Alan Duff

Alan Durant is the author of books for a wide age-range, from picture books such as Burger Boy, Angus Rides the Goods Train and Always and Forever to top-end teenage thrillers (Blood, Flesh and Bones). Having worked as a copywriter at Walker Books, he is now a full-time author. 
 
He's married, with three children and lives in Brighton. He does a lot of school visits throughout the UK and abroad and also runs writing workshops.

Alan Durant

Alan Edge

Alan Ereira

Alan Garner

Alan Gilbey

Alan Gordon is the founder and director of the Pain Psychology Center in California, a leading treatment facility for chronic pain sufferers that sees over 1,500 patients from around the world every year. Debilitated by chronic pain throughout his body for several years and frustrated by the lack of effective treatment, Gordon developed the ground-breaking Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) – a highly effective system of psychological techniques that rewire the brain’s neural circuits to turn off “stuck” pain signals. He is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Southern California.

Alan Gordon

Alan Grant

Born in 1926 in New York City, Alan Greenspan worked as a Juilliard-trained professional musician before studying Economics at New York University, where he earned his PhD. From 1974 to 1977, he served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald Ford. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed him Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, a position he held until his retirement in 2006. He is the author of the bestselling The Age of Turbulence and The Map and the Territory 2.0.

Alan Greenspan

Alan H Guth

Alan Hansen was one of Britain's most respected football players and is now one of the most outspoken and popular football pundits.

Alan Hansen

Alan Harris is a Welsh playwright who has written several plays for BBC radio including The Lighthouse and The Gold Farmer. His play A Good Night Out in the Valleys launched the new National Theatre Wales in 2010 and he has also been awarded a prestigious Creative Wales Award.

Alan Harris

Alan Hill

Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004. His most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, was published in 2017.

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hooper is a founder and Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Leadership Studies, 
University of Exeter, and is also a visiting Professor at Bristol Business 
School. He has been a CEO in the public sector and now consults widely on 
senior management development and the management of change.

Alan Hooper

Alan Isler was born in England in 1934, emigrating to the US at the age of 18. After serving in the US army he went on to study literature at Columbia University, and taught for much of his adult life. Isler was the author of several novels including Kraven Images, The Bacon Fancier, Clerical Errors, The Living Proof and The Prince of West End Avenue, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994. Isler died in 2010. 
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Alan Isler

Alan J Wilson

Alan Jenkins

Alan Johnson was born in May 1950. He is a British Labour Party politician who served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Johnson was the Member of Parliament for Hull West and Hessle until his retirement from politics in 2017. 
 His first book, This Boy, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize in 2013. His second, Please Mister Postman, won the National Book Award for Autobiography of the Year in 2014. His third, The Long and Winding Road, was published in 2016 and won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir.

Alan Johnson

Alan Jones

Belfast-born twins Alan and Gary Keery love cereal. As creators of The Cereal Killer Café, the trendiest new eatery on Brick Lane, they have turned that love of the nation’s favourite comfort food into a thriving business. The opening of their first café saw extraordinary interest with press and broadcast coverage from all over the world. The café was voted best new restaurant by Hot Dinners in 2014. A second café is opening in summer 2015.

Alan Keery

Alan Langford

Alan Lerner

Alan MacDonald

Alan Macdonald

Alan Macfarlane

Alan McDonald

Alan Melville

Alan Moore

Alan Moorehead was born in Melbourne, Australia. He travelled to England in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London Daily Express. Writer, world traveller, biographer, essayist, journalist, Moorehead was one of the most successful writers in English of his day. During World War II he won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East and Asia, the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe. He died in 1983.

Alan Moorehead

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Mary Jane Staples

Sammy Adams is always on the look-out for a new business opportunity. When he hears from his son David about the new-fangled supermarkets that are becoming all the rage in America, he immediately starts looking for a suitable site in South London. 
 
Meanwhile, legacies of the last war continue to haunt the Adams family. The mystery of Katje Galicia, the Polish woman who knows something of Sir Edwin Finch's past, becomes a major police enquiry while a beautiful German girl appears, bringing wartime memories back to Tim Adams and his wife Felicity. 
 
Tim and Felicity have much to rejoice over, while the younger members of the Adams family are starting to spread their wings.

Spreading Wings

A Novel of the Adams Family Saga

Pip Granger

Perfect for fans of Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell, a feel-good, colourful and comic saga set in post war London from Sunday Times bestseller Pip Granger. 
 
