Showing results by author "Katie Flynn" in All Categories

Liverpool, 1940. When war comes to Britain, Jessica Wilson and her friend Ruby seize the opportunity to leave behind the orphanage they grew up in and start new lives in the NAAFI. With only forged papers as identification, the girls expect to be turned away but are delighted with an offer of work. For the first time in their lives they experience real independence, and it isn't long before they're spending their evenings enjoying the delights of Liverpool.

One wild night in the 1930s, midwife Patty Peel is called to attend a birth on the opposite side of Liverpool. She pedals off into the storm and delivers a baby girl in a filthy slum dwelling, just as the mother dies. The drunk and violent father tells Patty to get rid of it so she takes the child away, meaning to deliver it to the nearest orphanage. However, Patty spent her entire childhood in an institution, except for the frequent occasions when she ran away, and cannot bear to hand the baby over.

Dympna Byrne lives a simple life with her family on the Connemara coast. She adores her father Micheál, and does her best to help her family by working hard and expecting little. But beneath the surface there are hidden secrets. Dympna’s mother idolises her clever eldest son, yet her attitude to Dympna is puzzling. So when her family find themselves in desperate need of money, it is Dympna who crosses the water to Liverpool to seek a better life.

August 1940: As the Luftwaffe swarm over Liverpool, Shane Quinn decides to move his family back to the safety of Ireland. But his only child, the beautiful Dana, would rather stay and serve her country than flee to a foreign land. Determined to make it on her own, she joins the WAAF with newfound pals Patty and Lucy. There’s plenty of excitement to be had on a RAF station, even a chance or two at love.

Tammy and her mother, Grace, are desperate to escape Tammy’s violent bully of a father. But when an unforeseen tragedy strikes, mother and daughter must flee Scotland in the dead of night. To survive the severest of penalties, they leave behind everything they know and love – including one another. Under new identities, Tammy and Grace must start afresh. Tammy joins the services and there she meets a dashing officer who begins to break her guard down. But can the course of love ever run smooth with Tammy unable to reveal her true self?

Rose McAllister is waiting for her husband, Steve, to come home. He is a seaman, often drunk and violent. Rose does her best to cope and sees that her daughters, Daisy and Petal, suffer as little as possible. Sensing that war is on the horizon, Steve tries to reform, but on his last night home, he pawns the girls' new dolls to go on a drinking binge. When war is declared, Rose finds a good job but agrees the children must be evacuated. War brings hardship and difficulty for the girls and Rose as they face the destruction of their home and cruelty at the hands of others....

It's 1938, and Cadi is chosen to be Rose Queen in the annual Rose Fete. She is thrilled to be treated like royalty for the day. But deep down she is desperate to leave the Welsh mining community where she grew up. When war is declared, Cadi and her best friend, Poppy, see a chance to escape. Cadi leaves behind her parents and local boy Aled, whom she is meant to marry, for Liverpool.

As WWI begins, no family, including the Neylers, will be left untouched, and by the time the war finally finishes, nothing will ever be the same again. Ted and Tina Neyler's children are growing up, doomed to be drawn into the Great War: Frank will be scarred forever by one terrible day in the trenches while Louis, the charming optimist, returns unscathed from the war to find that his wife and mistress have met up and that his misdemeanours are inexorably catching up with him.

1901. Tina Rose is the beloved daughter of a wealthy Jewish family while Edward grew up with an abusive father in the wilds of New Zealand. Despite their differences, the two fall madly in love when Edward arrives in England, looking for a better future. However, the consequences of their love affair are terrible for Tina, as she is shamed by the father she adores, and Edward is sent away. Against all the odds, Tina and Edward find each other again.

Living on the edge of the beautiful Norfolk Broads with her father, the only ripple in Tess Delamere's calm life is the disturbing dream about her dead mother which haunts her. She yearns to know more, but the arrival of a new stepmother heralds the end of Tess' hopes that her father might divulge the past. As she grows up, Tess slowly starts to put together the pieces herself. But the outbreak of war brings tragedy and upheaval, changing Tess' priorities....

