Showing results by author "Mary Jane Staples" in All Categories

Can she win the heart of the man she loves? Sammy has always had an eye for business and a good deal and is determined to expand the family business. But as his mighty empire grows, his assistant Susie Brown has plans of her own.... Susie has always adored Sammy and has decided that he will be the man she marries. But marriage doesn't figure in Sammy's plans. Will he fall into line? Does he stand a chance against a determined woman and the rest of the Adams family?

South London in the 1930s...and Mrs Hilda Jones is fed up with her dull husband. She thought marrying would liven him up, but after 25 years he's just as boring as the day she married him and now she wants to lead her own life. Her newly married daughter, Olive, is shocked, but Hilda is adamant.

Job and Jemima Hardy weren't Londoners by birth. They had both lived in a Sussex village until lack of work had sent Job and the family to Walworth - to a house in Stead Street. They got it cheap because of the poltergiest, but they were sensible folk and decided that eight shillings a week rent was a bargain, and - well - if the floors and doors sometimes moved a bit, they could live with it.

It's 1959, and Boots Adams and his wife, Polly, are at their favourite Camberwell pub when they witness with horror a sudden and vicious attack on the barman, Joe, by a knife-wielding thug. Is this a sign of the times? Is contempt for old traditions and enthusiasm for everything new and fashionable going to threaten the Adams family and their easy-going existence? While Gemma is courted by one of the young men who works for her father, her twin brother, James, finds himself affected by his girlfriend's intriguing family secrets.

Excitement is running high in the Adams family. Mr Finch, after a long career in secret government work, is to be knighted - which means that Chinese Lady will become a real 'Lady'! What with having to find a new outfit suitable for the occasion, and worrying about whether she'll have to curtsey to the king, the redoubtable matriarch of the Adams family scarcely knows if she's coming or going.

By the year 1949, life in Walworth has almost returned to normal. Sammy and Boots, now in a highly successful partnership, are rebuilding the old family firm. But an old enemy resurfaces - Mr Ben Ford, better known as the Fat Man, who seems determined to ruin the various branches of this growing business. It takes all the well-known Adams ingenuity and determination to outwit the thugs in the Fat Man's pay.

It is 1946, and with the war at last at an end, members of the Adams family who had been serving with the forces begin to come home. Boots is reunited with Polly and their twins, his son, Tim, returns to the welcoming arms of Felicity, and with so many others coming back, Chinese Lady finds herself once more the watchful matriarch of the family. But grandson Daniel is still serving in an army unit out in Palestine, where he is caught up in life-threatening circumstances, and his American fiancee, Patsy, counts the days until his return.

The new generation of the family are growing up quickly - Philip and Phoebe are spending time together and Maureen has ambitions to become a model. A local company wants to take over Adams Fashions and Boots and Sammy have difficult decisions to make. Rosie and Matt are thinking about selling the farm but worry their workers. While Felicity has resigned herself to never regaining her sight, Polly sees a familiar face that she can't place - a mysterious stranger who is being sheltered in Walworth. Anneliese encounters someone she never wished to see again and turns to Boots for help.

The 1950s are in full swing, and the Adams family is blessed with many new additions. Chinese Lady now has so many grandchildren that even she can sometimes scarcely remember them all. Boots and Sammy are kept up-to-date by the Adams youngsters, some of whom are now working in the family business. But they also welcome newcomers, including the lovely Anneliese, whose German ancestry makes her less than popular with some of her South London neighbours, and Joe and Hortense, newly arrived from the West Indies and working hard for Matt and Rosie on their farm in Kent.

It is 1953 - Coronation year - and like all of Cockney London the members of the Adams family are looking forward to the celebrations. Chinese Lady, now Lady Finch, worries that her friends will think she is too grand to mingle with them. But her husband has a more pressing worry - the sudden appearance of the lovely but mysterious Katje Galicia, who knows more than she should about his own chequered past.

There was a new family in Browning Street, Walworth - the Harrisons. Respectable and well-behaved, the only thing unusual about them was that Mr Harrison was never there. He was a sailor, said Ma Harrison, away fighting pirates in the China Seas. Actually, 'Knocker' Harrison was in Marsham Gaol - he had unfortunately burgled a lady's suite when she happened to be there. Pa wasn't really a very good burglar.

France, 1918: when Sophia, the rebellious daughter of a distinguished German general, witnesses a dramatic battle in the skies that leaves an English pilot without a plane and under the misapprehension that Sophia is on his side, she finds she has no choice but to agree to assist him in his attempt to avoid capture. He joins her in the family car she has stolen, trailed by both the German Army and a staff officer under strict instructions from Sophia's father to bring her home.

Maggie Wilson was only 33, but life in the teeming streets of Walworth was not that easy in 1908 - not if you were a widow with four young daughters. It was pretty much a hand-to-mouth existence, and without the lodger Maggie really wouldn't have managed at all. Constable Harry Bradshaw thought the Wilsons were a gutsy and brave little family.

Brussels, April 1915. A beautiful young woman finds herself on the run from the enemy. Also being pursued is Ned Scott, a British army major who has been badly injured. The pair find themselves at a hospital run by the famous Edith Cavell, who agrees to treat the major while offering them both refuge and a false identity - she names the young girl Anna.

Austria, 1938. Anne von Korvacs watches in horror as Hitler's tanks roll through the streets of Vienna, amid crowds of cheering supporters. Her embittered ex-husband, now a fervent member of the Nazi cause, is among the cavalcade - he is burning with hatred for Anne, seeing her as a symbol of the old Austrian empire he once served. A chance encounter with a British journalist leaves Anne with a secret that must be smuggled out of the country, and Anne knows that she must forsake her beloved Vienna and with her children flee to Britain.

When Jamie Blair, 24, unemployed and back from the trenches, took lodgings at Larcom Street in Walworth, he had no idea he was walking into a trap. The house was owned by Henry Mullins, big, burly and a hard drinker. Henry made life hell for his four stepchildren who looked half-starved and frequently got bashed.

Jack Andrews was having a tough time. He'd come back from the First World War to find his wife had 'got religion'. She'd got it so badly that she finally went off, left Jim and the three children and joined Father Peter's League of Repenters. She never really came home again. Jack and the children managed as best they could, but things were pretty tough when Aunt Edie turned up. The first thing she did was give her cousin, Maud Andrews, a piece of her mind for running off and leaving her family. But when that didn't do any good, Edie moved in and took over the Andrews family.

1918: the Kaiser's empire is about to fall and Captain Harry Phillips, a prisoner of war in a Romanian hospital, has had a very hard time of it. Then, out of the blue, comes an offer he can't refuse: a ticket home to his beloved England and to the arms of his much missed fiancée Elizabeth.

A disastrous marriage has left the young and beautiful Lady Caroline widowed and vowing never to marry again. When she sees her younger sister, Annabelle, falling for a man who is notoriously unfaithful, she determines to intervene and save Annabelle from a similar fate, hiring the handsome and witty adventurer Captain Burnside to distract her. But all does not go to plan....

Everyone liked Sergeant Joe. From the huge jolly Beavis family with whom he had lodgings in Newington Butts, to Mr George Singleton, Charing Cross Road bookseller, who employed Joe in a little lucrative and harmless forgery, Sergeant Joe was a univeral favourite. Quite a few people wondered why he didn't get married. But it wasn't until he bumped into Dolly Smith - quite literally in a London pea-souper - that he met a girl who made an impression on him.