A Soldier Returns...


S. Block - 2017
    . .While their men are at war the women of Great Paxford have fought hard to keep the home fires burning, but a new arrival threatens everything . . .Pat Simms has a secret she needs to keep, but the close scrutiny of her husband is near impossible to escape.Frances Barden has overcome every challenge these troubled times have thrown at her, but a new threat, one very close to home, has arisen.Steph Farrow made a vow, she promised to protect her farm and family while her husband was at war, but she never imagined this . . .Meanwhile, Teresa faces a tragedy she's powerless to stop.Even during the hardest times the women of the WI have prevailed, finding new love, happiness and purpose, but can they survive the enemy at their door?Don't miss any part of the story. Keep the Home Fires Burning - Part One: Spitfire Down! is available now. Search 9781785763588.The story's not over. An all-new novel is coming in 2018! To pre-order your copy now search 9781785764295.Perfect for fans of Call the Midwife, Granchester and Foyles War. If you adore the novels of Nadine Dorries, Diney Costello and Daisy Styles then this is an unmissable series for you.

A Town Like Alice


Nevil Shute - 1950
    A few years after the war, Jean is back in England, the nightmare behind her. However, an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved her life. Jean's travels leads her to a desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she finds a challenge that will draw on all the resourcefulness and spirit that carried her through her war-time ordeals.

Dance With Wings: A moving epic of love, secrets and family drama


Amelia Carr - 2008
    But instead of wartime bad news it's from the legendary Jackie Cochran, asking Nancy to fly for Great Britain. For Nancy, a girl with flying in her blood, it's an opportunity she simply can't turn down. But that fateful decision is to trigger a series of events, with consequences that will reverberate through the generations.In summer 2006, Sarah is at a crossroads in her life when her adored grandmother Nancy asks her to help lay the ghosts of her past to rest. Sarah agrees, little suspecting the long-buried and shocking secrets that will be dragged to the surface.From the tension of World War Two right up to the present day, this is a sweeping family story that is both moving and unforgettable.Don't miss any of Amelia's romantic epics, Dance With Wings, A Song At Sunset, A Woman of Secrets and The Secret She Kept.

The Gunner Girl


Clare Harvey - 2015
    Bea has grown up part of a large, boisterous East End family. But her sweetheart is missing in action, and her mother is controlling her life. She needs to escape. Edie inhabits a world of wealth and privilege, but knows only too well that money can't buy happiness. She wants to be like Mary Churchill, to make a difference. Joan can't remember much of her past or her family, and her home has been bombed in the Blitz. Desperate, she needs a refuge. Each one is a Gunner Girl: three very different women, one remarkable wartime friendship of shared hopes, lost loves and terrible danger.

The House at Tyneford


Natasha Solomons - 2011
    Nineteen-year-old Elise Landau is forced to leave her glittering life of parties and champagne to become a parlor maid in England. She arrives at Tyneford, the great house on the bay, where servants polish silver and serve drinks on the lawn. But war is coming, and the world is changing. When the master of Tyneford's young son, Kit, returns home, he and Elise strike up an unlikely friendship that will transform Tyneford—and Elise—forever.

Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase


Louise Walters - 2014
    What you do, to this child, to this child's mother, it is wrong...Roberta likes to collect the letters and postcards she finds in second-hand books. When her father gives her some of her grandmother's belongings, she finds a baffling letter from the grandfather she never knew - dated after he supposedly died in the war.Dorothy is unhappily married to Albert, who is away at war. When an aeroplane crashes in the field behind her house she meets Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski, and as their bond deepens she dares to hope she might find happiness. But fate has other plans for them both, and soon she is hiding a secret so momentous that its shockwaves will touch her granddaughter many years later...

The Secret Keeper


Kate Morton - 2012
    She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy—her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother.Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this may be her last chance, Laurel searches for answers to the questions that still haunt her from that long-ago day, answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past.Dorothy’s story takes the reader from pre–WWII England through the blitz, to the ’60s and beyond. It is the secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—who meet by chance in wartime London and whose lives are forever entwined. The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams and the unexpected consequences they sometimes bring. It is an unforgettable story of lovers and friends, deception and passion that is told—in Morton’s signature style—against a backdrop of events that changed the world.

The Railway Girls


Maisie Thomas - 2020
    Perfect for fans of Nancy Revell and Ellie Dean. In February, 1922, at the western-most entrance to Victoria Station in Manchester, a massive plaque was unveiled. Beneath a vast tiled map showing the lines of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway network, a series of seven bronze panels recorded the names of the men of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway who gave their lives for King and Country in the Great War – a total of 1,460 names.In March, 1940, a group of women of varying ages and backgrounds, stand in front of the memorial, ready to do their bit in this new World War..._________________________________________Mabel is determined to make a fresh start as a railway girl where no one will know the terrible thing she did and she can put her guilt behind her... Or is she just running away?Meanwhile Joan will never be as good as her sister, or so her Gran keeps telling her. A new job as a station clerk could be just the thing she needs to forget her troubles at home.And Dot is further into her forties than she cares to admit. Her beloved sons are away fighting and her husband – well, the less said about him the better. Ratty old sod. She is anxious to become a railway girl just like her dear mam – anything to feel she is supporting the sons she prays for every night. The three women start off as strangers, but soon form an unbreakable bond that will get them through the toughest of times...

