Résultats de "Annie Murray" dans Toutes les catégories

Anna Craven grew up captivated by stories of her mother's childhood in Birmingham and of Kate's friend, Olivia. Theirs was a magical friendship and Anna always regretted that, with Olivia's tragic death during the war, she would never meet the woman her mother loved so deeply. But when Kate dies, she leaves her daughter one final story: the whole truth of her life with Olivia Kemp. Anna is shocked to discover how little she really knew about the mother with whom she once felt so close.

Three very different women work together at Cadbury's Bournville factory, and their lives become entwined by war and work: and a child called David. Edie, the main character, marries young to escape her unhappy family home. Widowed at 19 and, after losing her child from the marriage, she faces the war grieving and lonely. Then one night during the Blitz, an infant mysteriously abandoned during the bombing is handed into her care.

Abandoned at birth, little Mercy Hanley shows a fierce determination few others can match. Her inner fire burns brightly, even in the harsh conditions of turn of the century Birmingham. For behind Mercy's pale and haunting face, there is a mind of steel, as her harsh foster mother, Mrs Gaskin, soon discovers. Beatings, threats, and poverty cannot halt Mercy's efforts to improve herself, or to create a new life for Susan, Mrs Gaskin's crippled daughter.

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 Lucy is taken in by Bertha Hipkiss, another impoverished chain maker, struggling to look after her own family.

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 20-years-old, Violet longs for friendship, love and escape. It seems her dreams might come true until tragedy strikes on one of the very worst nights of the Birmingham Blitz. Grace Templeton is the eldest in her family of 10 children. Spirited Grace is determined never to become burdened by child bearing and drudgery like her mother.

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 Dorrie wants to unburden herself of a secret that has cast a long shadow over her family. Haunted by the death of her son, Jo catches a glimpse of a young boy in a magazine who resembles Paul. Reading the article, she learns of a tragedy in India.

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, the father of Ann's youngest child.

When the father she worships disappears, ten-year-old Ada Fletcher and her family, are forced to move to a poor yard in Birmingham. Ada and Elsie, the two eldest children have to go to work in a local pearl button factory to try and make ends meet. The work is hard and relentless and their mother’s death is the final calamity. One day Ada returns home to find her siblings being dragged away to the local workhouse orphanage.