Liverpool, 1941: After German bombs shatter the life Cadi has built for herself in Liverpool, she is more determined than ever to sign up and do h bit. Joining the WAAF also means she is closer to her beau—until Jez is sent thousands of miles from home. While Jez is in Africa, someone from the past starts spreading vicious rumours that could threaten their relationship, and Cadi finds herself torn between keeping secrets and telling the truth to protect those she holds dear.

Liverpool 1939: Olivia Campbell appears to have the perfect life. However, behind closed doors she lives in constant fear of her abusive father and has no support from her mother. Longing for love and affection, she begins a relationship with Ted, a young lad who works in her father's factory. But her family disapprove of the relationship and forbid them from seeing each other.

London, 1939. When tragedy strikes, Libby Andrews is left homeless and destitute, fending for herself on the capital's most dangerous streets. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Libby is on the cusp of making a decision that could jeopardise her future when a local boy saves her from ruin. The kindness of this stranger sets her on a different path, and Libby heads to Liverpool with a determined mind and hope in her heart. There, she reconnects with long lost family - but will she be able to uncover the truth that tore them apart all those years ago?

Along a blacked-out wartime street a girl is scurrying, a basket on one arm. As sirens begin and bombs crash down, she is filled with panic and, with a heavy heart, abandons her burden in a sheltered doorway, meaning to return later. Even as she disappears in the resulting chaos, the bundle in the basket begins to wail.

Val Neyler, driving an ambulance through the blazing heart of London, is in an impossible position, for the man she loves is a fighter pilot with the Luftwaffe. And Jenny, whose husband, Simon, is flying Spitfires, finds herself working as a landgirl on a Devon farm. Cara, by contrast, develops her social life, and Maude, in the WAAF, falls in love with two men at once.... And Tina, matriarch of the family, loves them all, scolds them all, and tries to understand the new generation growing up in the troubled times of war.

Kay Duffield's fiancé is about to leave the country, and her own duty with the WAAF is imminent when she becomes a bride. The precious few days she spends with her new husband are quickly forgotten once she starts work as a balloon operator. There she makes friends with shy Emily Bevan, who has left her parents' hill farm in Wales for the first time; down-to-earth Biddy Bachelor, fresh from the horrors of the Liverpool bombing; and spirited Jo Stewart, the rebel among them, whose disregard for authority looks set to land them all in trouble. The girls stay friends through good times and bad, through romantic encounters and, ultimately, tragedy.

It is a cold December night and Sylvie Dugdale is weeping as she walks by the Mersey. She fails to notice an approaching figure, and jumping to one side to avoid collision, she finds herself struggling in the ice-cold river. Constable Brendan O'Hara, just coming off duty, sees the girl's plight and dives in to rescue her. He is dazzled by her beauty but discovers that Sylvie's husband is in prison, and the closeness that Brendan soon longs for is impossible. But he is able to help her escape from Liverpool....

Hetty Gilbert is a canal child with no permanent address, so when she needs to join the library, she cannot do so. Miss Preece dislikes children, but Hetty's longing for books touches a chord and she stretches the rules to help her. Soon, Hetty's chief desire is to become a librarian like her friend. But with war on the horizon, their lives will never be the same.

When Dot McCann, playing with her pals, decides to hide in Butcher Rathbone's almost empty dustbin, she overhears a conversation which could send one man to prison and the other to the gallows - and suddenly finds herself in possession of stolen goods. Dot lives with her aunt and uncle, abandoned after her parents died. She feels very alone until she meets up with Corky, who has run away from a London orphanage. They join forces with Emma, whose jeweller's shop has been burgled, and Nick, a young reporter who is investigating the crime.

Liverpool, 1938. It’s Christmas in the Courts, and single mother Rosheen Clarke and her mischievous twin daughters, April and May, have no idea of the cataclysmic events which will soon overtake them. When war is declared, April and May are evacuated to the countryside, and Rosheen joins the WAAF, where she befriends fellow Liverpudlian Cassie Valentine. While Rosheen worries about what trouble the twins will cause next, Cassie is fighting her love for her childhood friend, Andy.