Sue Wilsher, author of When My Ship Comes In, makes an emotional return to 1950s Essex Tilbury, 1950s. The Empire is a boarding house run by Vi, Doris's mother - the Empire Girls of the title. When Doris becomes pregnant out of marriage, she is kicked out of the house and forced to fend for herself. Desperate to look after her daughter, she takes any job going. She falls in with the Windrush immigrants and finds herself helping one to a new life in Britain.

Don't miss the gripping new drama from the nation's favourite storyteller! Are some memories best forgotten? Maureen Bancroft has never learned the art of putting herself first. As a widow with a gentle temperament and humble ways, she's been easy to take advantage of. All that changes when an unexpected windfall comes her way. Determined to make up for lost time, she decides to take a holiday and, needing a companion, looks up her friend, Barbara Hayle. Glamorous, and with a successful career on the stage, Barbara seems to be everything that Maureen is not. But things aren't as they seem, and what starts out as a nostalgic trip between friends, becomes something different altogether. Much has changed in the years since they first met now Maureen has something that her friend desperately needs, and Barbara is used to getting exactly what she wants. As their journey takes them down some dark byways, will this be the one friendship that Maureen should have left firmly in the past? Praise for Josephine Cox: 'Cox's talent as a storyteller never lets you escape the spell' Daily Mail 'A surefire winner' Woman's Weekly

The Wild Earth's Nobility is the first of Frank Waters's semiautobiographical novels in the Pikes Peak saga. Here, in a frontier town in the shadow of the commanding mountain, the Rogier family settles near an age-old route of migrating Native Americans. In an era of prospecting, silver strikes, and frenzied mining, Joseph Rogier becomes a successful building contractor, rears a large family, and is gradually overwhelmed by the power of the great peak.
In Waters's visionary prose, the story becomes a mythic journey to reconcile instinct and reason, consciousness and intuition, and the powerful emotions of a family struggling with its own dreams and human limitations.
Frank Waters (1902-1995), one of the finest chroniclers of the American Southwest, wrote twenty-eight works of fiction and nonfiction. Of Pike's Peak (1971), the Chicago Daily News wrote, It is a product of maturity, written with a sustained strength and beauty of style rarely found in fiction today.
Pike's Peak is composed of three condensed novels: The Wild Earth's Nobility, Below Grass Roots, and The Dust within the Rock.

The friendship between five-year-olds Sara Miller and Judy Levine begins in the summer of 1941, when their families move into adjoining row houses in Washington, D.C. Almost immediately, the United States enters World War II, and their childhood is thrust into a world dominated by the consequences of history. When asked to help their sick friend, Su Ling, keep up with her studies as she recuperates from rheumatic fever, her grandmother, An Lei, teaches them the ancient Chinese game of Mahjong, destined to become an invariable part of their lives as it merges cultures, love, and friendship.

Separated for the first time when they enter college, their personal choices, shaped and impacted by half a century of unparalleled wars, loss, and heartbreak, only bring them closer together, as they marry, raise their families, and pursue their chosen careers. Their lifelong journey, caught in a web of intricate and surprising twists of fate, surfaces in the public eye when a Ukrainian farm girl inadvertently unlocks a thirty-five-year mystery that has haunted them since their graduation from high school.

From coast to coast and across the globe, their heartwarming and compelling story confirms the powerful bond of friendship.

Some battles will be fought on the Homefront...The war has had a devastating effect on the Sweet Family with young Charlie Sweet, lost at sea, presumed dead and bombs falling on nearby Bristol. Still there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon in the form of Mary Sweet's upcoming wedding to her Canadian beau. But even that has failed to rouse their father from his grief. But in London a baby has been found in a bombed out house, sheltered in the arms of his dead mother. A child to make life worth living again... Discover the gripping, heartfelt second instalment in Lizzie Lane's bestselling Sweet Sisters trilogy. Praise for Lizzie Lane: 'A gripping saga and a storyline that will keep you hooked' Rosie Goodwin 'The Tobacco Girls is another heartwarming tale of love and friendship and a must-read for all saga fans.' Jean Fullerton 'Lizzie Lane opens the door to a past of factory girls, redolent with life-affirming friendship, drama, and choices that are as relevant today as they were then.' Catrin Collier 'If you want an exciting, authentic historical saga then look no further than Lizzie Lane.' Fenella J Miller

