Annie Murray
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2016
Description
The Second World War has finally come to a close. Birmingham is welcoming home its menfolk, and a new chapter is beginning in Rachel Booker's life. Her husband has returned, and the family that struggled for survival throughout the uncertain war years is now together. But family life settles into a routine and Rachel, unsatisfied, starts to yearn for more. Melly, Rachel's eldest daughter, is a child of the war. She grew up in the bombed-out streets...
Author
Pub. Date
2021
Description
Black Country Orphan is a moving story of the courage and strength of women, by the Sunday Times bestselling author Annie Murray. The early 1900s: Cradley Heath, a town in the Black Country near Birmingham and centre of the world's chain-making trade. Lucy Butler, a young girl crippled by a cruel accident, lives with her two brothers and widowed mother, a chain-maker barely making ends meet. When tragedy strikes, the Butler family is separated and...
Author
Description
Evie spent her early years left outside on the step. With a drunk for a father and a neglectful mother, all little Evie has ever craved is a safe home and a normal existence. Her young eyes had seen so much but this never tainted her spirit. If it wasn't for her best friend Gary, and friendly dog called Whisky, Evie might never have made it to her 16th birthday. At 16 she meets Ken, a sweet, brown-eyed boy, not much older than she is. Perhaps her...
Author
Description
Sisters Margaret and Annie lost their mother years ago, they long for her every day. Their frightfully protective father keeps the girls close but he can't protect them forever . . . When a scandal rocks the family, the girls are forced to leave their home. The girls flee to Birmingham's jewellery quarter to stay with the one person they can rely on - their uncle, goldsmith Ebenezer Watts and his warm-hearted wife, Hatt. Annie takes up work at a nearby...
Author
Series
Chocolate Girls volume 3
Pub. Date
2022
Description
September 1940, Birmingham. While her husband and daughter work at the Cadbury's Bournville factory, Ann Gilby has her hands full at home with her youngest Martin and other daughter, Sheila newly returned home with baby Elaine. With Sheila's husband away doing his bit in the RAF, Ann knows she should be grateful to have all her children safe under one roof. But she can't help but fear for their uncertain future as bombs fall ever closer to her Birmingham...
Author
Description
It is 1942, and after a tough childhood in Birmingham, Maryann Bartholomew has built a happy life with her husband and children working the canals on a narrowboat. But hard work and constant child bearing take their toll, and the death of a friend and another pregnancy lead her to a desperate and near-fatal act.
Author
Pub. Date
2019
Description
The Silversmith's Daughter is the emotional sequel to the Sunday Times bestseller Sisters of Gold by Annie Murray. It's 1915 and Daisy Tallis, headstrong, impassioned and a talented young silversmith, is desperate to make her parents proud. Having studied at the city's celebrated School of Jewellery and Silversmithing since the age of fourteen, Daisy is now skilled enough to be a teacher. It's at the school that she meets the notorious old rival of...
Author
Publisher
Macmillan
Pub. Date
2023
Description
April 1941. Almost losing her life in a bomb blast while serving in the Women's Volunteer Service has made Ann Gilby take stock of what's really important - her family. With daughter Sheila back home, and Joy still working munitions at the Cadbury factory and engaged to her soldier sweetheart, home life feels more settled too. Ann has even come to an uneasy truce with her husband, Len, despite her recent discovery of his infidelity and the fact that...
10) Chocolate girls
Author
Publisher
Pan
Pub. Date
2012
Description
Set between 1939 and 1959 this is a story of love, war and chocolate. It traces the lives of three very different women who work at Cadbury's factory. During the Blitz an infant, mysteriously abandoned during the bombing, is handed into one of the women's care and steals her heart.
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
Girls in Tin Hats is the heart-wrenching generational saga by Sunday Times top ten bestselling author Annie Murray. 1940 - Small Heath, in the heart of Birmingham, is facing the darkest days of the war. Two very different girls from this tight-knit community join up as ARP wardens to do their bit for the Home Front. Violet Simms lives with her controlling, widowed mother who runs the local pawn shop. At just twenty-years-old, Violet longs for friendship,...
12) War babies
Author
Series
Description
Rachel Booker has had a difficult start in life. When her father dies, deep in debt, her mother is left to make ends meet. Mother and daughter work together at Birmingham's Rag Market, selling second-hand clothes to put food on the table. Rachel's friendship with her first childhood friend, Danny, blossoms into something more and she falls pregnant just as WWII breaks out. The young couple marry in haste but it isn't long before Danny is called up....
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2014
Description
Growing up in Birmingham, Sylvia and Audrey Whitehouse have always been like chalk and cheese. When the Second World War breaks out, Sylvia is still dreaming of her forthcoming marriage to fiance Ian while Audrey jumps at the career opportunities the WAAF throws her way. Audrey joins the ranks at RAF Cardington but soon finds that her new freedom also brings temptation. When she goes too far, the consequences ripple through the Whitehouse family.
15) Poppy day
Author
Publisher
Pan Books
Pub. Date
2013
Description
Jessica runs away from her country home, to avoid marriage to the local blacksmith. At her aunt's house in Birmingham she meets and falls in love with Ned, a family friend. But Ned is married and his young wife is expecting a baby.
16) Mother and child
Author
Description
Mother and Child by Sunday Times bestseller Annie Murray is a moving story of loss, friendship and hope over two generations . . . Jo and Ian's marriage is hanging by a thread. One night almost two years ago, their only child, Paul, died in an accident that should never have happened. They have recently moved to a new area of Birmingham, to be near Ian's mother Dorrie who is increasingly frail. As Jo spends more time with her mother-in-law, she suspects...
Author
Publisher
Macmillan
Pub. Date
2024
Description
1946: The war might be over but for the Gilby family there are still battles to be fought at home. For Birmingham and the Gilby family the war years have been a time of great change. With husband, Len, having left her for another woman, Ann Gilby is finally free to follow her heart. While the neighbours may be scandalised by having a divorcee in their midst, Ann is determined to rise above the local gossip and make a happy home with her former sweetheart,...
Author
Description
In impoverished Birmingham in the 1930s, Emma Brown's life is turned upside down when her mother, Cynthia, has another baby. Cynthia doesn't seem able to cope, and soon it seems that the only thing to do is for her to go and stay with her tyrannical older sister across the city. Life gets even tougher for Emma with her mother away, and she decides it's time to bring her mother home. But the woman she discovers is very different to the mother she remembers....
Author
Publisher
Macmillan
Pub. Date
2013
Description
Birmingham, almost a decade after the end of the Great War, and the women of Lilac Street have had more than their fair share of troubles. Rose Southgate is trapped in a loveless marriage. Jen Green is desperately struggling to make ends meet, with a sick husband, and five children to support. And Phyllis Taylor is a widow who has managed to put a dark and traumatic past behind her.