"Packed with sharp authentic detail, this tale told through a child's eyes brings to life a colourful world of great characters from a bygone age." -- HOME &amp; COUNTRY 
"Loved this book. Could not put it down, read it in two sittings..." -- ***** Reader review 
"I enjoyed every minute of it and was sad when I finished it..." -- ***** Reader review 
 
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ALL WAS CALM AND NORMAL...UNTIL A STRANGER CAME INTO TOWN... 
 
1954, Soho, London. Rosie, and her beloved Auntie Maggie are opening up their café in Old Compton Street for Uncle Bert's breakfast special when the Widow Ginger comes to call. 
 
The Widow Ginger, an ex-GI with ice-cold blue eyes, is especially scary. He has unfinished business with Uncle Bert- business that includes being cheated on his share of a 'liberated' lorry-load of guns and explosives during the War - and he intends to make sure he now gets paid in full. 
 
And this isn't all: the lovely Luigi appears to be suffering from a severe case of unrequited lust; Bert and the local Mafioso Maltese Joe have had an acrimonious falling-out; and, most worrying of all, Rosie's best friend Jenny has begun to keel over mysteriously in the school playground.... 
 
The Widow Ginger continues Rosie's story (started in Not All Tarts Are Apples) and paints a picture of 1950s Soho so authentic you feel as though you are there...

The Widow Ginger

A heart-warming and upliftingly funny saga from the East End

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. 
 
Young Jimmy Adams, meanwhile, is enjoying working at the family clothing factory, where at the retirement party for two of the oldest employees, Bert and Gertie Roper, he meets their lively granddaughter Clare. Before long he has offered her a job on the switchboard, and has hopes of seeing her after working hours as well. And brave Felicity, blinded in the blitz, thinks she notices a glimmer of light appearing in her dark world - but dare not tell her husband, in case it is just her imagination... 
 
With the young Queen now on the throne, times are changing for the Adams family.

Changing Times

Johanna Lindsey

It was to be a great adventure for Melissa MacGregor - an escape from the wilds of her Scottish home into the world of the London Season. There she hopes to find a suitable husband who will not be intimidated by her sixteen uncles, six of whom are called Ian. But before she begins her pursuit of a new life, she encounters an intriguing stranger on her grandfather's lands. 
 
Lincoln Ross Burnett, the seventeenth Viscount Cambury, once called Scotland his home, until as a boy of twelve he was sent away to London after his father's death, the subject of a bitter family feud. Now, as he roams the countryside of his youth, he still feels the bitterness of his exile - until he meets Melissa, and is struck by her beauty and liveliness. He pursues her to London, where even their shared passion may not be powerful enough to overcome the devastating hatred of those who have sworn his destruction...

The Pursuit

an escapist package of love, passion, and conflict from the #1 New York Times bestselling author Johanna Lindsey

Catherine Cookson

This treasure trove of talent is set against the background of places already familiar to Catherine Cookson's countless readers - the North-East, the South Coast and London, with a time-scale stretching from the 1920's to the present day. 
 
In the title story, a disillusioned husband decides to call on an office colleague he has always slightly despised, and finds himself having to re-evaluate his own family relationships in the light of what he discovers in the other's home. In the three stories that make up 'The Forbidden Word', the first set in the 1920s, the second in the 1950s and the third in the1980s, Catherine Cookson traces the changes in attitudes to marriage and pregnancy that have taken place in the last eighty years. 
 
In other stories a shy bachelor begins to make friends for the first time in his life among the people who like himself have taken refuge from the Blitz in the London Underground, and a much put-upon young woman who makes up her own mind to escape from her family's domestic exploitation of her. The reader catches a glimpse behind the scenes in a large department store, and learns of the havoc that a husband's passion for cricket can cause.

The Simple Soul And Other Stories

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. 
 
Her grandson Paul, meanwhile, working for the Young Socialists, is worried at what his fiery colleague Lucy will say if she learns that he has titled connections. And Sammy, trying to rebuild his clothing business after the War, is horrified at the growing fashion for denim jeans, which even the young ladies of the family seem to be wearing. Should he forsake his beliefs that girls should dress like girls and start stocking these objectionable garments? 
 
All differences are resolved, as the great day dawns when the Adams family goes to the Palace for their proudest moment.

