An enjoyable read about love, courage and discovery during a time of change in post war Britain. A lovely story! KITTY NEALE When Nurse Kitty becomes the NHS's poster-girl for its overseas recruitment drive, she swaps the grey post-war backstreets of Manchester for the palm-fringed island of Barbados. But will her determination to save the NHS lose her everyone she loves? It's 1949 and nurse Kitty Longthorne is still hard at work at Manchester's Park Hospital. The one-year-old NHS is inundated by the nation's sick and dying, made worse by a crippling labour shortage. Now engaged, Kitty and James adore each other, but once they marry, she will be expected to leave the job that means so much to her. When she is offered the trip of a lifetime - a voyage by sea to Barbados to recruit nurses to join Park Hospital's ranks - adventurous Kitty is desperate to go. Her brother Ned has been there for years, and she simply cannot resist an opportunity to track him down and see what exactly he's been up to. But what of her beloved James? What of the baby she suspects she may be carrying? Returning home, Kitty has more to contend with than she ever anticipated: a gravely ill father, a dejected fiancé and the close-minded views of her peers upon the arrival of Kitty's first, hardworking recruit - Nurse Grace. After paradise, will Manchester ever be the same again? An uplifting, heart-wrenching novel based on the true story of the first ever NHS hospital, for fans of Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell. *** Praise for NURSE KITTY'S SECRET WAR A galloping read that conjures up life in a late 1940s hospital, complete with fierce matrons and handsome doctors. Nurse Kitty is a feisty heroine who sticks her neck out to protect her patients, while trying to resolve her own family problems and heal her broken heart. It's engaging and atmospheric. GILL PAUL I'm sure readers will love Nurse Kitty as she struggles to find true love when everything is going against it. I loved the end-of-WW2 setting, which is vividly imagined, and the sheer energy of Maggie Campbell's pacy prose. A perfect escapist read. KITTY DANTON, author of A Wartime Wish

A novel inspired by the brave nurses and doctors from the first NHS hospital, the Trafford General, opened after the end of World War II. An inspiring and romantic read for fans of Call the Midwife and The Nightingale Girls. It's May 1945 and at 3pm, nurse Kitty Longthorne listens, together with the other surgical staff at South Manchester's Park Hospital, to Winston Churchill's broadcast on the radio. Germany has signed a declaration of complete surrender. The war is over in Europe and that day is to be celebrated as VE Day. The mood in Park Hospital - still full of wounded American soldiers - is jubilant and hopeful, though Kitty is anything but. Her clandestine squeeze and the man she hopes to marry, James Williams has been giving her the cold shoulder for the last week, and she can't work out why. Furthermore, her twin brother, Ned, is still missing in action - his last known whereabouts point to him being in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. An uplifting, heart-wrenching novel based on the true story of the first ever NHS hospital, for fans of Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell. Praise for NURSE KITTY'S SECRET WAR A galloping read that conjures up life in a late 1940s hospital, complete with fierce matrons and handsome doctors. Nurse Kitty is a feisty heroine who sticks her neck out to protect her patients, while trying to resolve her own family problems and heal her broken heart. It's engaging and atmospheric. - Gill Paul I'm sure readers will love Nurse Kitty as she struggles to find true love when everything is going against it. I loved the end-of-WW2 setting, which is vividly imagined, and the sheer energy of Maggie Campbell's pacy prose. A perfect escapist read. - Kitty Danton, author of A Wartime Wish

A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness Finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award “A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.” In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

For many, a nursing home is the despised last stop before heading out into the Great Beyond. Not so for the heroines of The Song of Sadie Sparrow-three very different women whose lives intersect in a warm and endlessly engaging facility called The Hickories. Sadie Sparrow, Meg Vogel and Elise Chapelle represent different generations. They have experienced different sorrows and entertain different hopes. They even adhere to different worldviews, from devoutly Christian to unapologetically atheist. Yet over the course of a single year, they forge unlikely bonds that impact each other's lives in the here and now-and perhaps for all eternity. A beautifully written story of friendship set against the backdrop of life's twilight years, The Song of Sadie Sparrow explores contrasting views of purpose and pardon, life and afterlife-and faith's role in shaping those views, now and forevermore.

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