1943. After the heartache of the previous year, Connie Baxter now appears to have everything a girl could want. There is Ace, a man who loves her. She enjoys an enviable lifestyle despite the deprivations of war. She has friends and a job she adores as an usherette at the Criterion cinema. But appearances can be deceptive and Connie is struggling in more ways than one. Then, to compound Connie’s problems, her nemesis, Cousin Marlene, returns home. Secrets come to light, revealing jealousies that could shatter Connie’s world once more, and she realises that Ace isn’t the man she thought he was.
It is 1962 and pretty 17-year-old Greta finds life at home hard. She has no father and loathes her mother’s latest boyfriend. She’s happiest at work with her friends in Birmingham’s Cadbury factory. When her missing vixen of a sister, Marlene, turns up, Greta decides that she has to get away, and the only escape route is marriage. But she soon finds out that life with Trevor is not as she’d hoped, and freedom and happiness still elude her. When the situation worsens, she finds herself out on the streets – pregnant and homeless – until her mother’s friends Edie and Anatoli take her in, providing a safe, secure haven…until tragedy strikes.
Now that her family is grown, content in the knowledge that she loves them, Lucy Henshaw decides she is free to leave. She secretly purchases a beautiful house overlooking the Mersey, and there she plans to start afresh. Within hours, she has met some characters: her new neighbour Moira, who is dying, and sees Lucy as the ideal new companion for her husband; Shirley Bishop, cleaner extraordinaire; and Dr David Vincent, who is grieving for the loss of his young son. It is these new friends, too, who come to Lucy’s rescue when her husband Alan, falls ill. Always a fraudster who has tried to control her, his illness only seems to offer him another opportunity to complicate Lucy’s life all over again.
Headmaster Theodore Quinn has lived in Liverpool since coming over from America to fight for Britain in the 1940s. Over ten years later he is harbouring two secrets and scars that are both physical and emotional. Where women are concerned, he and his secrets are a closed shop, until Tia Bellamy walks into his life. Tia cuts through Theo’s reserve, and the first of his secrets is shared with her. The pair grow close to the residents of the Lady Streets, a tight community that looks after its own, and in particular to Maggie Stone and her little granddaughter Rosie. Then Theo reveals his second secret, and everything in their life begins to change…
Joan Bomford wanted to be a farmer so much she always wore a tie like her dad. As an 8-year-old she was the first person in the family to drive a tractor. No job was ever too tough for her. Now aged 83, she’s still as active, still driving tractors. This is her account of a lifelong love-affair with the land and the people who work on it. Up With The Lark is not only the portrait of a forgotten era, but also the story of one woman’s overwhelming desire to do the thing she cared about more than anything else – being Farmer Joan.
Inspector Witherspoon is perplexed. No one seems to know the identity of the dead man dressed like a vicar and propped up against the outside wall of St Paul’s Church. A paper clutched in the corpse’s hand reveals the address of a dilapidated and seemingly abandoned cottage – abandoned if you don’t count the human skeleton stuffed in the chimney. To link these two bizarre incidents will take all of the resources at Witherspoon’s command – and a little help from the efficient Mrs Jeffries. She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon…and keeps him on his toes. Everyone’s awed by his Scotland Yard successes – but they don’t know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs Jeffries’s polished detection skills are up to the task.
Sir Edmund Leggett is flattered to be stalked by a young lady. But she soon makes herself scarce after he’s murdered in cold blood. The police hold the young woman to blame. But Inspector Witherspoon has other ideas and consults his housekeeper, Mrs Jeffries – who always gets to the heart of the matter and proves that a great crimesolver’s work is never done.
In the backstreets of Liverpool, Eileen Watson lives with her mother Nellie, daughter Mel and her three tearaway sons. Life isn’t great, but they have each other, and family can get you through anything. Or can it? Then Britain declares war on Germany and their lives change forever. The children have to be evacuated, but Mel refuses to go, and so Eileen says goodbye to her mother and sons, moves away from the street they love and faces a future without her precious family. Thus begins a journey for them all. A journey filled with forbidden love, tragedy and the terrifying sounds of a city they love crumbling into the craters left by the Luftwaffe. Their lives will never be the same again…
The O’Neils, who have lost brothers and sons into the bowels of London’s East End, keep watch over their one remaining young male, Seamus. Meanwhile, Rosh Allen mourns the loss of her husband. Aided and impeded by her mother, she struggles to raise three fatherless children. With the help of a kind-hearted neighbour, her wounds begin to heal. Tess and Don Compton are on the verge of separation. But what really lies behind her desire to live on the posh side of the street. Behind the three families, two men are at work. One will do serious damage; the other will reunite a clan that goes all the way back to ancestors thrown ashore from the ships of the Spanish Armada.
Andrew Sanderson, brilliant surgeon and renowned musician, is still grieving the death of his wife Mary when his younger daughter turns up on the doorstep having left her philandering husband. It’s not long before the house is overrun with daughters, grandchildren, sons-in-law and a boisterous stray dog called Storm. At Andrew’s time of life, is this really what he needs? One thing is sure, home is a lot more interesting than it once was, and things have certainly changed from when he was a boy. As he reminisces about his past and the love he once shared with Mary, Andrew starts to realise that there is a new road to be travelled; he just has to let go of his grief and embrace tomorrow…
