This well written, poignant, fast-paced novel focuses on what women did in the Great War that turned Europe upside down and devastated so many millions of lives. It follows the path that leads Ellie Warburton from a curiously isolated, upper class childhood in the wilds of north Lancashire, to pre-war campaigning as a non-militant suffragette, to her wartime role as mobile kitchen and ambulance driver in Flanders' bloody fields. The youngest of “the three beautiful Warburton sisters”, Ellie is idealistic, romantically minded, yet determined to make her mark in the world. The eldest sister Matty is ambitiously self-centred. While she cares deeply for suffering humanity en masse, she has no understanding of individual emotion. Vicky is a born hedonist and while similarly self-centred, she radiates charm, effortlessly drawing people, notably men, into her web. Both, particularly Vicky, affect Ellie's life. Virtually all the men in their lives went to war. They raised companies, served as intelligence officers and doctors, while the great love of Ellie’s life, Luke Stoddard, born and brought up in a dreaded workhouse, served as a ‘tommy’ in the trenches before becoming a famous war artist. They were a doomed generation. How many survived the war?

Queen Victoria is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of women's rights, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor sex is bent' - 1870 It was a bloody and dangerous war lasting several decades, won finally by sheer will and determination in 1928. Drawing on extracts from diaries, newspapers, letters, journals and books, Joyce Marlow has pieced together this inspiring, poignant and exciting history using the voices of the women themselves. Some of the people and events are well-known, but Marlow has gone beyond the obvious, particularly beyond London, to show us the ordinary women - middle and working-class, who had the breathtaking courage to stand up and be counted - or just as likely hectored, or pelted with eggs. These women were clever and determined, knew the power of humour and surprise and exhibited 'unladylike' passion and bravery. Joyce Marlow's anthology is lively, comprehensive, surprising and triumphant.

From Rhys Bowen, the author of In Farleigh Field, comes the next Molly Murphy mystery: The Ghost of Christmas Past. Semi-retired private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan is suffering from depression after a miscarriage following her adventure in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906. She and her husband, Daniel, are invited for Christmas at a mansion on the Hudson, and they gratefully accept, expecting a peaceful and relaxing holiday season. Not long after they arrive, however, they start to feel the tension in the house’s atmosphere. Then they learn that the host couple's young daughter wandered out into the snow ten years ago and was never seen again. Molly can identify with the mother's pain at never knowing what happened to her child and wants to help, but there is so little to go on. No ransom note. No body ever found. But Molly slowly begins to suspect that the occupants of the house know more than they are letting on. Then, on Christmas Eve, there is a knock at the door and a young girl stands there. "I'm Charlotte," she says. "I've come home."