East London, 1938. Nine-year-old Daisy Purbright is a country girl at heart and together with beloved brother Bobby, they've enjoyed the endless freedoms of rural England. But when her father gambles the family's fortunes on a speculative investment in London's docklands, Daisy and her family are swept up into the intrigue, danger and excitement. The Purbrights desperately attempt to settle to a new life in the East End, but the whisperings of war grow louder. Then Adolf Hitler conducts a ...

It's Christmas 1880 in London's East End and a dying Irish girl leaves her baby in the care of the Sisters of Clemency. The nuns raise little Ettie O'Reilly as their own. But the lives of the nuns and orphans are soon crushed by an unexpected turn of events. Ettie is at her lowest ebb when she is betrayed by the boy who has promised his undying love and loyalty. She is faced with the revelation of a heart-wrenching secret.

1934: Lizzie Flowers has been mother and protector to her East End family, the Allens of Langley Street, since she was fifteen. Even when her doomed marriage to Frank Flowers collapses, she sacrifices her own happiness to keep the family united. But when Lizzie buys the infamous dockland's pub, the Mill Wall, she discovers she's bitten off more than she can chew. Long-time love Danny Flowers abandons her, a close friend is murdered and her adopted child Polly is threatened. Then crime lord...

When I was young, my parents would fight a lot, and I would always need to help my mother not to get beaten so badly. My mother had eight children, and I was the second oldest. My mother is my heart, and she's gone on now to be with the Lord. She died at the age of forty-two, and she was my pride and joy. In my books, I pretty much write about my life. I was married twice, and I talk about my abusive first husband and how he puked on me and woke me up out of my sleep. And I also write abou...