It's 1950, and when Laura and Billy Hopkins return to Manchester from their honeymoon, they're in seventh heaven despite the austerity that has been going on since World War II. But the euphoria gradually evaporates and they settle into a penny-pinching existence on Billy's teaching salary as babies and bills appear with alarming regularity. When Billy spots an advertisement for Education Officers in Kenya, it sound like the answer to all their prayers, despite worries about the Mau Mau rebellion and the omnipresence of dangerous creatures. After much family debate, Laura, Billy and the junior Hopkins set off to Nairobi on a BOAC Argonaut and start on the biggest adventure of their lives.

"Gutsy...will keep the pages turning." DAILY EXPRESS With her parents dead Maddy Kieran knows the situation is desperate for her and her fourteen-year-old sister. When she makes a momentous decision to follow her self-centred brother, Thomas, to Liverpool, they find themselves destitute, their savings gone. Maddy finds work with Mrs Egan, an eccentric, imperious old lady who rescues the girls, and their newly found brother and his young family, from the streets. When Maddy is made the sole beneficiary of Mrs Egan's will, she can scarcely believe her luck. But there's a condition: Maddy mustn't marry until Mrs Egan dies. And Maddy, who has fallen in love with a seaman, has a terrible choice - her fiance or the promise to the old lady on whom she and her family depend.

Manchester 1940. They called it the Christmas Blitz but for Jess Delaney, the German bombs meant being locked in the cellar by her feckless, tarty mother, Lizzie. When Lizzie is caught shoplifting Jess is sent to live with Uncle Bernie, a dishonest bruiser of a man, who treats her like a slave. The Sally Army offers her, literally, salvation - and a chance to play the trumpet. When a young airman dares her to play at a tea dance, Jess rises to the challenge and is soon playing in a band, but Uncle Bernie hasn't finished with her yet...

A hand-on-heart honest (and often laugh-out-loud funny) account of growing up in Liverpool in the '50s and '60s in a large, eccentric Anglo-Irish family. Ruling the roost there was Mam - menopausal and always saving for a divorce, or her own business, whichever was cheaper. Then there was Dad - either in the pub, or practising his banjo in the outside lav - and Cherry's five brothers and three sisters...From the still-rationed post-war years to the swinging '60s when Liverpool became fashionable, this delightful memoir brings a fondly remembered era vividly to life.

Ten years ago, Andrea Hayes was the best master bombmaker in the business, Young, beautiful and deadly, she was the favourite of her Irish republican masters. Then it all went wrong. Five children were killed, when disruption was all that was intended. It all became too much, and she turned away from her trade... Now, a new Andrea Hayes lives a safe suburban life, with her loving husband and young daughter. Safe in the knowledge that her past is another country. But then her daughter is kidnapped and the past has come knocking.

When the S.S. SOUTHERN QUEEN encounters a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean, a strange mystery unfolds. The lifeboat is marked VALPARAISO I, but the VALPARAISO had been sunk by a Japanese submarine nearly a year earlier whilst carrying a million pounds' worth of gold bullion. In the lifeboat is a man with a question mark tattooed on his left forearm; but he can shed no light on the situation because his memory has gone - or so he claims. Two other survivors from the VALPARAISO, Rains and Jones, have doubts about the man's professed amnesia. They decide to stick around, because a million pounds in gold bullion is worth anybody's time and, if necessary, more than a little violence.

A heart-warming new Potteries novel... Rosemary thinks life couldn't get any worse when her mother dies in a tragic accident. Left penniless and alone, betrayed by the one man she thinks she can trust, her whole world changes when she finds out that she's adopted. Beth has spent a lifetime regretting giving up her only daughter. Surrounded by the riches of the Rushton family, she's determined that one day she'll find the child she lost and reunite her with her true family, and when that vital first connection is made neither of their lives will ever be the same again.

