Liverpool Kids of WWII - Part 1

The Liverpool Blitz is over…

The seven-year-old boy who was evacuated in The Green Gates Story, comes home after many months away, and is faced with changes to his life: house moves, new districts, new faces…

No sweets, because Mum’s used the coupons for sugar.
What are bananas?
What’s ice-cream?
White bread?

Upon his return to his home city and with his evacuation experience behind him, he views his life ahead as a series of hurdles, but the War is ongoing…

Toys? – Pretend games and a good healthy imagination.
Free-time? – Fun of collecting waste paper, scrap metal, bones and rags, in support of the war effort.

His first trip into town, shopping with Mum, and the surprising sight of big blackened shells, once shops, now dark spaces between buildings, which had suffered direct hits, torn apart innards and burnt deposits.  
Blast waves obliterating shop windows and doors of adjacent buildings, displaying:
Heaps of broken bricks
Shattered concrete supports
Splintered wood floors hanging drunkenly, with massive heaps of dust and debris deposited on the piled remains, awaiting attention and clearance.

How to cope with the unnecessary death of a classmate, killed at play, after accidentally falling through the blitzed roof of an unsafe bomb-damaged house?

When the supply and demands of shortages cause the theft of a family bicycle.

Kids discovering the incomprehensible: German POWs sitting smoking, chatting and laughing, employed in collecting and stacking usable bricks from a bomb site, watched by a grey-haired bespectacled British soldier sat in his parked army lorry when he was not reading a dog-eared copy of Lilliput magazine.  
Same kids, frowning and mindful of captured British soldiers packed into overcrowded huts inside barbed-wire enclosures, overlooked by machine-gun towers, in the Fatherland!

Living Through The Great War at Home: How the People of Bromley Faced the Challenges of War

Living Through the Great War at Home tells the story of the people of Bromley from the month before the outbreak of war to the Armistice in 1918 and the celebration of peace in July 1919. Although it shows how men were mobilised, volunteered, conscripted and left to ‘follow the colours’, it is a book about the people of Bromley and how their lives were challenged and changed during the war, how they supported their own boys in the army, how they dealt with the problems of war, the restrictions of DORA (Defence of the Realm Act) and the threat and reality of the Zeppelin raids. We learn of the generosity of the people in supporting their ‘boys’, caring for the Belgian refugees and the wounded—the VAD hospitals and how women rose to the challenge, both in terms of filling the gaps in the workforce left by the men and struggling to put food on the table as rising prices and shortages finally led to rationing. The work is based on real information from the local newspaper, together with research to put them into context and understand the stories better.

Logan and the Time Machine

Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Logan who loved having adventures. One day Logan decided to go back in time to see the land of the dinosaurs. So, he grabbed his bag and his hat and tied his shoelaces tight and then jumped into his magical time machine. The time machine whizzed and whirled and wooed and suddenly went Bop! And then disappeared!

When Logan travels back in time to the age of the dinosaurs in his magical time machine, he never anticipates a chance encounter with a little dinosaur would result in an unexpected friendship. But with new dinosaur friends come new dangers.With the sudden arrival of a large T-Rex can Logan be brave and save his new dinosaur friend?

Get set to go on a wonderful journey with dinosaurs, time travel and new friendships accompanied by beautiful illustrations that will captivate the imagination of kids of all ages.

Look What Happened While I Was Sleeping

Butterfly gardening is a simple and continuously rewarding hobby. It is done at home, no fancy clothes or tools, by anyone at any age. Determine what nectar plants thrive in your climate zone and plant them in your garden or put them in containers on your balcony, the butterflies will come! Plant some host plants amongst the nectar plants and the butterflies will stay! Nature's splendour and beauty is just a few plants away. You never know how your life can change when you open your eyes after a nice, long rest.

Love Beyond Love

This very personal and moving love story takes us from the anticipation of the very first date through to the moment of the very last breath. It encompasses sheer joy, romance, fortitude and sadness. But love and memories live on forever because this is a Love Beyond Love. – Jan Smith (a friend)

Love on the Vine

Set between the old Cotswolds market town of Stow on the Wold and the Dordogne region of France our heroine finds herself in a life-shattering situation having caught out her cheating husband.

Approaching her 50th birthday and with two children, one away at university and the other out on a gap year in the far east, Lottie will struggle by with the help of a few friends as she ponders where she will go from here.

Heartache and low self-esteem abounds her every waking minute; will she ever recover, can an escape to her elder sister’s holiday villa in France come to her rescue? Join us on a journey that will give the reader an idea of how true friendship works and enjoy an insight into the wonders of the Dordogne countryside that is a must for wine lovers and general tourists alike.

