Nothing and no one keeps us lot down.'A life of poverty in a cramped pit cottage is all that seventeen-year-old Ruby Dinsdale has known. Even with her father and younger brother working at the coal mine, money is tight. Her mother Mary is skilled at stretching what little they have, but the small contribution Ruby makes from her job at the local pub makes all the difference. So when Ruby is sacked, and Mary becomes pregnant again, the family's challenges are greater than ever.When charming miner Gordon begins to court Ruby it seems as though happiness is on the horizon, until she uncovers a deeper betrayal than she could ever have imagined.But although the Dinsdales are materially poor, they are rich in love, friendship and determination - all qualities that they will draw on to get them through whatever lies ahead.

    Perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Nadine Dorries.In 1940s Hampshire the war is settling into its stride bringing dark days for many.Connie Baxter has just moved in with her Aunt Gertie after the death of her mother. Gertie works as a cleaner at the Criterion Picture House in Gosport and she helps Connie to get a job there as an usherette. For Connie, it's the perfect place to work because she adores the movies with their glamorous, romantic stars.The only fly in the ointment is the Criterion's creepy manager with his wandering hands. But soon Connie is firm friends with Queenie, who sells ice creams and soon tells her how to warn him off.Charming Tommo Smith is a 'taxi-dancer'. For a fee he steers ladies of a certain age around the dance floor - and sometimes more besides which pays for his smart clothes. Connie's friend Queenie says he's a chancer, but his gorgeous blue eyes tell Connie something different. When suddenly he disappears, Connie accepts that Queenie may be right - he was too good to be true.As the war rages on and Connie struggles with the harsh realities of life and the turbulence of romance, she comes to realize that life isn't always like it is in the pictures.

    

    

    Fifteen-year-old Annie Anderson was adopted by Sylvia and Hugh after the death of their own daughter. Annie is told that her own mother in childbirth and her father died before she was born.A chance encounter introduces Annie to local lad Andrew Fraser. Their friendship blossoms, but once Annie’s adoptive parents learn of it they forbid her from seeing him. When Annie asks why, it sets her on a path to discover more about her origins – but will what she learns bring heartache or joy? Don’t miss this rich and vivid saga by one of Liverpool’s best-known novelists, perfect for fans of Kitty Neale and Katie Flynn.

    She's sent to an orphanage in Blackpool, but the master has an eye for a pretty young lass. Grace won't be his victim, so she runs, destitute, into the night. In Blackpool, she finds a home with the kindly Sheila and Peggy - and meets a lovely airman. But it's 1938, and war is on the horizon. Will Grace ever find the happiness and home she deserves?

    By the author of Lily's War.On the ground, the crowd of men stood with their mouths agape, watching the wings soar into the air, the tail kept impressively steady and the small plane with a woman at the controls disappearing into the May sunshine.It's 1942 and Bobby Hollis has joined the Air Transport Auxiliary in a team known as the 'glamour girls' - amazing women who pilot aircraft all around the country.Bobby always wanted to escape life on the family farm and the ATA seemed like the perfect opportunity for her. But there's always something standing in her way. Like a demanding father, who wants to marry her off to a rich man. And the family secrets that threaten to engulf everything.As Bobby navigates her way through life, and love, she has to learn that controlling a huge, four-engined bomber might just be easier than controlling her own life . . .

    Monica Savage is delighted when new neighbours move in next door, and she and Joan Copperfield quickly become firm friends. While Monica's father has a good job as a guard on the railway, Joan's family are harder up, with her sailor dad Billy mostly off at sea, and restless when he's home - Mersey View is no substitute for the exotic places he sails to. Though money's tight, the Copperfield women are spirited and independent, and it's her friendship with the more confident Joan that gives Monica the courage to challenge her parents and pursue her dream of becoming a hairdresser. Joan is lucky enough to get a job at Crawford's biscuit factory, where she's even allowed to buy broken biscuits cheaply as a perk.But there are dark secrets lurking. When an abandoned child arrives unexpectedly on the Copperfields' doorstep, her arrival will change everything. As war clouds gather, can the girls make their back street dreams reality, or will the families of Mersey View be torn apart?

    It is the late 1960s and the family enjoy an idyllic life in the Vale of Kashmir, despite the area being riddled with conflict and poverty. But after a devastating earthquake wipes out her entire family, Jaya is taken into the care of relatives in Delhi, who attempt to marry her off and keep secret from her the possibility that Tahir, her younger brother, has survived the earthquake. After escaping from the arranged marriage Jaya is put through medical training in Scotland, as she had always dreamed, and where she develops feelings for her foster family’s eldest son, Alastair, who is engaged to someone else. In the meantime, Tahir has been abducted by a band of Kashmiri freedom fighters, who have made him one of their own. Jaya finally returns to her troubled homeland to find him and come to terms with the loss of her family. Alastair, who arrives in Kashmir to announce his love for Jaya, is kidnapped by the freedom fighters, forcing her to risk everything to get him back.

