The Poppy Girls is the first title in The Maitland Trilogy, by bestselling author Margaret Dickinson. Even amidst the horror of the trenches, friendship will survive Thwarted in her desire to become a doctor like her brother, Robert, Pips Maitland rebels against her mother’s wishes that she settle down and raise children. However, when Robert brings home a friend from medical school, Giles Kendall, it seems perhaps Pips might fall in love with an acceptable suitor after all. But the year is 1914 and the future is uncertain. Hearing that her father’s friend, Dr John Hazelwood, is forming a flying ambulance corps to take to the front lines, Pips is determined to become one of its nurses and asks Alice Dawson, her maid, to go with her. Robert and Giles offer their services as doctors, and Alice’s brother William joins them as a stretcher bearer. Nothing could have prepared them for the horrific sights they encounter. Moving their unit close to the fighting to offer first aid as quickly as possible puts them all in constant danger. But even amidst the barrage of shelling and gunfire, the unending stream of injured being brought to their post, the love between Pips and Giles survives and blossoms just like the poppies of Flanders fields.

In the early 1920s, the Maitland family are still coming to terms with the aftermath of the Great War. After her courageous work as an ambulance driver and nurse close to the Front, Pips is now restless and without purpose in her life. She seeks excitement in the frenetic world of endless parties and balls in London during the ‘Roaring Twenties’, but finds that only the thrill of driving on the Brooklands race-track can blot out her horrific memories of the trenches and help her to forget her broken love affair. Her beloved brother, Robert, has his own demons to battle. Although happily married to Alice and with a daughter, Daisy, on whom the whole family dotes – none more so than Pips – Robert believes that the loss of his right arm in the war has ended his career as a doctor. As he, too, struggles to find purpose in his life, the reappearance of faces from the past poses a dilemma for Pips. Can she ever trust a man’s promises and allow herself to love again? The Brooklands Girls is the heartfelt sequel to The Poppy Girls, by bestselling author Margaret Dickinson.

The Poppy Girls is the first title in The Maitland Trilogy, by bestselling author Margaret Dickinson.Even amidst the horror of the trenches, friendship will surviveThwarted in her desire to become a doctor like her brother Robert, Pips Maitland rebels against her mother's wishes that she settle down and raise children. However, when Robert brings home a friend from medical school, Giles Kendall, it seems perhaps Pips might fall in love with an acceptable suitor after all. But the year is 1914 and the future is uncertain. Hearing that her father's friend, Dr John Hazelwood, is forming a flying ambulance corps to take to the front lines, Pips is determined to become one of its nurses and asks Alice Dawson, her maid, to go with her. Robert and Giles offer their services as doctors, and Alice's brother William joins them as a stretcher bearer. Nothing could have prepared them for the horrific sights they encounter. Moving their unit close to the fighting to offer first aid as quickly as possible puts them all in constant danger. But even amidst the barrage of shelling and gunfire, the unending stream of injured being brought to their post, the love between Pips and Giles survives and blossoms just like the poppies of Flanders fields.

Family and friendship mean everything under the darkening skies of wartime Britain, by Sunday Times bestselling author Margaret Dickinson. It is the 1930s and the Maitland family have spent the years following the Great War struggling to come to terms with its catastrophic aftermath, and their hopes now lie with the next generation. Their Lincolnshire village of Doddington suffered terrible loss and it has taken great courage for the bereaved families to rebuild their lives without their loved ones. When war is declared again, it is Daisy Maitland and her peers who must now take up the fight for freedom. Feisty and a daredevil like her beloved Aunt Pips, who spent World War One on the front line serving with a flying ambulance corps, Daisy had persuaded a family friend to teach her to fly as a young woman. Now her country is at war, she is determined to put her skills to good use, enlisting in the Air Transport Auxiliary. There she forges new friendships - but she never forgets her childhood friend and cousin, Luke, who has joined the RAF as a fighter pilot. As war rages in the skies and on the ground, Daisy, her friends and her family - at home and across the Channel - will find their bravery and strength tested to the very limits in their determination to save their country. And they have learned one of the most valuable lessons of all: true love will find a way.

In the three books of THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION, Elizabeth Moon swept us away to an extraordinary fantasy world and introduced us to Paksenarrion, a lowly sheepfarmer's daughter destined to become a warrior among warriors and a paladin beyond compare. But Paksenarrion could never have fulfilled her destiny had it not been for one who came before. Gird, the peasant. Gird, the armsman. Gird, the Liberator, who taught his people that they could fight - and win - against oppression. This is his story. Surrender None is the first of two prequels to the hugely popular DEED OF PAKSENARRION trilogy.

