April 1941.Almost losing her life in a bomb blast while serving in the Women's Volunteer Service has made Ann Gilby take stock of what's really important - her family.With daughter Sheila back home, and Joy still working munitions at the Cadbury factory and engaged to her soldier sweetheart, home life feels more settled too. Ann has even come to an uneasy truce with her husband, Len, despite her recent discovery of his infidelity and the fact that he has fathered a child with another woman.But what Ann has not reckoned with is Marianne, Len's other woman, turning up on her doorstep - a woman with a mysterious past.Only Ann has secrets of her own and one day soon she knows she will have to tell her youngest child, Martin, who his father really is . . .From Annie Murray, the bestselling author of Chocolate Girls, The Bells of Bournville Green and Secrets of the Chocolate Girls, Wartime for the Chocolate Girls is a gritty family...

Courage, passion, ambition and tragedy under the storm clouds of war from the top ten bestselling author. It is 1915 and Daisy Tallis, headstrong, impassioned and a talented young silversmith, is desperate to make her parents proud. The family business is at the very heart of Birmingham's jewellery quarter community.Daisy, having studied at the city's celebrated School of Jewellery and Silversmithing, is now skilled enough to be a teacher. It is at the school that she meets her father's notorious rival, James Carson. Although he's a married man, Daisy finds herself dangerously drawn to his flattery.As war tightens its grip on the country, the jewellery quarter is thrown into turmoil as the men are forced to decide who will enlist. When tragedy strikes, can Daisy and her mother find what it takes to hold both the business and the family together?'Full of drama, love and compassion' Take a Break'A...

Mother and Child by Sunday Times bestseller Annie Murray is a moving story of loss, friendship and hope over two generations . . .Their lives have been torn apart by tragedy . . . Birmingham Jo and Ian's marriage is hanging by a thread. One night almost two years ago, their adopted only child, Paul, twenty-three, died in a horrific accident which should never have happened. They have recently moved to a new area of Birmingham, to be near Ian's mother Dorrie, who tragically lost her husband when Ian and his sister were very young. The accident in 1957 left a terrible mark on the family, but Dorrie only really starts to talk to Jo about what happened all these years later, now that the couple are living close by.IndiaHaunted by the death of her son, Jo catches a glimpse of a young boy who resembles Paul in a magazine. Reading the article, she learns of a tragedy in a land far away from Birmingham...

In the New Year of 1936, Gwen Purdy, aged 21, leaves her home to become a schoolteacher in a poor area of Birmingham. Her parents are horrified, but she has the support of her fiance, a recently ordained clergyman. Her early weeks in Birmingham are an eye-opener: at the school she faces a class of 52 children, some of whose homes are among Birmingham's very poorest. One of the teachers, the elderly Miss Drysdale, proves an inspiration, and Gwen begins to understand the appalling hardships endured by the children as she is drawn into their lives. Little Lucy Fernandez is a 'cripple' and an epileptic. Through her, Gwen meets Daniel Fernandez, the elder brother in a fatherless household. The family has roots in a Wales' small Spanish community, and Daniel is a young man as fierce and passionate in his emotions as in his social concerns. Gwen falls in love, and is quickly engaged in his battle to win rights for the working classes. As the Brigades are mobilized to fight the Spanish Civil War, Gwen has to face the fact that Daniel has secrets in his past which she would rather not face up to...About the AuthorAnnie Murray was born in 1961 in Berkshire, and graduated from St John's College, Oxford. In 1991 she won a SHE-Granada short story competetion and was taken on by a literary agent. Her first novel, BIRMINGHAM ROSE was published in 1995. This has been followed by several other bestselling Birmingham sagas including, most recently, THE NARROWBOAT GIRL, CHOCOLATE GIRLS and WATER GYPSIES.

SynopsisBeautiful, dark-haired Lily has been abandoned in a Birmingham slum as a tiny child. With few clues as to her identity she endures a childhood of loneliness and loss. At eighteen she applies for a post as nanny with the family of a Captain Fairford, a soldier in Ambala, north India and his highly strung wife Susan. Lily is drawn into the emotional life of the Fairford family and adores her charge, two year old Cosmo. When, in 1907, Captain Fairford orders a new Daimler car, it is brought out by a young motor mechanic, Sam Ironside. Sam and Lily fall deeply in love, and it is only later that Lily learns that Sam is married and feels utterly betrayed. When Cosmo is later sent home to school, Lily finds another post with a Dr. McBride and his invalid wife, in a beautiful Himalayan hill station. The place is idyllic, and Lily settles for a quiet life. However, she is unprepared for the pain and misunderstandings that follow and force her to run from everything she has known . . . Where Earth Meets Sky takes us from Edwardian England and the British Raj, through the darkness of the Great War to the glamour of Brooklands Race Track in the 1920s. Spanning two continents, it is a story of enduring friendships and two hearts which cannot be kept apart.