Dear Mrs. Bird


A.J. Pearce - 2018
    Emmy Lake is Doing Her Bit for the war effort, volunteering as a telephone operator with the Auxiliary Fire Services. When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent seem suddenly achievable. But the job turns out to be typist to the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird. Emmy is disappointed, but gamely bucks up and buckles down. Mrs Bird is very clear: Any letters containing Unpleasantness—must go straight in the bin. But when Emmy reads poignant letters from women who are lonely, may have Gone Too Far with the wrong men and found themselves in trouble, or who can’t bear to let their children be evacuated, she is unable to resist responding. As the German planes make their nightly raids, and London picks up the smoldering pieces each morning, Emmy secretly begins to write letters back to the women of all ages who have spilled out their troubles. Prepare to fall head over heels with Emmy and her best friend, Bunty, who are spirited and gutsy, even in the face of events that bring a terrible blow. As the bombs continue to fall, the irrepressible Emmy keeps writing, and readers are transformed by AJ Pearce’s hilarious, heartwarming, and enormously moving tale of friendship, the kindness of strangers, and ordinary people in extraordinary times.

Letters to the Lost


Iona Grey - 2015
    Iona Grey's prose is warm, evocative, and immediately engaging; her characters become so real you can't bear to let them go.I promised to love you forever, in a time when I didn't know if I'd live to see the start of another week. Now it looks like forever is finally running out. I never stopped loving you. I tried, for the sake of my own sanity, but I never even got close, and I never stopped hoping either.Late on a frozen February evening, a young woman is running through the streets of London. Having fled from her abusive boyfriend and with nowhere to go, Jess stumbles onto a forgotten lane where a small, clearly unlived in old house offers her best chance of shelter for the night. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives and when she can't help but open it, she finds herself drawn inexorably into the story of two lovers from another time. In London 1942, Stella meets Dan, a US airman, quite by accident, but there is no denying the impossible, unstoppable attraction that draws them together. Dan is a B-17 pilot flying his bomber into Europe from a British airbase; his odds of survival are one in five. In the midst of such uncertainty, the one thing they hold onto is the letters they write to each other. Fate is unkind and they are separated by decades and continents. In the present, Jess becomes determined to find out what happened to them. Her hope—inspired by a love so powerful it spans a lifetime—will lead her to find a startling redemption in her own life in this powerfully moving novel.“A captivating tale of love and love lost.” —Booklist“A wonderful story.” —Rosamunde Pilcher, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Shell Seekers

A Scent of Lavender


Elizabeth Elgin - 2003
    It's 1940 and the threat of invasion hangs over Britain. But in the isolated hamlet of Nun Ainsty it is the arrival of the Army that turns things turned upside down – especially for two young women.Lorna Hatherwood, married to a man ten years older, lives a quiet life. Then she volunteers to read to blind soldiers at the nearby Manor and everything changes – because of a handsome medical officer named Ewan MacMillan. But their relationship could spell disaster…Then there is Ness Nightingale. A Land Girl billeted with Lorna, Ness is trying to forget a disastrous love affair. But when she meets Mick Hardie, a conscientious objector, she has to remind herself that she has vowed never to trust a man again …

Miss Nightingale's Nurses


Kate Eastham - 2018
     Ada Houston is alone. Her grandfather has recently passed away and her brother is missing, last seen working on the Liverpool docks. Everyone assumes him to be dead. But she will not give up hope. Ada's determined search takes her to the Crimea where she joins the team of Florence Nightingale's nurses. She may have set off looking for her brother, but along the way Ada finds friends, romance and a new purpose in her own life in the most troubling and difficult of places.

The Last Bookshop in London: A Novel of World War II


Madeline Martin - 2021
    Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and blackout curtains that she finds on her arrival were not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London.Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed—a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.

The Heart of a Gypsy


Roberta Kagan - 2012
    They hid, waging their own private war against Hitler’s tyrannical, and murderous reign. Among these Resistance Fighters, there were groups of Romany people (gypsies).“The Heart of A Gypsy” is a spellbinding love story filled with Romance, and spiced with the magic of the Gypsy culture. It takes place in Poland during the time of the Third Reich, while World War Two was raging. This is a tale of a people who would rather die, than surrender their freedom.Enter into a little known world, where only a few have traveled before… The world of the Romany.If you enjoy romance, secret magical traditions, riveting action, and steamy sex….you will love “The Heart of A Gypsy.”

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir


Jennifer Ryan - 2017
    Hearts are breaking as sons and husbands leave to fight, and when the Vicar decides to close the choir until the men return, all seems lost.But coming together in song is just what the women of Chilbury need in these dark hours, and they are ready to sing. With a little fighting spirit and the arrival of a new musical resident, the charismatic Miss Primrose Trent, the choir is reborn.Some see the choir as a chance to forget their troubles, others the chance to shine. Though for one villager, the choir is the perfect cover to destroy Chilbury’s new-found harmony.Uplifting and profoundly moving, THE CHILBURY LADIES’ CHOIR explores how a village can endure the onslaught of war, how monumental history affects small lives and how survival is as much about friendship as it is about courage.