Pan Books Chocolate Girls 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

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

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

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

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

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

Can the Woolworth girls achieve their dreams in time for their futures to begin? The Woolworths Saturday Girls is the seventh instalment in Elaine Everest's much-loved Woolworths series • 1950. The Second World War is over and life has moved on for the Woolworth girls, Sarah, Maisie and Freda. In a new world the Woolworth women have high expectations of their daughters, wanting them to seize opportunities they didn’t have themselves • Ready to take on Saturday jobs at Woolworths, budding friends Bessie, Claudette, Clementine and Dorothy are faced with unforeseeable challenges, as the real world comes into focus. Their bond can only be strengthened as they overcome the darkest times. Perhaps their lives are not as clear-cut as their mothers wished them to be

The Patchwork Girls by Elaine Everest is a moving story about the ties of friends and family, set during the turbulence of the Second World War • 1939. After the sudden and tragic loss of her husband, Helen is returning home to her mother’s house in Biggin Hill, Kent – the one place she vowed she’d never go back to again • Alone and not knowing where to turn, Helen finds herself joining the local women’s sewing circle despite being hopeless with a needle and thread. These resourceful women can not only make do and mend clothes, quilts and woolly hats, but their friendship mends something deeper in Helen too. Lizzie is a natural leader, always ready to lend a helping hand or a listening ear. Effie has uprooted her life from London to keep her two little girls away from the bombing raids, and the sewing circle is a welcome distraction from worries about how to keep a roof over their heads and about her husband too, now serving in active duty overseas

The Orphanage Girls is a gritty and moving historical saga about an orphanage in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Jam Factory Girls, Mary Wood • Children deserve a family to call their own • Ruth dares to dream of another life – far away from the horrors within the walls of Bethnal Green’s infamous orphanage. Luckily she has her friends, Amy and Ellen – but she can’t keep them safe, and the suffering is only getting worse. Surely there must be a way out of here? • But when Ruth breaks free from the shackles of confinement and sets out into East London, hoping to make a new life for herself, she finds that, for a girl with nowhere to turn, life can be just as tough on the outside • Bett keeps order in this unruly part of the East End – and takes Ruth under her wing alongside orphanage escapee Robbie

The Buffer Girls is an inspiring tale of love, heartache and ambition from bestselling author Margaret Dickinson • It is 1920 in the Derbyshire dales. The Ryan family are adjusting to life now that the war is over. Walter has returned home a broken man and so it falls to his son and daughter, Josh and Emily, to keep the family candle-making business going • The Ryan children grew up with Amy Clark, daughter of the village blacksmith, and Thomas 'Trip' Trippett, whose father owns a cutlery business in Sheffield. Romance blossoms for Josh and Amy while Emily falls in love with Trip, but she is unsure if the feeling is mutual. Martha Ryan is fiercely ambitious for her son and so she uproots her family to Sheffield, but all Josh wants is to continue the family business and marry Amy

Christmas with the Teashop Girls is a heartwarming and moving story of wartime love, bravery and hope, by the bestselling author of the Woolworths series, Elaine Everest • It is late 1940 and the war feels closer to home than ever for Rose Neville and her staff at the Lyon's Teashop in Margate. The worry of rationing hangs overhead as the Nippies do their best to provide a happy smile and a hot cup of tea for their customers. When a heavy bombing raid targets the Kent coastline, Lyon's is badly hit, throwing the future of the cafe into jeopardy • The light in Rose's life is her dashing fiance Capt. Ben Hargreaves and planning their Christmas Eve wedding. But she must also plan to take two new step-daughters into her life and get on the right side of her wealthy mother-in-law, Lady Diana