SynopsisBook 1 An absorbing tale of adventure and true love Young Maryann Nelson is devastated at the loss of her beloved father. But worse is to come when her mother, Flo, sees an opportunity to better herself and her family in a marriage to the local undertaker, Norman Griffin. Though on the surface a caring family man, Norman is not at all what he seems, as Maryann and her sister Sal soon discover.Unable to turn to their unsympathetic mother for support, the girls are left alone with their harrowing secret. But for Sal it is too much to bear . . . The chance of a new life opens up for Maryann when she befriends Joel Bartholomew. Aboard his narrowboat, the Esther Jane, she finds herself falling in love with life on the canal as she is swept away from Birmingham and all her worries. Until Joel's feelings for Maryann begin to change, awakening all the old nightmares that she had thought were long buried, and in panic and confusion she takes flight . . .

A warm-hearted story of adventure, friendship and how family can be created in the most unexpected ways

SynopsisA sequel to The Hopscotch Summer Molly Fox has grown up in the back streets of Birmingham at the mercy of her cruel grandfather and her drunken mother. Though she has grown into a tall, beautiful woman, Molly is haunted by terrible family secrets. When she is found lying drunk in a gutter, Molly reaches a turning point. She decides to escape by joining the army as an ATS girl. At first her new start seems fated to be a disaster but the army gives her the encouragement she hungers for and soon her life is flourishing. But war brings tragedy as well as triumph, and when Molly receives news from home, it becomes clear that she can't escape her past so easily...

SynopsisBook 2Anna has always been exceptionally close to her mother, Kate and as a child, was captivated by the stories her mother would tell of her childhood in Birmingham with her best friend, Olivia. Olivia and Kate seemed to have a magical friendship. But when Kate dies, she leaves her daughter a final story, one that this time tells the whole truth of her life with Olivia Kemp. As Anna reads, she is shocked to discover how little she really knew about the mother she felt so close to. With Kate's words of caution ringing in her head, she goes in search of the one woman who can answer urgent questions about her mother's life, and about her own...A remarkable, stirring novel, "Birmingham Friends" perfectly captures the complicated intimacy of female relationships.

SynopsisBook 3August 1939. Genie Watkins, a Birmingham kid, would love to have a proper happy family like her Italian friend, Teresa. But Genie hasn’t reckoned with the outbreak of war, her already rocky family being split up and the strangely liberating effect it all has on her mother . . . Under Birmingham skies darkened by blackout Genie shares her fears and hopes with Teresa, keeps her spirits up with her nan and glamorous auntie Lil, and tries to hold her family together. And amid it all, she discovers love... Collect the Birmingham set: Birmingham Rose Birmingham Friends

1940: as war closes in and the bombs fall, on the Homefront, two sisters must find their place in a new world of 'men's' work, in which a telegraph can break your heart and nothing in the future is certain. Growing up in Birmingham, Sylvia and Audrey Whitehouse were always like chalk and cheese. As young women, while Sylvia dreams of her forthcoming life married to fiancé Ian. Audrey can't bear the thought of being tied down by marriage and children. Instead she jumps at the career opportunities the WAAF throws her way. Joining the ranks at RAF Cardington, she finds these new freedoms come with confusion and irresistible temptations. When she goes too far in one careless moment, the consequences will ripple through the whole Whitehouse family. Meanwhile, Sylvia has come round to the idea of war work and, doing her bit, becomes a railway porter, much to Ian's dismay. Fetching and carrying are just not feminine, not like Sylvia's new friend Kitty, who is as sweet and pretty as...

SYNOPSISThree very different women work together at Cadbury's Bournville factory, and their lives become entwined by war and work - and a child called David. Edie, the main character, marries young to escape her unhappy family home. Widowed at 19 and, after losing her child from the marriage, she faces the war grieving and lonely. Then one night during the Blitz, an infant mysteriously abandoned during the bombing is handed into her care... Ruby, meanwhile, doesn't want to be left behind in the wedding stakes and settles for marriage with Frank. Finally there's Janet, kind-hearted and susceptible to male charm, who is hurt desperately by an affair with a married man. David, the child who steals Edie's heart as she brings him up through a time none of them will ever forget, is the love of all their lives. And when David is old enough to wonder who he really is, he leads Edie through struggle and heartache to a life and love she would never have dreamed of...