After a four-month estrangement from her family, thirty-two-year-old Emma Michaels visits The Harbor View Assisted Living Home to tell her grandmother, Gussie, that she has made a decision: she's going to sell the family property--her inheritance. Sitting on the dock of Poquatuck Village, Connecticut, looking across the harbor to their family's longtime home, the two women debate over Emma's choice--and their conversation lays the framework for the book, which flows over the decades, all the way back to Gussie's youth and marriage, then forward through the lives of her three children, Auggie, Livy, and Alyssa, whose hopes and talents are warped by their mother's influence and disappointed expectations. Expectations passed down through the generations. Subtle. Unspoken. Implacable.
As Emma and Gussie remember the choices and dynamics that have produced the complicated tapestry that is their family's history, Emma makes a number of surprising discoveries about her loved ones--and herself--and she prepares to do what no one else in her family has dared: let go of the past to make room for the future, though doing so will destroy the thing her grandmother holds most dear.

July 1947. Britain is still gripped by rationing, even as the excitement of Princess Elizabeth's engagement sweeps the nation. In the Woolworths' canteen, Freda is still dreaming of meeting her own Prince Charming. So far she's been unlucky in love. When she has an accident on her motorbike, knocking a cyclist off his bicycle, it seems bad luck is still following her around. Anthony is not only a fellow Woolworths employee but was an Olympic hopeful. Will his injured leg heal in time for him to compete? Can he ever forgive Freda? Sarah's idyllic family life is under threat with worries about her husband, Alan. Does he still love her? The friends must rally round to face some of the toughest challenges of their lives together. And although they experience loss, hardship and shocks along the way, love is on the horizon for the Woolworths girls . . . Wedding Bells for Woolworths is the fifth instalment in Elaine Everest's much-loved Woolworths series.

A convenient marriage Could save them both... Battle-weary Viking Lord Hafual plans to tend his lands, raise his son and recover from the traumatic death of his wife. So nobody is more surprised than him when his neighbour, Lady Elene, publicly announces their intention to wed! Learning the danger Elene faces if he refuses stirs feelings of protectiveness, and a longing in Hafual he'd long-since buried. So, for better or worse, he'll make Elene his bride...

Have you ever wished you could go back and do something all over again and do it differently? I know I have; we all have. Th e choices that we make every day not only effect our lives but the lives of those that are around us that we may not even be aware that it has effected somebody else's life. Many times we do not have a choice in the decision we make and we can only make the best of what may be a really bad situation. You will see in this story of Alyson -that she like so many of us did not always have a choice in what life handed her. Th e choices she did have were limited or forced upon her by others' ultimatums. You will read about choices that Alyson made that you think the girl absolutely has lost her mind.

You may ask yourself, "Is she crazy?" "What was she thinking?" Other times you may feel as scared as she was and want to hug her and comfort her when she huddles in a corner shaking from pure fear. You may even wish you could crawl inside the pages and knock a few folks on their behinds. Alyson keeps going and she forever tries to make others happy, she tries to do what is expected of her, and she tries to be the perfect student, child, daughter, sister, wife and mother. You will read about the many times that she failed at each of these.

A classic novel, heartbreaking and emotional, from Sunday Times bestselling writer Josephine Cox, 'hailed quite rightly as a gifted writer in the tradition of Catherine Cookson' Manchester Evening News. A Time For Us is perfect for fans of Lesley Pearse and Rosie Goodwin. Lucy Nolan is the golden girl. The only daughter of local grocers, Sally and Mike Nolan, she's grown up in a home of total love and security. The one thing her heart desires is that Jack Hanson might ask her to marry him, and when he does eventually propose, Lucy is prepared to give up everything to be with him - even though it means leaving her beloved parents to live abroad where Jack has been offered an exciting business opportunity. But then, almost on the eve of the marriage itself, tragedy strikes. And for the first time in her life, Lucy is forced to realise that Fate, which has been so kind to her, can also be just as cruel.