Dottie and Mary forged a friendship over a bag of penny sweets when they were eight years old. They’ve shared everything together since then. Now at seventeen, they’re both shop girls, working at Woolworths. As they go out in the world in pursuit of love and happiness, the simplicity of their childhood dissolves as life becomes more complicated. The heady excitement of first love will consume them both, but the pain of unintentional betrayal will test their friendship.

Dottie Perks has forged a new life for herself in London, a new job and loving boyfriend. She’s safe, happy and loved. What more could she ask for? But when Dottie visits her home in Brighton, the last person she expects to see is her first love; Ralph Bennett. As old feelings come rushing to the surface, Dottie struggles to deny the strong chemistry between them. She can’t throw away everything to be with Ralph… can she?

Brighton, 1930: Maureen O’Connell is a carefree girl, but war is looming and life will never be the same again. Jack and Nelson have always been dear friends to Maureen. Despite their different backgrounds, they’ve seen each other through thick and thin. The candle Maureen’s always held for Jack burns bright, but just as she’s found love, war wrenches them apart. With Jack no longer by her side and Nelson at war, can Maureen look to a brighter future?

Ireland, 1924. For 13-year-old Nora Doyle every day is a fight for survival in Ballybun, the rural Irish village she calls home. Each night, as she feels the cold wind blowing through the cracks of her family’s cramped cottage, Nora longs to escape the poverty surrounding her and find her place in the world. When she meets Edward, from the grand house that looms over her tiny village, she feels an unlikely kinship that is impossible to explain and as she grows from an impulsive child into ...

Ireland, 1901: The workhouse gates clanged shut behind us, as me and the mammy walked down the hill towards the town. I was six years old and leaving the only home I had ever known … When Cissy Ryan’s real mother comes to claim her from the workhouse, it’s not how she imagined. Her family’s tumbledown cottage has ice on the inside of its windows and is in an isolated, poverty-stricken village in the muddy Irish countryside. But when Cissy is allowed to help neighbour Colm Doyle and his hor...

Dublin, 1952. When Mary Kate Ryan receives a surprise inheritance from the woman who abandoned her as a tiny baby, she’s stunned. All her life, she has longed to know why her mother disappeared, and now she’s devastated to realize that every lonely night she spent without a home or family of her own, her mother knew exactly where she was. Mary Kate is about to refuse the money when she sees a beautiful, deserted house for sale and something sparks in her heart. She will reawaken it, as the...

London 1940. As the war rages in Europe, Rose Brown steps on board a ship bound for America, hoping to escape the danger. She's frightened, but her widowed mammy and three sisters in Ireland need the money she earns as nanny to the rich Townsend family. But while Rose plays with baby Sarah in the salty spray on deck, disaster strikes, and the ocean liner begins to sink. In the chaos, Rose and the baby are separated from the family.Pulled from the s...

Mary Kate takes a deep breath as she stands outside 24 Merrion Square with its red front door and pretty rose garden. Grieving from her recent heartbreak, will returning to the Irish boarding house be the second chance she so desperately needs?Dublin, 1956: When Mary Kate Ryan loses the love of her life, she’s not sure how she can keep going. Feeling completely lost, she allows her friend Moira Kent to persuade her...

In the darkest days of war, can she find a place to call home?1939: When tragedy strikes in the East End of London, thirteen-year-old Ivy Connell and her little brother Fred find themselves orphaned. Holding Fred’s small hand, she knows she must keep him safe. So Ivy decides to leave the bombed-out streets of the city in search of the Irish village her Daddy used to tell her so many stories about.Somehow, she’s going to get...

Everyone remembered the summer of ’39 as golden and strange. Golden because it was the driest on record; strange because people were burrowing holes and roofing them with iron. Waiting for the bombs…In the Hampshire town of Markham, Georgia Kennedy wakes on her husband’s last day in Civvy Street and feels elated. Conventionally married to the pompous Hugh, she discovers liberation during the war. Like other women, she embraces the camaraderie previously held back by gender and clas...

Poverty and factory work have filled Lu Wilmott with a determination to make something of herself. The call to Spain is irresistible: she can live up to her ideals and finally be the woman she’s always wanted to be. Signing up as a driver, Lu leaves her past and becomes Eve. One of the few women in charge of heavy vehicles, faced with constant danger, she falls for Spain. But here ‘Eve’ encounters an old love. Can she find room in her stretched new life for romance? Amidst death and diseas...

As World War Two breaks over Europe, Eve Anders is already a veteran from the Spanish Civil War. But now she’s called to a very different kind of action: to come home to train for the newly-formed SOE. When Eve left her home town of Portsmouth, she’d never intended to return. Poor housing, poor wages and poor opportunities forced her to make a clean break. But the experience gained as a driver in Spain, desperately fighting for the Republic, enabled her to reinvent herself and to gain a co...