This was an ok read,Back Cover Blurb:Liverpool, 1902. Bill and Isobel Logan scratch a living by selling their shrimps around the streets of Liverpool, but Amy, their youngest daughter, hates the work, particularly the smell, about which their neighbour, Paddy Keagan, constantly taunts her.When I...
On Christmas Day 1924, Sara Cordwainer rides to church in Liverpool with her parents in their Rolls Royce. As they pass the ragged children outside the gates, she gives them her collection money, and unwittingly precipitates a tragedy that will haunt her for many years to come.
Laura Collins, a widow, is struggling to make a good life for her daughters, Tess and Tina.They are living with Laura's sister Millie and her seven children so when Laura is offered a good job, with accommodation, she is delighted.Life is very different for the Brewsters, living on Manor Farm in ...
Liverpool. December, 1905. In the breaking dawn of a raw windswept morning, a new-born baby girl is left at the door of an orphange. So helpless and appealing is the foundling that young Nellie McDowell, the maid-of-all-work, decides there and then to adopt her as her own sister.In the years that...
Liverpool 1917. Stella Bennett is sixteen and so beautiful that Michael Gallagher, an Irishman fighting with the British Navy, falls in love with her on sight. The Bennett family is horrified but the young couple know their minds and are set on marriage. Then Stella has a baby, Ginny, and when Mi...
Jess and Nancy are nurses in France during the Great War. They have much in common for both have lost their lovers in the trenches, so when the war is over and they return to Liverpool, their future seems bleak. Very soon, however, their paths diverge. Nancy marries an Australian stockman and go...
Lizzie Devlin, an orphan, lives with her Aunt Annie whom she loves, Uncle Perce who hates her and two boy cousins within a stone’s throw of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Her situation at home starts to worsen as her uncle grows surlier and more violent. Eventually the worst happens and Lizzie is...
The year is 1925, and in Liverpool, Rose Ryder worships her father, a tram-driver. She nurses a secret dream of driving trams too, even though it's not considered a job for women. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Colm O'Neill is happily settled - until his father gets a job working on the Liverptool-Birkenh...
My friend Carol highly recommended the Yorkshire Dales, so Brian and I set off to have a look at a part of the country we seem to have missed, and were immediately enchanted. Not only is it beautiful and magical but, as I soon discovered, it is believed to be the setting for a book I have always ...
He was not a holidaymaker, neither was he with the theatre. His name was Jerry and he was with a firm of contractors who kept both piers and a great many of the other Marine Parade attractions in good repair. He had been repainting the Wellington pier when his undoubted good looks had caught Merl...
Yet where to start? She sat Joy down on her bed and settled beside her, going back in her mind to the moment when she had left her sister, safely tucked away, with the branches of some tree or other – Gillian was no naturalist – hiding most of her from view. As she began to speak, she was transpo...
On the twenty-first of April 1936 you’re into double figures, so we shall have to celebrate in a special way, Daddy had said, coming into the nursery to read them a story after tea, though she could easily have read the book he had chosen. But Jamie, who was not quite six, enjoyed the stories and...
Visiting the women in their own homes meant that the nurses really understood their problems and were not merely paying lip service to them. Ellen revelled in the freedom which she and Patty enjoyed when compared with life on the ward. Mostly they worked together, though as Ellen’s experience gre...
Passing Mr Rathbone’s shop she smiled to herself, for the previous day she and Aunt Myrtle had done the messages together and her aunt had announced her intention of visiting Rathbone’s. ‘Now that Mr Rathbone and your uncle are on good terms, like, I’ll see if I can get some meat a bit cheaper,’ ...
It was a Saturday morning and she was strolling along the pavement in Nelson Street, kicking at the scatter of leaves which had been blown along from the trees which lined Great George Square and half-heartedly watching the passing traffic, whilst from the main road ahead of her she could hear th...
She and Nick were curled up in the middle of a nice haystack into which they had burrowed the previous evening, but despite the fact that she was warm and cosy – though a trifle itchy, for hayseeds down the neck are not the best of bedfellows – she was depressed by the sight of the rain. She had ...
Remembering her own arrival at Ty Hen, Nell was determined to be especially friendly towards the land girl and had offered to accompany her aunt to the station, though she took it philosophically when her offer was refused. ‘With me off half the day, because heaven alone knows what time her train...
Donal had suggested going swimming, but as the baths had sessions for boys and girls on separate days, that would have meant swimming in the canal, which Deirdre felt, as a working girl, she was a bit old for. Donal could have pointed out that, at ten, she was scarcely a woman grown, but he did n...
When the children met outside the court in which the Butchers lived, Percy was sporting a black eye, purple in the middle and rainbow-hued round the edge. It was natural, therefore, for Evie to enquire how he had got such a shiner. Percy might have replied that he had walked into a door or simply...
The child was happier than she had believed possible, enjoying both the company and the work involved. Diana had always been mature for her age, Emmy reflected, and this suited Mrs Symons ideally. Together, the old lady and the little girl read books, played cards, and addressed envelopes when th...
He had had a magical leave, they had gone ahead and done all they could towards getting married as soon as possible, and Marianne, charmed and delighted at the turn of events, or so she claimed, had suggested that they should have a large engagement party in ten days’ time, because she and Mauric...
Gerrout me wa-a-a-ay!’ Linnet, who had been walking carefully down the snowy pavement on Havelock Street, clutching her messages and thinking wistfully of the hot cup of tea which would await her on her return home, was unwise enough to turn round to see who was shouting, which was how she came t...
This was their first sea voyage and neither of them had felt ill once since leaving Bombay. Life on board ship, what was more, had been interesting enough to alleviate the boredom which might otherwise have attacked them, and, so far as she could judge, homesickness had not troubled them either. ...
They were alone, because earlier in the week, at an agreed time, Chris had telephoned to the box in the village to find out how his parents were getting on without him, and Rhys had said that they could do with some help at the dipping, now that they had such a large flock of sheep. Nonny had wan...
Presently the bus from the market town would draw up and those still remaining on board would alight. He hoped his wife would be amongst them. As soon as she got in she would begin preparations for his dinner and already he was looking forward to what, as he grew older, was becoming the main exci...
This was a house of mourning and he wished himself anywhere but here. They walked down a short passageway and into the kitchen, which was crowded with young McCabes. A woman he took to be Mrs McCabe was sitting at the kitchen table with her head resting on her sprawled arms. She was crying rhythm...
Darkness and quiet brought their own beauty to a place singularly lacking in attraction, and the moon, high in the clear night sky, even managed to make the house look as though it might possibly be more comfortable than a cold doorstep. Kitty knew well that this was an illusion, but just for a m...
Her friend seemed happy enough, though once the cafeteria was up and running she had confessed to Polly that much as she enjoyed the job and the challenge of creating something out of nothing, so to speak, it was not the same as it had been when she and Caitlin had started Cathy’s Place.‘We were ...
But Biddy had been worn out by the time she got to bed and then, cuddling down and waiting for sleep to overcome her at once, as it usually did, she was sadly disappointed. All she could do was think about him, the young man who had rescued her, Dai Evans! How he looked wh...
She had looked at these doors often; enviously for the most part. She had seen men and women going in and coming out, positively laden with books, and she had thought, rebelliously, that it was extremely unfair. Why should adults be able to borrow books, when they had no real need of them, wherea...
DRAT THE girl, where’s she got to?’ Miranda, who was awaiting her turn to jump into the skipping rope being expertly twirled by two of the older girls who lived in the small cul-de-sac, stood up and headed for the steps of Number Six, upon the top one of which her Aunt Vi stood. She hung back a l...