Résultats lu par "Maggie Mash" dans Toutes les catégories

London, 1926. Two baby girls are born just hours and miles apart. One you know as the Queen of England, but what of the other girl - the daughter of an undertaker named in her honour? Betsy Sunshine grows up surrounded by death in war-torn London, watching her community grieve for their loved ones whilst dealing with her own teenage troubles...namely her promiscuous sister Margie. As Betsy grows older we see how the country changes through her eyes, and along the way we discover the birth of a secret that threatens to tear her family apart.

July 1942, and 23-year-old nightclub singer Kate Watson has made a home for herself in bomb-blitzed London. A motley crew of friends has replaced the family she's not spoken to in years. Until Kate's sister Sarah walks back into her life, asking her to return home to Dorset for one month to look after her daughter, Lizzie. Reluctantly Kate agrees, though it means facing the troubled past she hoped she'd escaped.

Bryony and Hannah are sisters, but they couldn't be more different, and war has brought even more of a rift between them. Bryony is happiest at Combe Lodge, the family home, while young, headstrong Hannah has fled to Jersey. At Combe Lodge, everyone else is pitching in with the war effort. The family home fills with evacuees, and Bryony is doing her bit, flying planes at the nearby Combe Lodge Airlines. But Bryony knows that she needs to reach out to Hannah. Only she will be able to keep her flighty younger sister's feet on the ground. But is Bryony too late to help her? Will Hannah ever come home?

Born into hardship in a Northumbrian mining village, Annie Manon needs all her strength to survive the bleak years following the First World War. As her family fractures around her, she longs to make something of her life. Through hard work and determination Annie eventually leaves the poverty and despair of her childhood behind her. But then war breaks out once more, taking her further away from her dreams and those she loves most. And it is all Annie can do to keep hope alive....

October 1943. Nineteen-year-old Polly Holmes is leaving poor bombed London behind to join the war effort on Britain's canals. Stepping aboard the Marigold amid pouring rain, there's lots for Polly to get to grips with. Not least her fellow crew: strong and impetuous Verity, whose bark is worse than her bite, and seasoned skipper Bet. With her sweetheart away fighting in the RAF and her beloved brother killed in action, there's plenty of heartache to be healed on the waterway.

June 1940, and newly qualified teacher Phyllis Saunders is evacuated with her school to Dorset. Here she encounters prejudice and suspicion, but she is determined to make the best of life for herself and the children in her care. All the while her fiancé, submariner Sammy, is facing danger out at sea. On a visit to London, Phyllis gets caught up in the Blitz but manages to escape. Shaken but alive, she returns to the relative peace of the countryside - but soon she is nursing a secret she can tell no-one about.

In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known novelists in Britain. House Mother Normal: A Geriatric Comedy is Johnson's most richly characterised, humane and sympathetic work. Eight residents in a home for the elderly sit down to dinner, along with the House Mother herself, and each takes it in turn to relay the proceedings of the evening from their own, individual perspective.

Hester Fielding was once the leading ballerina of her day. Her life is the stuff of drama: a bleak Yorkshire childhood transformed by the discovery of her amazing gifts as a dancer; a dangerous love affair that can only lead to heartbreak; and a secret that would topple her from her pinnacle of fame if it ever came out. Now Hester has returned to Yorkshire, to Wychwood, where, each year at Christmas, a ballet is performed on Twelfth Night in the little theatre.

When the king sends Radmer of Donmouth on a mission to Rome, Donmouth is left in the safekeeping of his only daughter, Elfrun. This is the story of daughters in a man's world: Wynn, daughter of the smith; Saethryth, daughter of the village steward; and Auli, daughter of a merchant. Above all it is the story of Elfrun of Donmouth, uncertain of her father's fate, not knowing who she can trust or who she can love....

A heart-rending tale of love and tragedy during The Birmingham Blitz. Perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Annie Groves. For Kathy O'Malley, life has not been easy with her husband, Barry, out of work and with two children to feed. Then when war breaks out in 1939, many of the local men enlist, including Barry, leaving the women to cope as best they can. The years that follow are full of hardship: rationing, nightly air raids, and endless shifts working at the local munitions factory all take their toll on Kathy.

