Liz’s Books

Lizzie looks around her twin brother’s room in a state of shock. In the middle of the night Ed has vanished, leaving no forwarding address. For four years he’s been tormented by what he witnessed at Dunkirk four years before, helping his father steer their tiny boat to rescue thousands of injured soldiers. He was never the same after that.

But then his call-up letter arrives, and she opens it to discover that instead of being assigned to one of the forces, he’s been told to report for work at a coal mine – one of fifty thousand ‘Bevin boys’ chosen to help produce the fuel to power the nation through the war.

If he fails to sign on, he will be arrested and tried as a deserter. Knowing how alike they are, Lizzie realises there is a way to save him.

In a quiet village, a terrible secret threatens to break the surface. 

The war is over and Molly, together with her vicar father and younger brother Jimmy, has moved out of London to a rural parish in East Anglia. When summer arrives, the heat is almost as unbearable as the village gossip. As Molly finds herself falling for the mercurial Kit, whispers build against her father and everything she thought she knew is turned upside-down. 

July, 1919. At the Hotel de la Paix in the small village of Hoppestadt, three women arrive at the end of the war, searching for traces of the men they have loved and lost to the battlefields of Ypres in Belgium.

Ruby is just twenty-one, a shy Englishwoman looking for the grave of her husband. Alice is only a little older but brimming with confidence; she has travelled all the way from America, convinced her brother is in fact still alive. Then there’s Martha, and her son Otto, who are not all they seem to be.

The three women may have very different backgrounds, but they are united in their search for reconciliation: to resolve themselves to what the war took from them, but also to what life might still promise for the future. All three bear their own burdens of sorrow and guilt, and their searches seem almost impossibly daunting. While initially regarding each other with suspicion what they eventually discover, together, is greater than any of them could have imagined.

1760, Spitalfields. Anna Butterfield’s life is about to change forever, as she moves from her idyllic Suffolk home to be introduced into London society. A chance encounter with a French silk weaver, Henri, draws her in to the volatile world of the city’s burgeoning silk trade. Henri is working on his ‘master piece’, to become a master weaver and freeman; Anna longs to become an artist while struggling against pressure from her uncle’s family to marry a wealthy young lawyer.

As their lives become ever more intertwined, Henri realizes that Anna’s designs could give them both an opportunity for freedom. But his world becomes more dangerous by the day, as riots threaten to tear them apart forever.

Inspired by real historical events and characters, The Silk Weaver is a captivating, unforgettable story of illicit romance in a time of enlightenment and social upheaval.

London, 1910: Maria, a remarkable young seamstress, is noticed by Queen Mary, patron of the London Needlework Guild, who gives her a job in the royal household. 

A century later, when turning out her mother’s loft, Caroline discovers an old patchwork quilt left to her by her grandmother, and becomes intrigued by the curious verse embroidered into its lining. When her best friend, a fabric conservator, notices that some of the fabrics are almost certainly unique and rare royal wedding silks, Caroline becomes determined to discover more about the quilt and its mysterious origins.

Through the fading memories of her mother, some family letters and photographs, some old cassette tapes and the help of a local journalist, she uncovers an extraordinary story involving a royal affair, a life of incarceration, an illegal adoption and two women whose lives collided with devastating consequences.

Finally, Caroline comes to understand what her grandmother wanted her to know – the truth about herself and how she wants to live her own life.