Appointment At The Palace

An Adams Family Saga Novel

The woman who presented herself at the offices of the respectable firm of London solicitors was, the receptionist decided, clearly a vagrant who had been sleeping on the streets. The clothes that hung on her frail body were filthy, and she seemed unable to speak. When she asked to see the firm's senior partner, Alexander Armstrong, she was at first shown the door - but when Mr Armstrong learned the name of his visitor, all the office staff were amazed at his reaction. For Irene Baindor was a woman with a past, and her emergence from obscurity was to signal the unravelling of a mystery that had baffled the lawyer for twenty-six years. 
What Irene - the silent lady of the title - had been doing, and where she had been, gradually emerged over the following weeks as Armstrong met the unlikely benefactors who had befriended her and helped her to build a useful and satisfying life in a sheltered environment. Now, at last, she was able to confront her tortured and violent past and find great happiness and contentment with the help of old friends and some newer ones.

The Silent Lady

Val Wood

Rosa grew up an orphan in a remote, watery island fastness on the wild East coast of Yorkshire. Taken in as a small child by the motherly Mrs Drew, she realised as she grew up that this large and seemingly close farming family contained many troubled souls. Mr Drew, whose religious fervour held a dark secret; Jim, the eldest son, who was terrified of something from his past; Delia, longing to escape from the island; and tall, handsome, confident Matthew, who wanted only one thing - Rosa herself. 
 
But Rosa's background was one of mystery. Her mother, before she drowned in the dyke near their home, had always promised that one day Rosa's father would return to her - a handsome Spaniard, with jewels and silks in treasure chests, sailing in on a ship with golden sails. Mr Drew knew the secret of Rosa's past - and so did the two mysterious Irishmen, who came back to the island after many years and who threatened everything which Rosa held most dear. 
 
Other novels by Valerie Wood include: The Hungry Tide, winner of the Catherine Cookson Prize for Fiction, Annie, Children of the Tide, The Romany Girl, Emily, and Going Home.

Rosa's Island

Brittany is proud and strong, a modern woman who is certain she will never have anyone to love her. Her relationships have been few and far between , and all her potential lovers have been intimidated by her height - she is almost six feet tall. Then one day, Dalden walks into her life. She see him across the lawn at a political rally, where he entices her with his tremendous strength and even greater height. Dalden is a stranger to the country, and begs Brittany to help him in his quest to find a criminal - a quest which will take Brittany to strange new worlds ... and the depths of her own heart.

Heart Of A Warrior

The grandson of a Scottish clan chieftain, Duncan MacTavish, is shocked to learn that his other grandfather was an English marquess whose title and London estate he has inherited.  As if that weren't enough to deal with, he's engaged to a stranger who has publicly mocked him.  His bride to be, Ophelia, is more concerned with guiding a lovely and inexperienced country girl named Sabrina through the latter's all-important first coming-out season than with her own wedding.  The enchanting Sabrina enthralls Duncan much more than his intended does, and she likewise shares his passionate feelings.  But duty and circumstance - plus a scandal lurking in Sabrina's family past - have made their union an impossible dream, unless true love can somehow, miraculously, find a way.

The Heir

Volume 2 opens with a seventeen-year-old Mary Ann struggling with the painful business of growing up as her first love, Corny Boyle, leaves for America. It follows her through her eventual marriage to Corny, and the joys and trials of being a wife, and a mother to six-year-old twins, Rose Mary and David.

Mary Ann Omnibus (2)

Volume 1 follows Mary Ann, a young girl living in poverty in a dockland tenement on Tyneside, from the ages of eight to thirteen. She is determined to bring about a better way of life for her family and, to the amazement of the gentle parish priest, Father Owen, and the rage and consternation of her arch-enemy, Sarah Flanagan, Mary Ann's tenacity eventually pays off.

Mary Ann Omnibus (1)

Frederick Forsyth

It was 1882 when Antoinette Giry, Maitresse du Corps de Ballet at the Paris Opera House, took her small daughter to the funfair at Neuilly. And there, in a cage, she saw a filthy manacled creature whose tormented eyes shone from a grotesquely deformed face. It was Antoinette Giry who saved him, freed him, cured his wounds and finally let him find a dwelling place in the labyrinthine depths of the Opera House. The creature - Erik - whose hideous face hid a brilliant brain of near-genius, was to become the Phantom of the Opera - magician, artists, musician, and lover. When he tried to lure the object of his adoration to his underground domain - it was to end in tragedy. 
 
It was Madame Giry who saved him once more, set him on a ship to the New World - and there Erik Muhlheim began a new and secret life, a life that began in misery and poverty but in which his incredible skills finally carved out an unexpected kingdom of power. And there it was he learned again of Christine, whose life had changed dramatically since that night in the Paris Opera House. 
 
