set foot in Liverpool, they are beset by new trials.After moving to York, they are forced to settle in the nightmarish slums of Walmgate. Yet the very poverty and hopelessness of their surroundings binds the small community together. Only stubborn determination survive tragedy can win them hopes of a better life….

    But now she is set to begin a placement as a trainee nurse in St Katherine’s, the largest voluntary hospital in the East End of London. An abrupt – but not unwelcome – education awaits her.Daredevil May has long been bored and frustrated with the pointless rituals of her privileged life. Nursing, she believes, will provide an honourable escape, and freedom to meet people from all walks of life. It is at St Katherine’s in Poplar that she becomes bosom friends with a socialist station-master’s daughter, Ellen Carter and staunch suffragette Ada Farrar.Together May and Ellen explore their new surroundings in the East End, with cockney drama at full cry on every street. As May becomes closer to the people she helps and serves, she finds herself questioning the very social conventions she’s been taught to live by. Her nursing duties mean she has no time to mix in Society, and her family worry she will never meet someone suitable. In the rare moments when she has time to stop and think, May starts to suspect they might be right…A wonderful tale of love, death and self-discovery, Mayfair Rebel paints an unforgettable picture of life at the top and the bottom of the social ladder. Each world has its heartbreaks, its joys and its corruptions; but Nurse Winton is at home in either one and respected in both. But if she finds love, will she be forced to choose between them?