Pan Books Birmingham Friends Murray Annie

Rachel Booker has a difficult start in life. When her father dies, deep in gambling debt, her mother must harden herself to make ends meet, but becomes so hard she has little room left for affection or warmth. Mother and daughter work at the open market in Birmingham, selling second-hand clothes or whatever they can find just to put a little food on the table • But the market has a silver lining: it's there that Rachel makes her first childhood friend, Danny. As they grow older, the friendship grows into something more and their innocent romance gives Rachel the care and comfort she's always craved. But at just sixteen, as World War II breaks out, Rachel falls pregnant. They marry in haste but it isn't long before Danny is called up • Left on the home front with a new baby and little else, Rachel must scrape by with the other residents of Sparkbrook

In Annie Murray's bestselling Chocolate Girls, three very different women work together at Cadbury's Bournville factory, where their lives become entwined by war and work - and a child called David • Edie marries young to escape her unhappy family home. Widowed at nineteen, and having lost 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

Wartime Friends is a tale of unbreakable bonds in times of strife, by bestselling author Margaret Dickinson • It is 1940s coastal Lincolnshire and Carolyn Holmes is keen to do what she can for the war effort. Raised on the family farm, she is prevented by her mother from going to secretarial college • Phyllis Carter, a widow from the Great War, lives close by with her son, Peter, who works on the farm. Peter and Carolyn are great friends but do not see a future together, although it is the dearest wish of both mothers to see them marry • After their home town is caught in an air raid, Peter decides to volunteer – to the distress of his mother – and Carolyn leaves to join the ATS, where she meets Beryl Morley, who will become a lifelong friend • Carolyn and Beryl are posted to Beaumanor Hall as ‘listeners’, the most difficult of signals intelligence gathering, intercepting enemy messages which are then sent to Bletchley Park for deciphering

From Annie Murray, the bestselling author of The Bells of Bournville Green, comes Secrets of the Chocolate Girls, another gritty family saga about love, war and chocolate • September 1940, Birmingham • While her husband and daughter work at the Cadbury's Bournville factory, Ann Gilby has her hands full at home with her other daughter, Sheila, newly returned home with baby Elaine. With Sheila's husband away doing his bit in the RAF, Ann knows she should be grateful to have all her children safe under one roof. But she can't help but fear for their uncertain future as bombs fall ever closer to her Birmingham home. Part of her yearns for the carefree days of her youth when she also worked the line at Cadburys, filling trays of chocolate shells

It is 1946: the war is over and three young women face a new kind of life. But peacetime brings its own pressures • Katie O'Neill's childhood has been dominated by her temperamental mother and by frightening secrets that she barely understands. Innocent, yet hungry for love, she is easily taken in by male charm and is left outcast and alone with her young son • Emma Brown has spent the war at home in Birmingham, longing for her husband Norm to return and meet the son he has never seen. But she soon finds that the joy of homecoming only brings a whole new set of problems • And Molly Fox, after a sad and brutal childhood, found a place to belong during the war, in the women's army, the ATS. Now, the women are no longer wanted and Molly finds peacetime a bleak, difficult challenge

A tale of hardship and survival, The Doorstep Child is a heart-rending story from bestselling author Annie Murray • From a tender age little Evie struggled • Evie spent her early years left outside on the step. With a drunk for a father and a neglectful mother, all little Evie has ever craved is a safe home and a normal existence • Her young eyes had seen so much but this never tainted her spirit. If it wasn't for her best friend Gary, and friendly dog called Whisky - Evie might never have made it to the sixteenth birthday • At sixteen she meets Ken, a sweet brown-eyed boy, not much older than she is. Perhaps her fortunes have changed? But no sooner does she give over her heart, she is betrayed, not for the first time in her young life

The Woolworths girls have come a long way together • Fun loving Maisie, is devoted to her young family and her work at Woolworths. But her happy life with her RAF officer husband, their baby daughter leads her to think of the family she left behind . . . With the war now into its fourth year, what will she find when she sets about searching for them? • Sarah and her husband, Alan, are blissfully happy and long for a sibling for their daughter. But dark days lay ahead for this close family • Freda heads home to Birmingham, to go in search of her family, back to the life she fled - far from the safety of Woolworths and her new friends • With families' separated by war, will the Woolworths girls be able to pull together?

Sometimes the end is only the beginning • Annie is single, unemployed and just a bit stuck when her beloved father dies unexpectedly. Furious at his partner's plans to scatter his ashes somewhere of no emotional significance, Annie seizes the urn and, on a whim, decides to take it on a tour of the thirty-one sea areas that make up the shipping forecast, which her father loved listening to, despite living in landlocked St Albans. Travelling around the coastline of Britain searching for the perfect place to say goodbye, she starts to wonder if it might be time to rethink some of the relationships in her life - but is it too late for second chances? • A novel about love, loss and the importance of living life to the full, Annie Stanley, All at Sea by Sue Teddern is proof that it's often the most difficult moments in life that show us what really matters

The Allotment Girls is an inspiring and heartwarming novel of wartime hardship, friendship and fortitude from Kate Thompson, author of the Secrets of the Sewing Bee • During the Second World War, life in the iconic Bryant & May match factory is grimy and tough. Annie, Rose, Pearl and Millie carry on making matches for the British Army, with bombs raining down around them • Inspired by the Dig for Victory campaign, Annie persuades the owners to start Bryant & May allotment in the factory grounds. With plenty of sweat and toil, the girls eventually carve out a corner of the yard into a green plot full of life and colour • In the darkest of times, the girls find their allotment a tranquil, happy escape. Using pierced dustbin lids to sieve through the shrapnel and debris, they bring about a powerful change, not just in the factory, but their own lives

An emotional journey portraying the multiple frustrations, pressures and hidden agonies of four women. City of Friends is the number one bestselling novel from the highly acclaimed author, Joanna Trollope • The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she'd ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London? • As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new - one without professional achievements or meetings, but instead, long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home - she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and for all the happiness and heartbreaks in between

The Perfect Present is a glamorous and festive read from bestselling author of Christmas at Tiffany's, Karen Swan • Haunted by a past she can't escape, Laura Cunningham desires nothing more than to keep her world small and precise - her quiet relationship and growing jewellery business are all she needs to get by. Until the day when Rob Blake walks into her studio and commissions a necklace that will tell his enigmatic wife Cat's life in charms • As Laura interviews Cat's family, friends and former lovers, she steps out of her world and into theirs - a charmed world where weekends are spent in Verbier and the air is lavender-scented, where friends are wild, extravagant and jealous, and a big love has to compete with grand passions • Hearts are opened, secrets revealed and as the necklace begins to fill up with trinkets, Cat's intoxicating life envelops Laura's own

The Wronged Daughter by Mary Wood is an emotional and moving novel that reunites old friends and heals old wounds • Mags has never forgotten the friendship she forged with Flora and Ella, two fellow nurses she served with at the beginning of World War I. Haunted by what she experienced during that time, she fears a reunion with her friends would bring back the horror she's tried so desperately to suppress • Now, with her wedding on the horizon, this should be a joyful time for Mags. But the sudden loss of her mother and the constant doubt she harbours surrounding her fiance, Harold, are marring her happiness • Mags throws herself into running the family mill, but she's dealt another aching blow by a betrayal that leaves her reeling. Finding the strength the war had taken from her, she fights back, not realizing the consequences and devastating outcome awaiting her