Inevitably, their paths must cross again in the old sequence of tragedy and triumph. 
 
The Phantom, one of the most mysterious and romantic figures ever created, soars again in a world of his own making. Frederick Forsyth's magnificent and evocative story adds a new dimension to the legend of the Phantom.

Phantom Of Manhattan

Bridget Gether's parents had been killed in the wartime blitz and she had lived with the Overmeers at Balderstone, their sprawling property in the Northumbrian countryside, since she was a child. Unaware that she had been manipulated into agreeing to marry their son Laurence, only an encounter with Bruce Dickenson, the son of a neighbouring farmer, opened her eyes to the possibility that she might be making a mistake. 'Once you are married,' Bridget's future mother-in-law tried to reassure her, 'everything will fall into place'. But Bridget had her reservations, although she told herself she has loved Laurence Overmeer with a schoolgirl passion for years. But could she trust him, especially after the event that had caused this heart-searching? Had he been seeing someone else all the time he had been courting her? She decided that there were sufficient grounds for doubt, so she called off the marriage. However, she had reckoned without the formidable Overmeer family, whose desperate business straits compelled them to take whatever steps they felt were necessary to protect their interests. As for Laurence, he could not forgive Bridget for the humiliation of rejection, so he made his own plans for revenge. But he could not have known that someone else was planning a different kind of revenge, and that the outcome would shake the very foundations of the Overmeer family. 
 
The Blind Years, another of Catherine Cookson's part-mysteries, part-love stories, once again displays her consummate skill at portraying the nuances of family conflict.

The Blind Years

From autumn 1941 to the first months of 1942, the war continued to affect the lives of the Adams and Somers families. 
 
It was not so much the war, however, as a succession of tragic domestic events that brought a sad and lonely little girl called Phoebe into the care of Susie and Sammy Adams, reminding them of the entry of Rosie as a child into the lives of Boots and Emily. Much needed to be done to cure little Phoebe of her sadness, and it proved a difficult time for Susie and Sammy. 
 
Further shadows fell when news came that Tim was a prisoner of war, and that Japan had attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbour and British bases in the Far East. 
 
But Boots's French-born daughter Eloise had her dearest wish come true when she married Colonel Lucas of the Commandos in Alexandria.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

ROONEY 
He was the only one of the dustbin gang who was as yet unmarried. He'd worked for the Corporation as a dustman for fifteen of his thirty-five years, and his mates all agreed he was too canny to be caught, having avoided four widows and two spinsters in ten years. Rooney liked life to follow a pattern - that and his independence was what made him tick. 
 
But it all went flying out of the window when he moved into Ma Howlett's place. And once the rug of his comfortable old habits had been yanked from under him, Rooney found that life was much more complicated than he had imagined! 
 
 
THE NICE BLOKE 
Harry Blenheim had always been known as 'the nice bloke' an inoffensive man whose existence many thought was as dull as ditchwater. But then, at the office Christmas party, he gave in to the demands of the vivacious Betty Ray, and the scandal that followed not only split up his family but ruined his career. 
 
Harry reasoned that, with luck, he could have avoided it all, but the roots of the problem lay much deeper. There was his rapidly cooling marriage, and his hatred of his unscrupulous father-in-law. Now Harry was in real trouble, and it would take all the efforts of his dearly-loved daughter Gail and his staunch friends Janet and Robbie Dunn to help him pick up the pieces and start to live again...

Rooney / The Nice Bloke

It is summer, 1941, and the country is still at war. In the Devon village of Ashleigh, however, evacuees from the London blitz are living in an atmosphere of rural peacefulness, although Daisy Ricketts of Bermondsey isn't sure if she'll ever get on with carping Mrs Mumford, the subject of whispers because of her husband's mysterious disappearance. 
 
David, the elder son of Tommy and Vi Adams, meets Kate Trimble, a cockney girl from Camberwell who has just arrived in Ashleigh with her aunt. Kate is imaginative and precocious, while David is happy-go-lucky , and as the war is directly affecting the lives of so many other members of the Adams family, Kate and David establish a friendship in the summer sunshine of Devon. But as their friendship develops some exciting undercurrents, an incident occurs which brings home to them the darker intrigues of wartime and provides a devastating shock to everyone.