The disappearance of a smart young criminal, Darren Mallory, is cause for some concern but his family, all seasoned villains,. refuse to cooperate with the police. Despite the relatives' unwillingness to help with his investigation, Detective Superintendent Mark Pemberton pushes ahead and launches an official search for the missing man. The meagre information he finds suggests Mallory's abduction was orchestrated by a team of fake police officers, but a faint trail leading to the murky world of drugs comes to a dead end. Is this just a red herring, concocted to throw Pemberton further off the scent?

A terrible secret in the past. An unspeakable presence in the woods. Private detective Charlie Parker has come home to the Maine landscape of his youth, to the ghosts of his past and to the brutal slaying of a young mother and her son. Forced to embark on a nerve-shredding manhunt, Parker soon closes in on his prime suspect. But someone else is tracking them both. And the body count is rising... To stop the killer, Parker will have to solve a thirty-year-old puzzle and map the nightmare wilderness of his own past and his own heart. And confront a legend that is evil incarnate...

From the ever-popular winner of the Catherine Cookson Prize for Fiction When Georgiana and her maid, Kitty, make the long sea-journey from their native East Yorkshire to America, they are seeking a new life of freedom. But in New York, Georgiana encounters an imposter posing as Edward Newmarch, her cousin's womanising husband, who has abandoned his wife and fled to America. Meanwhile the real Edward, having escaped from a disastrous marriage in England, is now running from a bigamous union with the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner. As Georgiana and Kitty journey to the hidden valley of gold, and Edward tries to flee his enemies, the dangers and passions of this new country and its people threaten to overwhelm them.

"Tugs the heartstrings." SUNDAY TIMES In 1955 John Boyle and James Lafferty became school friends. They both lived in Ferguslie Park, the worst housing scheme in Paisley. At the Academy, they felt ashamed of where they lived; yet in 'Feegie', in their school uniforms, they were mocked by the locals as 'snobs'. It made allies of them, but when Laff dropped out of school and left for exotic destinations in the Merchant Navy, it set the relationship on a course that would end in tragedy.

"A compelling, carefully crafted, top-notch thriller," GEORGE PELECANOS Iraklis - a mysterious Greek terrorist group. A rogue offshoot of the Communist Party. At its head, a man with many names who has been in exile for ten years. Alex Mavros - a half-Greek, half-Scottish investigator. A man driven by the desire to find his missing brother. Grace Helmer - an American who saw her father murdered when she was a child. Iraklis was responsible. Now Iraklis is back - and Grace Helmer employs Mavros to track down her father's killer. From Athens to the mountains of the southern mainland he unearths clues from the past with a dangerous legacy in the present...

"Every page is a delight." DAILY MAIL Their fathers ruled the East End in the 1960s. Now they inherit the legacy... The O'Donnell family ran their manor in the East End with a fist of iron, keeping control of their gambling, prostitution and protection rackets. But gang warfare brought horror and sorrow with it, losing Catherine O'Donnell her life and finally bringing murder and violence into the heart of the family. Now Eileen O'Donnell is out of prison and her sons Luke and Brendan are running the show. It ought to be time for some peace quiet. Instead, the trouble is only just beginning.

English adventurer Harvey Landon agrees to help his old Oxford friend, Don Vargas, who is plotting the overthrow of a South American government. The Revolutionaries, however, are without aircraft and, to obtain their supply, Landon volunteers to take a letter out of the country to a mysterious Mr. Delgado in New York. Complications begin as Landon is stalked on board the New York-bound oil-tanker by two agents intent on killing him and stealing the letter.

It is one thing to expect a little weirdness when you're up a mountain with a flying saucer worshipping religion but quite another to enter a Staffordshire pub and find a toe-wrestling competition where one of the contenders is dressed only in beer towels. When Iain Aitch spends the summer travelling round England, he finds the living embodiments of 'summer madness' at every turn. From the Cornish villagers who float a giant pasty across a river, to the predatory hen parties who stalk Blackpool dressed to kill, this is a hilarious insight into the English in the twenty-first century!