Sharon Kendrick crafts sizzling romances that hold readers in a constant state of page-turning bliss. True, Constantine Karantinos has only the faintest memory of a romantic dalliance with a waitress named Laura. But when he learns she’s mothered his heir, he summons her to Greece, where she insists on paying her way as his housekeeper. Finding her stubborn willfulness the ultimate aphrodisiac, Constantine determines to win her over in the bedroom - again and again and again.

In June 2014, Julia White - a beautiful and intelligent young woman - blows up a coffee shop in central London, killing 24 people before turning herself in to the police. Apart from publishing a potentially ironic manifesto, she refuses to explain the reasons for her actions.... Clare Hardenberg, an investigative journalist, has been commissioned to write a biography of Julia, but at the start of the novel she is on her way to prison herself. What has brought her to this point?

New Year's Eve, 1940: Evie Chase, determined to make a difference to the war effort, joins the ATA, the civilian pilots who ferry Tiger Moths and Spitfires to bases across Britain. Two other women nervously join up: Stella Grainger and Megan Jones. Billeted in a tiny cottage, they must learn to live and work together. Brave, beautiful and fiercely independent, they find romance, confront loss, and forge friendships that will last a lifetime.

Lucy Gabbitas has just left school and is excited about joining her sisters at the local umbrella factory. But then her beloved father dies of lung disease leaving Lucy and her brothers and sisters broken-hearted. With barely enough to make ends meet, the family receive no sympathy from their tyrannical mother, Annie, and their first Christmas without him holds little comfort and joy. Things seem to be looking brighter for Lucy when she meets John Grey and falls in love. That is until Annie becomes seriously ill and dies, and Lucy is forced to put her family first.

When 17-year-old Mary O'Connor collapses one Sunday in church she is taken to live with Dr Roberts and his wife in a beautiful Yorkshire village for her health. Though initially employed as a maid, Mary soon becomes the daughter the couple were never able to have. With Britain at war, unable to remain idle, Mary finds employment in the local steel works but when her fiancé Tom Downing is killed in action Mary is convinced it is retribution for their night of sin during Tom's Christmas leave.

The death of her mother in 1813, brings added responsibility to 17-year-old Anna Mason. A self-confident girl, she has to shed her girlhood sooner than she would have expected as she assumes many of her mother's tasks in running the household of Hawkshead Manor. Julian Kirby, a family friend, is entranced by Anna but she doesn't feel she is able to return his affections while her father remains so devastated by his wife's death.

Beth thought she had been rescued from a life of servitude by an offer of marriage from gentleman farmer Edgar Collins, but her future would be bleaker than she could ever imagine. When the legitimacy of her twin babies with Edgar is called into question, the tiny infants are taken from Beth and sent far away. James is adopted by Edgar's uncle, the very wealthy Lord Redfern, master of Redfern Abbey. But little Daisy is sent to a cold-hearted childless couple who raise her to be a maid rather than a daughter.

Dare you close your eyes for even a few seconds? One, two, three... Lisa Dale shuts her eyes and counts to 100 during a game of hide-and-seek. When she opens them, her four-year-old daughter, Ella, is gone. Disappeared without a trace. The police, the media and Lisa's family all think they know who snatched Ella. But what if the person who took her isn't a stranger? What if they are convinced they are doing the right thing? And what if Lisa's little girl is in danger of disappearing forever?

When Constance Barrington dies, she leaves behind a wealthy estate and a complex family network. But when the whole family gathers to hear her last will and testament, they are in for a terrible shock. Constance - possessed of a long memory and a spiteful disposition - altered her will shortly before her death. The new provisions are far from fair; some benefit hugely and others hardly at all.

Polly Flint was the kind of girl who was always "seeing" mysterious things. So it was hardly a surprise when she began to pick up odd echoes and reflections after she moved into her aunt's house. But it soon becomes clear that the inhabitants of a nether world were asking Polly for help... As soon as she arrives in Wellow, Polly Flint knows there is magic in the place. And she should know because she is an unusual girl who can see things others can't.