Bright Day, Dark Night

Danielle Steel

Stephanie had a rat of a husband. But after thirteen years of marriage and two kids, she was devastated when he left her for a younger woman. Suddenly, Stephanie was alone, and after trying to find a little romance on new york's wild singles circuit, she was reconciled to raising her kids alone - until a spur-of-the-moment trip to Paris changed everything. She met him on the Left Bank - Peter Baker, a marvellously handsome high-tech entrepreneur. He seemed just too perfect, but to Stephanie's amazement he contacted her when they returned to New York. At her Long Island cottage Stephanie embarked upon a bizarre and hilarious adventure beyond her wildest dreams. 
 
Shy, serious Peter, Chairman of a bionic enterprise, was supposed to be away on business. But instead, he's standing at her door, wearing day-glo satin and rhinestones. Naturally, Stephanie thinks this is a joke, until she discovers - this isn't Peter, but his double! Calling himself Paul Klone, this wild, uninhibited creature isn't remotely like Peter except for his identically sexy good looks. 
 
An uproarious novel which explores the outrageous triangle between Stephanie, Peter...and The Klone.

The Klone And I

HERITAGE OF FOLLY 
The Batleys and the Cadwells owned neighbouring farms on the beautiful, wild Northumbrian coast. But there all similarity ended, and enmity began. For between the two families raged a violent and bitter feud - a feud so powerful that the very name of Cadwell made Ralph Batley seethe with uncontrollable fury. 
 
Into this stormy atmosphere came Linda Metcalfe, a young agricultural student, who innocently became involved in the tension between the two households on the day of her arrival. Employed by Ralph Batley, Linda soon found herself in a very difficult situation. For not only had she unwittingly become a part of the feud, but she began to feel a strange admiration for Ralph, who made it painfully clear that he had no use for her either on the farm or in his life. But then the past erupted into the present, forcing Ralph to change his attitude to Linda and resolving the whole Batley/Cadwell heritage of folly... 
 
THE FEN TIGER 
Deep in the wild fen country, Rosamund Morley lived a cloistered, poverty-stricken existence with her sister Jennifer and her alcoholic father. She was the prop and stay of the family - and it was she who ran for help the night her father set his bed alight after a drinking bout. That night was to change the course of Rosamund's life - for, fleeing through the woods, she met Michael Bradshaw, the man she christened the 'Fen Tiger'. 
 
When she knew more of Michael's past and the fate that had forced him to live in isolation, Rosamund's initial feelings of dislike changed to compassion...and then to something deeper....

Heritage Of Folly / The Fen Tiger

KATE HANNIGAN 
Dr Rodney Prince had never seen a girl who looked more out o place in the grime and squalor of the Fifteen Streets than did Kate Hannigan. He knew she had suffered at the hands of men: Tim Hannigan, her 'father' was a vicious bully; John Herrington, a smooth-talking seducer, had left her with his child. 
 
But Rodney Prince's desire for a family had been frozen out by a wife who'd wanted Harley Street, not a Tyneside slum. By contrast, Kate glowed with a warmth that far outshone the hard, brittle beauty of Stella, and exposed the emptiness in his heart. 
 
And so, between Rodney Prince, a wealthy man locked in an unhappy marriage, and Kate Hannigan, a bastard child of the slums, grew a love that opposed all the concepts of an Edwardian society... 
 
THE LONG CORRIDOR 
To outsiders, Dr Paul Higgin's life appeared to be happy and contented. Everyone had a good word for him, and his home life appeared to be ideal. At thirty-six, Bett Higgins could still pass for a much younger woman, not just in looks but in the way she loved the company of people half her age. A grand couple, some might say... 
 
But once the surgery was closed and the curtains drawn, the façade that Paul and Bett Higgins presented to the world concealed a welter of hate that had grown worse with the passing years. Between them stood the barrier of the past - of secrets that, were they known, could affect everyone around them. Unable to forgive each other, they led their separate lives - until Bett decided to allow her spite and resentment to culminate in revenge on the husband she did not love...

Kate Hannigan / The Long Corridor

The headstrong child of Chandos Straton and Courteney Harte, Casey Straton inherited her mother's eyes and her father's stubborn temperament. Despite her prowess at roping, riding and shooting, the responsibility of running the family ranch is given to Casey's brother - so high-spirited Casey storms away from her Texas home, determined to prove to her family that she can do much more than "women's work". 
 
Damien Rutledge III, a successful New York businessman, has come west to kill the man who murdered his father. Despite his powerful physique and unwavering courage, his inability to handle a gun in this untamed country would have cost him his life if it weren't for the timely intervention of a youngster called "Kid". But there is more to Kid than meets the eye - for beneath the wide-brimmed hat and poncho is a stunningly sensuous woman - Casey Straton. The nearness of this handsome and fearless man awakens the fires of passion and touches her vulnerable heart, on the rocky trail that winds from dangerous duty to irrepressible love.