When Rosie Jones' lover, Sean Quinnan, is killed in a building accident, she knows the blame lies with his irresponsible boss, her childhood tormentor Joe Brindle. Rosie finds she is carrying Sean's baby and is disowned by her mother and fired from her job, but salvation comes in the form of war veteran George Metcalf. He offers to marry her and adopt her son as his own, but Rosie's troubles are far from over. George's daughter, Barbara, is determined to thwart her every move and, even with a husband to protect her, will she ever be truly safe from Joe Brindle?

The Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger Award has produced his finest work to date Herbert Molin, a retired police officer, is living alone in a remote cottage in the vast forests of Harjedalen in northern Sweden. He has two obsessions: the tango and a conviction that someone is after him. He has no close friends, no close neighbours, and by the time his body is found, Molin is almost unrecognisable. Stefan Lindman, a police officer on extended sick leave, hears of the death of his former colleague and, to take his mind off his own problems, decides to involve himself in the case. What he discovers, to his horror and disbelief, is a network of evil almost unimaginable in this remote district, and one which seems impossible to link to Molin's death.

If you like gritty, rags-to-riches Northern sagas, you'll enjoy this." FAMILY CIRCLE A heart-warming saga Carrie McDarmoun is just fifteen when her big sister marries into the Sutton family. It's a day to celebrate, despite the scowl on Olive Sutton's face at one of her lads marrying "beneath" them. By evening Carrie's tipsy on her first taste of homemade sloe gin - but then stolen moments with the boy of her dreams turn sour and change her life for ever. David Sutton can't remember a time when he didn't love Carrie, even though she's only ever seen him as a friend. He's the first to notice that all's not well with the lovely girl whose happiness means everything to him. When she confides the secret she's concealing, David doesn't hesitate to offer the solution any woman in Carrie's position prays for, on one condition: that no one else knows the truth.

It's the long, hot summer of 1968. For ten-year-old Kathleen Slaven and her pals, the school holidays beckon. Into their run-down village in the west of Scotland arrives Tony, a real American kid, ready to lead them into all kinds of adventures. Meanwhile their mothers grow old before their time on broken promises and their fathers booze or gamble away their wages, while their families go hungry. Evocative, haunting and wryly humorous, this is a powerful tale about growing up, sparkling with the energy and vigour of childhood.

'A great read' BEST For Eunice Morton, World War II means escape from her family's Blackpool boarding house. She volunteers for the Women's Land Army and is sent to Gloucestershire, where she and her fellow land girls find a new and exciting life, learning new skills and spending long days outdoors. Her life also changes with the arrival of a group of German POWs. Despite the warnings of her friend Olive, passion proves stronger than reason, and she embarks on an illicit affair with Heinrich Muller. By the time Eunice comes to her senses it is too late...

In Edinburgh's old Parliament House, an armed robbery trial is about to take a macabre turn. While the lawyers tussle over the evidence, the judge suddenly collapses in mortal agony - the victim of an apparent heart attack. For Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner, with his life finally back on track after the near-collapse of his marriage, the last thing he needs is to be faced with the most baffling case of his career. But as the wave of brutal robberies continues, it emerges that Lord Archergait's death may have been murder - and he's not the only judge whose life is in danger. With a gang of ruthless killers still at large, it's down to Skinner to piece together a puzzle of sinister complexity. "Remarkably assured" NEW YORK TIMES

Murder and mystery in the final days of the Raj Introducing Scotland Yard detective and World War 1 hero Joe Sandilands India, 1922. In Panikhat, 50 miles from Calcutta, the wives of officers in the Bengal Greys have been dying violently, one every year and always in March. All the deaths are bizarre and seem accidental. The only link between them is the small red roses that mysteriously appear on the women's graves on the anniversaries of their deaths. The first victim perished in a fire, the second was bitten by a cobra, another was thrown off her horse into a ravine, while the fourth drowned. When the fifth, the pretty young wife of Captain Somersham, is found with her wrists cut, the Governor of Bengal refuses to accept a suicide verdict and calls for help from the reluctant Joe Sandilands, currently on secondment to the Bengal police.