Corgi book The Long Walk Home Wood Val

Holderness, 1846 • For reliable, thirteen-year-old Bella, life isn't turning out quite as she'd hoped. She lives at the Woodman Inn - an ancient hostelry run by her family in the Yorkshire countryside - with her parents and siblings, but when she learns not only that her father is seriously ill, but that her mother is expecting a fifth child, her dreams of leaving home to become a schoolteacher are quickly dashed • Times are hard, and when their father dies Bella also has to take on the role of mother to her baby brother. Her days are brightened by the occasional visit from Jamie Lucan - the eighteen-year-old son of a wealthy landowning neighbour. Also grieving the loss of a parent, Jamie has more in common with Bella than she thinks • When her mother announces out of the blue that she wants to move the family to Hull, Bella is forced to leave the only home she has ever known

The new, festive novel from one of the country's favourite saga authors - if you like Katie Flynn and Dilly Court, you'll love Val's heartwarming stories of triumph over adversity • Harriet and Fletcher Tuke have worked hard to raise their children well. Daniel, the eldest son, has always accepted that his birth father died soon after he was born, and Fletcher has raised Daniel as his own • But as Daniel comes of age and begins to fall in love with childhood friend Beatrice Hart, he can't help but wonder about his heritage - his olive skin and dark eyes reminding him daily of the difference between him and his siblings, and between his and Beatrice's families. Meanwhile, shocking truths about Fletcher's own family line are suddenly brought to the surface, revealing a connection between the two families

For ten years, Delia has had to fend for herself and her son Jack, and as a young unmarried mother, life has never been easy. Every new coat and pair of shoes was bought with what little money she could scrape together as a singer on the stage • But when the theatre work dries up, Delia faces a dilemma: continue the search for employment with no knowing whether she’ll find the stability and security her son needs, or return to the place that should be home . . . where only spite and hatred await them • Desperate now, a chance encounter suddenly presents a lifeline. But Delia is faced with an impossible, heart-wrenching choice. Can she bear to leave Jack behind, hoping another family will care for him? Will they ever be reunited? • What else can a mother do to give her son the life he deserves? • Val Wood's wonderful historical sagas are perfect for readers of Dilly Court, Maggie Hope and Rosie Goodwin

Winter, 1860 • Rosalie has been granted a life of comfort and wealth but neither of these protects her when her mother suddenly dies • Polly has lead a life of grinding poverty; after losing her own mother, she finds herself alone on the bitterly cold streets of Hull • Then fate intervenes, bringing the two girls together when Polly takes a job as a scullery maid in Rosalie’s lonely house. The girls become unlikely friends and, when forced to leave the city behind, find themselves setting out to live with Rosalie’s uncle on the North Yorkshire Moors. Here they discover a life that neither of them has known before; though after finding momentary joy they soon learn once again that tragedy is never far away…

A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where Joshua and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth – but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind ... A new ‘America’, called Valhalla, is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth, with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth – and Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government • Meanwhile the Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls, graceful hive-mind humanoids. But the trolls are beginning to react to humanity’s thoughtless exploitation ... Joshua, now a married man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any mankind has waged before

From the combined talents of the UK's bestselling novelist and a giant of British science fiction comes the dazzling new chapter in the extraordinary and bestselling Long Earth sequence • 'Imaginative, sense-of-wonder at its best . . . thrilling stuff from the masters' Independent on Sunday • 2040-2045: In the years after a cataclysmic eruption there is massive economic dislocation as populations flee to myriad Long Earth worlds • Sally, Joshua, and Lobsang are all involved in this perilous work when, out of the blue, Sally is contacted by her long-vanished father and inventor of the original Stepper device, Willis Linsay. He tells her he is planning a fantastic voyage across the Long Mars and wants her to accompany him. But he is not what he seems

2070-71. Nearly six decades after Step Day and in the Long Earth, the new Next post-human society continues to evolve • For Joshua Valiente, now in his late sixties, it is time to take one last solo journey into the High Meggers: an adventure that turns into a disaster. Alone and facing death, his only hope of salvation lies with a group of trolls. But as Joshua confronts his mortality, the Long Earth receives a signal from the stars. A signal that is picked up by radio astronomers but also in more abstract ways – by the trolls and by the Great Traversers. Its message is simple but its implications are enormous • JOIN US • The super-smart Next realise that the Message contains instructions on how to develop an immense artificial intelligence but to build it they have to seek help from throughout the industrious worlds of mankind

2045-2059. After the cataclysmic upheavals of Step Day and the Yellowstone eruption humanity is spreading further into the Long Earth, and society, on a battered Datum Earth and beyond, continues to evolve • Now an elderly and cantankerous AI, Lobsang lives in disguise with Agnes in an exotic, far-distant world. He’s convinced they’re leading a normal life in New Springfield – they even adopt a child – but it seems they have been guided there for a reason. As rumours of strange sightings and hauntings proliferate, it becomes clear that something is very awry with this particular world • Millions of steps away, Joshua is on a personal journey of discovery: learning about the father he never knew and a secret family history. But then he receives a summons from New Springfield

Winner of the Parliamentary Book Award, best memoir by a Parliamentarian, 2016 • From the condemned slums of Southam Street in West London to the corridors of power in Westminster, Alan Johnson’s multi-award-winning autobiography charts an extraordinary journey, almost unimaginable in today’s Britain. This third volume tells of Alan’s early political skirmishes as a trades union leader, where his negotiating skills and charismatic style soon came to the notice of Tony Blair and other senior members of the Labour Party • As a result, Alan was chosen to stand in the constituency of Hull West and Hessle, and entered Parliament as an MP after the landslide election victory for Labour in May 1997. But this is no self-aggrandizing memoir of Westminster politicking and skulduggery

A powerful story about a woman's struggle to claim what is rightfully hers, from the Sunday Times bestselling author Val Wood • 1850: Beatrix Fawcett is just eighteen when her father tells her she is to marry a stranger. Hesitantly, but with little choice, she agrees to the match - in the hope of a good husband in Charles, and a happy new life together in rural Yorkshire • As Beatrix sets about making their house a home, she falls in love with it and the surrounding countryside. But she does not fall in love with her husband... Charles has chosen her simply to meet the requirements of his inheritance and has little interest in his young wife • Soon, the only spark in Beatrix's lonely life is her beloved children. But when Charles threatens to take them away from her, Beatrix must find strength in desperate times

'The police belonged to another world - the world they saw on the television or in the papers. Not theirs.' • When two eighteen-year-old girls go missing on their gap year in Thailand, their families are thrust into the international spotlight: desperate, bereft and frantic with worry • Journalist Kate Waters always does everything she can to be first to the story, first with the exclusive, first to discover the truth - and this time is no exception. But she can't help but think of her own son, who she hasn't seen in two years, since he left home to go travelling. This time it's personal • And as the case of the missing girls unfolds, they will all find that even this far away, danger can lie closer to home than you might think

The Plumberry School of Comfort Food was originally published as a four-part serial. This is the complete story in one package • Putting other people first doesn’t always mean you have to come second… • Verity has lost everything she loved; her best friend and baking companion has died, taking with her their shared passion for cooking. To top it off, it looks like her career and love life might soon follow suit • Although she’s very much in need of some time for herself, Verity instead leaps at the opportunity to help a friend find her feet and help establish a cooking school. Just as long as she doesn’t have to cook anything! Even so, it’s all far from easy, even with the comfort of new friendship and a taste of fresh romance • So when tragedy strikes at the very heart of the cookery school Verity once again risks losing everything