All I Need Is You

Iris Gower

A sensational story of tragedy, riches, poverty and love from bestselling author Iris Gower. If you like Dilly Court and Rosie Goodwin, you will love this..! 
 
READERS ARE LOVING FIREBIRD! 
"Her characters come to life and feel as if they're [your] neighbours..." - 5 STARS 
"Can't put it down..." - 5 STARS 
"Excellent" - 5 STARS 
"Brilliant" - 5 STARS 
 
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PASSIONS RUN HIGH AMIDST THE WELSH HILLS... 
 
When Llinos Savage's mother dies an untimely death, she finds herself in charge of the family pottery while still a young girl, attempting to keep the business afloat and dealing with the plotting of Philip Morton Edwards, the powerful and rich owner of the rival pottery in Swansea. Her father's return, badly wounded, from fighting Napoleon in France should be a joyous reunion, but instead his presence only adds to her difficulties. 
 
Two men make her world even more complicated: Eynon Morton Edwards, Philip's son - a gentle and sympathetic figure yet despised by his father; and Joe, an exotic outsider, born of an unlikely union between a cultured English businessman and a Native American squaw. 
 
How will Llinos cope with running the pottery, while suffering from the hatred of the Morton Edwards family and battling to suppress her own feelings for the man who seems her most unlikely suitor? 
 
Firebird is the first novel in Iris Gower's Firebird series. The saga continues in Dream Catcher.

Firebird

(Firebird:1) An enthralling, heart-wrenching and moving saga set amongst the Welsh hills

Only after returning from his well-attended funeral did Fiona Bailey realise just how much she would miss Davey Love. Despite her initial doubts and prejudices about this rough-hewn Irishman, towards the end of his life she had discovered qualities about him she had previously overlooked; and that she could talk to him and appreciate his considerable wit. Above all, though, it was his inherent kindness that she had failed to discern when she and her husband had first met Davey and his wayward son Sammy. 
 
The Baileys, Bill and Fiona, lived in the Tyneside town of Fellburn where Bill was a successful building contractor. Years before he had met and married Fiona, a young widow with her own lovable family, to which they had shortly added by adoption the orphaned Mamie. Then, when one of Fiona's children, Willie, acquired a new friend, Sammy, it was he and his father Davey who, by one means or another, were able to make a special contribution to the lives and fortunes of the Bailey family. 
 
Now with Davey gone, there would be new challenges to face. It had been agreed that Sammy would live with them but would this formidable lad with his colourful language fit in as a fully-fledged member of the Bailey family? As for Fiona, it was she who bore the brunt of the arguments and disagreements that were an inevitable part of life in the Bailey household. Whatever life had in store, however, she knew she could always rely on Bill, that rock of a man with a rough tongue but a heart of gold.

Bondage Of Love

It was 1940, and many of the younger members of the Adams family were caught up in the war in France. Boots, now a Major and on the staff of General Sir Henry Simms, was one of the thousands of British troops trying to escape in the armada of little boats from Dunkirk. His son Tim and nephew Bobby were also struggling to reach the coast and safety, while Eloise was with the ATS awaiting the homecoming soldiers at Portsmouth with a comforting cup of tea and a ticket home. Boots and Tim both made it safely back, but of Bobby there was no sign, and the family all feared the worst. 
 
In a farm some miles from Dunkirk, however, Bobby was alive but injured, and trapped by the advancing Germans. The farmer and his wife offered him refuge but Helene, the farmer's independent-minded daughter, was scathing about the retreating British army and gave the brave, joking young sergeant a hard time. Working in the fields, dodging the German soldiers, Bobby was desperately looking for a way to escape and Helene, despite her hostility, found herself increasingly anxious to help the Englishman to get back home. Their adventures were to thrill the Adams family when they came to hear about it.

The Family At War

Kelsey Langton has been left penniless by her parents' death, and as the sole provider for her younger sister, Jean, she needs to find them both a home and a future. There seems to be only one way to ensure Jean's well-being, and that is by sacrificing her own - Kelsey decides that she must sell herself to the highest bidder. With fear and trepidation she enters the House of Eros, resigned to become the plaything of some well-heeled gentleman. The man to win her is Lord Derek Malory, a dashing rakehell from a family of harming London rakes. Enchanted by the stunning, dark-haired girl with flashing bright eyes, he purchases her for his mistress, sweeping Kelsey into a world of astonishing family secrets, perilous rivalries and unconventional loyalties. 
 