Will a chance meeting with a charming handsome French vineyard owner refuel her passion for life or will a chance discovery ruin it, the journey is sometimes painful but some amusing moments can intercede. Making the right life choices and decisions at the right time will decide how Lottie’s life turns out.

Lucy: Ultimate Survivor

A dramatic and intriguing true Georgian tale of love, betrayal and survival. Lucy, a strong-willed girl from a wealthy family, was brought up on the English–Welsh border and married a Caribbean plantation owner, Sam Lord, for love, meanwhile he married her for her fortune, at a time when a woman was a chattel and everything she had, including her children, became her husband’s. Abused and imprisoned in Barbados, she escaped with the help of enslaved people. A vibrant intimate description of early 19th-century life – giving birth at sea, braving disease and cruelty, and witnessing the abject misery of slavery – this is a story of courage in adversity, a runaway marriage to an unfaithful husband and a descent from a life of pampered luxury to a struggle for survival in a far-off land.

M.J.K’s One Hundred Talks on Mary Jane Kelly

In the late spring of 2019, I suffered an accident that put me in a deep coma for days. The details of the event are yet to be clearly explained, since I developed a retrograde amnesia, which doesn't let me remember the previous moments and thus fully recall it. However, the raw facts go like this: I woke up in the middle of the night, in the seaside house where I had travelled for the weekend, went outside and fell out of a nearby three storey balcony on the asphalt in the street. When I came out of the coma, I was diagnosed with a gash in the carotid artery on the right side of my neck.

It immediately came to my mind that what provoked Mary Jane Kelly's death, the last victim of the so-called Whitechapel murders in 1888 committed by Jack the "Ripper" (a sobriquet never mentioned across this book) was precisely the same injury as a result of aggression, although many barbaric ones had been perpetrated on her. Of all the canonical Ripper murders, Mary Jane Kelly's is considered the most gruesome, and also puzzling, of them all. During the long weeks I passed in bed following my accident, Mary Jane Kelly invaded my thoughts and gave me company, offering me talks on herself, always in the form of poems and verses. That's the genesis of this book.

Mabel Murphy

It’s 1920s London and the world is in a deep economic depression. Times are very hard and the city is rife with unemployment, poverty and disease. One family in East London
have managed to keep themselves afloat, housed and fed, despite having one parent with a long-term mental health condition, but that is all about to change as their teenage daughter is catapulted into a series of life events which are traumatic, heartbreaking and shocking but which make her become a much stronger and more resilient human being than she ever dreamed possible.
This is a harrowing story of innocence, shame, hostility and vicious cruelty from the very people who should be caring for those in need, but it is tempered with love, hope and the potential to change one’s situation given the right opportunities.
Although fictional, this was a true story for many women of that time and is based on several older women whom the author met and supported whilst an NHS nurse in the large hospital system.

Magic Mickey and the Golden Dragon

How on earth did the twins Michael and Freya become trapped on an old-fashioned pirate ship?

Michael and Freya wake up to find themselves trapped aboard “The Golden Dragon”, an old pirate ship controlled by the wicked Captain Nastypants. 

Mummy and Daddy are nowhere to be seen. 

The terrified children wonder “how did we get here”?  

More importantly, HOW DO THEY ESCAPE?

Magikal Mumbai Flavours

‘Food and culture go hand in hand; as life moves on, we win some and we  lose some. There are times where we have to learn to adapt, infusing our  life with flavours. So far, my life – including my journey from the  classroom to the restaurant – has been blessed with some very old as  well as very new recipes of warmth and love.‘Basic Indian cooking  revolves around a healthy lifestyle, and in this wholesome book you will  learn to cook old regional dishes like Malvani chicken (from  Maharashtra on India’s west coast), Mangshore jhol lamb (from Kolkata on  the east coast),  Laccha paratha (from the north), Kerala lamb curry  (from the south coast), as well as modern fusion dishes from the global  food village, such as Mexican chimichangas, Arabic ouzi, Mexican chaat,  butter chicken pizza and spiced pesto fried rice – all with an Indian  twist.‘It has been an absolute pleasure and source of pride to share  the tips and tricks I have inherited to make Indian cooking an  experience for you, whether you are cooking alone or with your family  and friends.’CHEF SEEMA DALVI

Magnificent, Marvellous Minibeasts

A series of short stories written about minibeasts for young children and self-readers.

Do you know the minibeasts in your garden? Enjoy listening and reading about their adventures and learn some fun facts about each minibeast. Can you learn the Beetlebop with Bertie Beetle? Or follow the figure-of-eight dance with Belinda Buzz Bee and Walter? Or can you follow Sydney Snail and Eva’s trail around the garden? What about reading how Willie Waspie catches the robbers and saves the day?