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Polly Longden's china-doll looks belie a strong and fiery personality. When typhoid strikes her home city of Lincoln, she needs every ounce of that strength in order to cope. With the death of her mother, thirteen-year-old Polly has to give up her ambition of becoming a teacher to care for her family. When their father, too, falls victim to the typhoid, his only hope is to go to hospital, leaving Polly to cope alone. Thankfully she has the support of her neighbours: Bertha Halliday and her son, Leo, a young policeman.
A spirited novel of love and revenge from a hugely popular author Meg Kirkland fears her impudent tongue has caused her father's dismissal from his job and forced her whole family from their home on Middleditch Farm. Worse still, her father abandons them outside the workhouse, leaving Meg to care for her devastated mother, Sarah, and little brother as tragedy continues to haunt the family. Isaac Pendleton, Master of the workhouse, rules the lives of all those within its walls but when Sarah becomes his latest mistress, Meg is disgusted. Her loyal friend, Jake, born and bred in the workhouse, has a maturity and understanding beyond his years. Yet it is Meg's fiery independence that encourages Jake to leave the workhouse and seek employment on Middleditch Farm. His future is assured, but who will take care of Meg? The pretty, vivacious girl, once so innocent, becomes a calculating and manipulative young woman who will stop at nothing to get her own way even if it means betraying those she has loved. Without Sin is Margaret Dickinson's spirited historical saga of a passionate young woman who learns to fight for her own survival in a cruel world.
Following the gripping story of the Ryan family in Margaret Dickinson's top ten bestseller The Buffer Girls, Daughters of Courage sees Emily and Trip fight to keep their new life afloat in the turbulent 1930s. Love blossoms under the storm clouds of war. Emily Ryan has gone up in the world since her arrival in Sheffield. Brought there by her mother's ambitious schemes for her brother, Josh, she had found work as a buffer girl polishing cutlery for the city's famous trade. With the help of a friend, Nell, Emily eventually set up her own buffing business employing those with whom she had once worked. Married to Thomas Trippet – 'Trip' to his friends – they plan to build a life together, but when Lucy, Nell's daughter, disappears it seems that the menace from the past is never very far away. Trip is now a partner with his half-brother in the Trippet family's cutlery manufacturing business, but their success is threatened by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Can Emily keep their family and friends safe from the shadow of unemployment? And then comes the threat of another war . . .
The Clippie Girls is a compelling story of love, loss and heartbreak in the Second World War, by the author of the Fleethaven Trilogy, Margaret Dickinson. Rose and Myrtle Sylvester look up to their older sister, Peggy. She is the sensible, reliable one in the household of women headed by their grandmother, Grace Booth, and their mother, Mary Sylvester. When war is declared in 1939 they must face the hardships together and huge changes in their lives are inevitable. For Rose, there is the chance to fulfil her dream of becoming a clippie on Sheffield's trams like Peggy. But for Myrtle, the studious, clever one in the family, war may shatter her ambitions. When the tram on which Peggy is a conductress is caught in a bomb blast, she bravely helps to rescue her passengers. One of them is a young soldier, Terry Price, and he and Peggy begin courting. They meet every time he can get leave, but eventually Terry is posted abroad and she hears nothing from him. Worse still, Peggy must break the devastating news to her family that she is pregnant. The shock waves that ripple through the family will affect each and every one of them and life will never be the same again.
Esther Everett - illegitimate and unwanted - arrives out of the early morning mist at old Sam Brumby's farm, desperate for work and a place to stay. Despite his initial misgivings, Esther proves herself more than capable, and soon earns Sam's grudging respect and affection.
The Tulip Girl is Margaret Dickinson's captivating Lincolnshire saga about the endurance of true love in the face of adversity. Abandoned outside an orphanage as a newborn baby, spirited Maddie March has had to fight her way through life. So when she finds a home at Few Farm with Frank Brackenbury and his household, she welcomes the chance for a fresh start. Work on the farm is hard, but believing herself truly loved for the first time in her young life by the farmer's son, Michael, even the animosity of the housekeeper Mrs Trowbridge cannot mar Maddie's newfound happiness. 1947 brings harsh winter, sweeping devastation over the farm and threatening the Brackenburys' livelihood. All seems lost, until Maddie has an idea that might save them all from poverty. But then she discovers she is pregnant . . .
The Poppy Girls is the first title in The Maitland Trilogy, by bestselling author Margaret Dickinson. Even amidst the horror of the trenches, friendship will survive Thwarted in her desire to become a doctor like her brother, Robert, Pips Maitland rebels against her mother’s wishes that she settle down and raise children. However, when Robert brings home a friend from medical school, Giles Kendall, it seems perhaps Pips might fall in love with an acceptable suitor after all. But the year is 1914 and the future is uncertain. Hearing that her father’s friend, Dr John Hazelwood, is forming a flying ambulance corps to take to the front lines, Pips is determined to become one of its nurses an...
Hannah Francis has been forced to leave her beloved mother and the life in the silk mill town of Macclesfield and is set to become an apprentice at a cotton mill in the Derbyshire dales. It is not long before she attracts the eye of Edmund Critchlow, the man who owns them all, body and soul - the man from whom no pretty mill girl is safe.
A startlingly original work establishing the impact of domestic servants on the life and writings of Emily Dickinson
The follow-up to Tangled Threads, Margaret Dickinson's Twisted Strands follows the dramatic highs and lows of the Hardcastle family as they endure the upheaval caused by war. It is 1914, and Eveleen Hardcastle, now in in her early thirties, has married Richard. As the First World War breaks out, Eveleen, a sophisticated young woman, is left to manage the factory while Richard goes off to fight for his country. Eveleen's mother Mary has found happiness at last in her marriage to Josh. Her young granddaughter, Bridie, still lives at home, and is beautiful, but has a spirited, strong will which her grandmother finds hard to control. Bridie is secretly besotted with her godfather, Andrew, whom she is convinced she will marry when she is older. While the war plays out, Bridie becomes a nurse, looking after wounded soldiers billeted in the local Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire stately homes and there finds a vocation that is both rewarding and gives her a maturity beyond her years . . .