But Lord Derek is unaware of the true worth of the prize he has so frivolously acquired - never dreaming that his proud, spirited mistress is a highborn lady blessed with grace, wit and intelligence as well as beauty. And he certainly never expected that he would fall in love with her.

Say You Love Me

For seventeen-year-old Brid Stevens, the day began with such promise. At four o'clock on a summer morning, her alarm clock roused her from a dream-filled sleep, for she had an appointment to keep with Joe Lloyd, whom she had met at the weekly dance, on the cliff-top at Stockwell Hill overlooking the sea. Joe was not the usual sort to frequent the dance-hall, she thought, and he had made the prospect of their watching the sun come up more exciting than anything she could previously recall. And so it proved to be. But upon her return home, where she lived with her parents and her brother, all hell was let loose. Harry Palmer was also there, fresh from telling his tale of the lovers' tryst he said he had witnessed. Brid and Joe, he claimed, had spent the night together, there on the cliff-top. 
 
In the afternoon, by previous arrangement, she made her way to the beach, from where she and Joe were to go swimming, but her arrival was to be in the aftermath of violence, for Joe, she discovered, had also suffered, this time at the hands of those who envied him. What was to occur after that would bring the day to a horrifying end, as family and friends of all concerned displayed their prejudices and made their own judgements. 
 
The events of this powerful novel, set on the Northumbrian coast in the 1960s, take place over one day, a day during which everyone involved discovers that the consequences of an innocent meeting between two young people are far more significant than the event itself. The Bonny Dawn is a remarkable tour-de-force by Britain's most popular novelist.

The Bonny Dawn

Fourteen-year-old Marie Anne Lawson, youngest daughter of a prosperous Northumbrian family, had always run when she might have walked, and it was as she was running away from a sight she would rather not have witnessed that she stumbled and fell, injuring her ankle, to be discovered by a local man who, because of a disfigurement, was known thereabouts as 'the branded man'. Already fearful of him by reputation, his sudden appearance frightened her into unconsciousness. When she came to, she was back at The Manor and confined to bed for an indefinite period. Marie Anne's mother, with no love and little sympathy, awaited her recovery with impatience, for she had already planned to despatch her wayward daughter to London, where her Aunt Martha would supervise the development of her natural ability for the piano, the only talent Mrs Lawson believed her daughter possessed. As for Marie Anne, already resentful at the enforced exile, Aunt Martha's frosty reception caused her to wonder if one domination would now be replaced by another. Only the friendship of her aunt's companion, Sarah Foggerty, prevented her from plunging into despair - that and the encouragement she received from her music tutor on her daily visits to the Academy. Why, then, did his sudden disappearance make it necessary for her to return to Northumberland, this time into the care of her beloved grandfather? As the years went by many twists and turns of fate awaited Marie Anne, one of them concerned with the very man who had struck fear in her all those years before. Sarah Foggerty too had a part to play in her destiny - but neither she nor Marie Anne could have foreseen the consequences of their timely friendship. 
 
Set at the turn of the century in the wilds of Northumberland and in the slums of the East End of London, The Branded Man is the gripping story of Marie Anne, Sarah Foggerty - and the mysterious man who was to influence both their lives.

The Branded Man

Joan Hessayon

Joyce d'Avranche had always been the poor and ignored member of the d'Avranche family of Helmingham Hall. Her childhood had been one of hardship, and over her dead mother hung the disgrace of an old scandal. Then, when the legitimate heir went missing on an Amazon exploration, Joyce was brought to Helmingham and told she could well be the new owner of the beautiful old house and garden. 
 
Almost at once she fell in love with it and wanted, more than anything, to possess it. But her background had not prepared her for the running of a huge estate. Everything she did was wrong and her only friend was Rose, wife of the head gardener. Rose, too, had sorrows to bear. Barren, in spite of her longing for a child, she sublimated her sadness in the gardens of Helmingham, concentrating all her energy on the breeding of a new flower - the Helmingham Rose. 
 
As the two young women watched the gradual unfurling of the perfect flower, so their own lives moved towards maturity and unexpected happiness.

The Helmingham Rose

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. They settled quickly into London life - particularly Jonathan, the eldest. Jonathan got a job at Camberwell Green and it was there, in Lyons teashop, that he met Emma Somers, niece of Boots Adams. Over a long and hazy summer - the summer of 1939 - the two young people met, always at lunchtime, and never allowing their friendship to progress too far. 
 