    Here, historian Alexander Ivanov reveals their fears and betrayals, privilege and debauchery, conspiracies and rivalries, love and tragedy as they forged Russia into one of the world's greatest empires. No ruler in history has embodied the oppressive domination of these rulers more vividly than Alexander Ivanov's opening subject, Tsar Ivan IV, the first of all the Russian tsars, known to history as Ivan the Terrible. Although a gifted ruler who did much to unite and improve the conditions in his primitive country, Ivan was also a notorious sadist who delighted in torturing and murdering anyone who displeased him. Ivan's death in 1584 ushered in the Time of Troubles, thirty-five years of famine, plague, and war that crippled the nation. A series of rulers attempted to cope with the devastation, beginning with Ivan's successor Boris Godunov. Finally, grasping for stability, Russia's nobles begged young Michael Romanov, the great-nephew of Ivan's beloved wife Anastasia, to take the throne. Michael successfully united the war-torn and ravaged nation and founded a dynasty that would rule for 300 years. The Romanov line produced Russia's most brilliant yet most unconventional sovereign: Peter the Great, a towering figure of a man whose restless, creative mind led him on an inexorable quest to modernize and civilize the still backward nation. The reforms he enacted so enraged nobles and peasants alike that Peter had to quash a series of rebellions to keep his crown. Ruthlessly stifling dissent and massacring rebels, he ultimately cowed the Russian people into submission, achieving a legacy that nearly equaled his ambitions. It was left to a woman - and a foreigner, at that - to lead the nation further out of the darkness. German princess Sophie Friederike Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst, known to the world as Catherine the Great, absorbed the principles of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and applied them to a country built on the backs of millions of serfs. However ineffective some of her policies, in the end, she made Russia a major player on the European stage. Serfdom was finally abolished in the nineteenth century, but it would be decades before Russian peasants could own land of their own and learn to farm it productively. The boyars and tsars clung to power until the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The sad fate of the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family, marked the end of the absolute power that Ivan the Terrible had so exploited. The abuses would continue but under a new and drastically different form of government.

    But when the Blitz reaches Manchester, she is locked in the cellar by her feckless mother, Lizzie. As bombs rain down from a sky turned blood red with flame, Jess waits for Lizzie to return.But fortunes are fickle, and soon Jess finds herself packed off to live with her tyrant Uncle Bernie, a bullying black marketeer. Though he treats her like a servant, she seeks refuge in the Sally Army and her natural musical talent offers both an escape route and the chance for love.But Uncle Bernie never forgives his niece for refusing to join his illegal schemes and threatens to deprive Jess of her hard-won freedom once and for all. This is a sweeping saga of hope and resilience perfect for fans of Kitty Neale and Rosie Goodwin. Praise for Dancing on Deansgate ‘A heart-wrenching story’ 5* Reader review‘It drew me in straight away’ 5* Reader review‘Another gem from a great writer’ 5* Reader review‘A compelling story of separation and hardship, and heartache overcome at last’ 5* Reader review

    That's what the locals are saying about Llandegwen, deep in the Welsh valleys. The village choir, once a source of pride for the small mining community, has been forced to disband; the elderly choirmaster heartbroken by the empty seats belonging to those who'll never return from the battlefields. The arrival of a young war widow from the East End with her little boy sets tongues wagging, not least when rumours abound that she's looking to revive the choir. Can the community set aside their grief and lift their voices, and the village's hopes, once more?

    William’s loyalty has worn thin over the years but he cannot break the ties with Galloway because times are hard and the house in which he lives belongs to him. Carrie Tanner grows up in the heart of a poor yet loving family, but as she becomes a young woman she becomes involved in the Suffragette movement. The times are changing – and quickly. Will this close-knit community be able to pull together or will it be torn apart?

    Meanwhile, her older sister Peggy works as an apprentice at the Girls' School, hoping for a more prosperous future as a schoolteacher.Jennet and Titus Eastwood have always made decisions for their daughters' futures. But as the sisters near adulthood they are determined to make their own choices. And with temptation in the way, will the girls find love - or infatuation - leads them astray?Then an unexpected but familiar face arrives in town, and the family's future is threatened. For Bessie and Jennet, a difficult choice must be made - love or family . . .

    But he came from London's East End and settled in the north, a mean, dark, secretive man who was interested only in lining his pockets at the expense of those around him - most especially his wife and daughters. Ellen, his wife, bore with him for years, until she found her children threatened. Then she was prepared to fight like a tigress to protect the four girls, give them a chance of a new and better life, a chance to escape from the evil and oppressive legacy of Billy London. There was Abigail, clever, ambitious, and with an outer shell of steel that life had taught her was necessary if she was to survive. Tishy, overwhelmingly lovely, who lived in a world all her own. Marie, brisk, capable, and nearly strong enough to defy her father on her own. And Theresa, more wounded, more vulnerable, more damaged by Billy than any of them. As the sirens of 1939 heralded the advent of war, so Billy London's girls began their own battle for new, triumphant, and fulfilling lives.