Then, as the clouds of war gathered over Europe, Jonathan got his call-up papers. And the first alarms of conflict began to affect the Adams family in other ways. Boots, on the Officer's Reserve list, was called onto the staff of General Sir Henry Sims, and Polly Sims herself joined the Auxiliaries. Suddenly there was only a little time left for people to lead ordinary lives - and Jonathan Hardy and Emma Somers had to make decisions about their future.

The Last Summer

Elvi Rhodes

Perfect for fans of Rosie Goodwin, Dilly Court and Catherine Cookson, a moving saga of courage, hardship and triumph set in Yorkshire by multi-million copy seller Elvi Rhodes. 
 
READERS ARE LOVING THE MOUNTAIN! 
"Really enjoyed this book. Right from the start, it gripped your interest. Couldn't wait for times to get back to reading it!" - 5 STARS 
"Couldn't put this book down." - 5 STARS 
"Excellent story enjoyed reading it the twists and turns of the main characters keeping you entertained and wanting more thank you " - 5 STARS 
"Another brilliant book by this author based in Yorkshire again. Family saga at its best. Will definitely read more by this author" - 5 STARS 
 
**************************************************** 
 
PASSIONS IGNITE AMIDST THE HARSH AND RUGGED HILLS OF YORKSHIRE... 
 
When Jake Tempest hears of jobs going building the new railway lines, he is drawn to Whernside in the Yorkshire countryside, and the mountain through which a tunnel is being carved. 
 
Beth Seymour is the one thing that lightens his harsh new life - but she has a husband and is trapped in an increasingly loveless marriage. 
 
As the construction of the railway progresses in the shadow of the mountain, complex passions play out...

The Mountain

An emotional saga of fierce passions you won’t want to put down…

P G Wodehouse is widely recognized as the greatest English comic writer of the twentieth century. 
 
His characters and settings have entered our language and our mythology. The first ever collected edition (Wodehouse had many publishers in his lifetime), the Everyman Wodehouse, will contain all the novels and stories, newly edited and reset from the first British edition. 
 
Printed on cream-wove, acid-free paper, sewn and bound in cloth, each Everyman volume is already recognized as the finest edition of the master ever published.

Everyman's Library P G WODEHOUSE

Everyman's Pocket Classics complements highly successful Pocket Poets series, offering the best prose writing in a handy pocket-sized format. Like all Everyman Library books, each title is printed on a cream-wove, acid-free paper with full cloth sewn binding, headbands and silk ribbon marker. Eminently collectable and great gifts.

Everyman's Library POCKET CLASSICS

Pocket clothbound volumes from the world's greatest poets, and with a stunning range of anthologies. Each volume has an elegant jacket, full cloth sewn binding, silk ribbon marker and headbands, with gold stamping on front and spine and decorative endpapers. In size, price and presentation they make ideal gifts and are a joy to read and collect. More than eighty titles in print.

Everyman's Library POCKET POETS

Everyman’s Library Contemporary Classics

Ex-Heroes

Explore with Peter Rabbit

Extraordinary Lives

Factory Girls

Fairwick Chronicles

Fairytale in Progress

Faith, Hope and Glory

Laid-back Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco investigates crimes in the dangerous world of first century Rome, a place of political intrigue, corruption and murder.

Falco

Fall of the Dragon

Luce doesn’t like the sound of the Sword and Cross reform school, and it lives up to all her expectations. Until she meets Daniel. He’s perfect, but what she doesn’t realise is that they have met before. Many times. He is a fallen angel, and each time they meet they are torn apart, Luce dying and Daniel forced to live on without her. They think that they have found a way to break the curse, but they will have to make great sacrifices along the way. Love never dies in this darkly romantic series which spans centuries in its storytelling.

Fallen

Falling Kingdoms

Far Out Five

Far-Flung Adventures

Sam and Remi Fargo are a husband and wife team on a quest. Treasure hunters, they travel the world looking for ancient artefacts and exotic bounty. They're in it for the history and the mystery, but others are not so honourable, and the Fargo's often find themselves caught up in ancient riddles, desperate to solve the puzzle before the bad guys get there first.

Fargo Adventures

Fate & Flame

Father Brown

Father, I Don’t Want This Marriage

Faust

Feral Love

More than 100 million copies sold worlwide, this is a series that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.

Fifty Shades

Find Spot

Finn Fitzpatrick Series

First Favourite Tales

The First Festivals series invites children to explore the world's culture from the comfort of their home, encourages the development of hand-eye coordination and is recommended for children aged 2 and over.

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