Set in Lincolnshire during World War 2, Wartime Friends is a tale of unbreakable bonds in times of strife, by bestselling author of The Poacher's Daughter, Margaret Dickinson. It is 1940s coastal Lincolnshire and Carolyn Holmes is keen to do what she can for the war effort. Raised on the family farm, she is prevented by her mother from going to secretarial college. Phyllis Carter, a widow from the Great War, lives close by with her son, Peter, who works on the farm. Peter and Carolyn are great friends but do not see a future together, although it is the dearest wish of both mothers to see them marry. After their home town is caught in an air raid, Peter decides to volunteer – to the distress of his mother – and Carolyn leaves to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service – the 'women's branch' of the British Army. It is there she meets Beryl Morley, who will become a lifelong friend. Carolyn and Beryl are posted to Beaumanor Hall as ‘listeners’. This is the most difficult of signals intelligence gathering, intercepting enemy messages which are then sent to Bletchley Park for deciphering. As the war unfolds and their work becomes even more vital, Carolyn and Beryl’s friendship strengthens and, in the dangerous times that follow, they will both need the support of the other as they face personal troubles of their own – and the lives of those they love are put at risk . . .

“A fast, smart novel, brighter than a meteor and twice as scary. Stephen Woodworth provides shocks and thoughts in equal measure, and climbs right to the top!”—Greg Bear In a world where the dead can testify against the living, someone is getting away with murder. Because to every generation are born a select few souls with violet-colored eyes, and the ability to channel the dead. Both rare and precious—and rigidly controlled by a society that craves their services—these Violets perform a number of different duties. The most fortunate increase the world's cultural heritage by channeling the still-creative spirits of famous dead artists and musicians. The least fortunate aid the police and the law courts, catching criminals by interviewing the deceased victims of violent crime. But now the Violets themselves have become the target of a brutal serial murderer—a murderer who had learned how to mask his or her identity even from the victims. Can the FBI, aided by a Violet so scared of death that she is afraid to live, uncover the criminal in time? Or must more of her race be dispatched to the realm that has haunted them all since childhood? Praise for Through Violet Eyes “Chilling . . . shades of Minority Report and The Eyes of Laura Mars . . . tantalizing puzzle rife with red herrings, one made all the more entertaining by brisk pacing and strong internal logic.”—Publishers Weekly a“Wow . . . one cool idea and Stephen Woodworth makes it work like fine oiled machinery. Full of energy and suspense, Through Violet Eyes is a great and original first novel. I look forward to his next.”—Joe R. Lansdale “An eerie and compelling page-turner that maps the terra incognita between the living and the dead, loss and redemption, desire and grief, at the same time exploring what it means to be human in a frightening otherworld that too closely evokes our own reality.”—Elizabeth Hand

Mongrel Nation surveys the history of the United Kingdom’s African, Asian, and Caribbean populations from 1948 to the present, working at the juncture of cultural studies, literary criticism, and postcolonial theory. Ashley Dawson argues that during the past fifty years Asian and black intellectuals from Sam Selvon to Zadie Smith have continually challenged the United Kingdom’s exclusionary definitions of citizenship, using innovative forms of cultural expression to reconfigure definitions of belonging in the postcolonial age. By examining popular culture and exploring topics such as the nexus of race and gender, the growth of transnational politics, and the clash between first- and second-generation immigrants, Dawson broadens and enlivens the field of postcolonial studies. Mongrel Nation gives readers a broad landscape from which to view the shifting currents of politics, literature, and culture in postcolonial Britain. At a time when the contradictions of expansionist braggadocio again dominate the world stage, Mongrel Nation usefully illuminates the legacy of imperialism and suggests that creative voices of resistance can never be silenced.Dawson “Elegant, eloquent, and full of imaginative insight, Mongrel Nation is a refreshing, engaged, and informative addition to post-colonial and diasporic literary scholarship.” —Hazel V. Carby, Yale University “Eloquent and strong, insightful and historically precise, lively and engaging, Mongrel Nation is an expansive history of twentieth-century internationalist encounters that provides a broader landscape from which to understand currents, shifts, and historical junctures that shaped the international postcolonial imagination.” —May Joseph, Pratt Institute Ashley Dawson is Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island. He is coeditor of the forthcoming Exceptional State: Contemporary U.S. Culture and the New Imperialism.

Can love and friendship survive hardship and war?Following the gripping story of the Ryan family in Margaret Dickinson's top ten bestseller The Buffer Girls, Daughters of Courage sees Emily and Trip fight to keep their new life afloat in the turbulent 1930s.Emily Ryan has gone up in the world since her arrival in Sheffield. Brought there by her mother's ambitious schemes for her brother, Josh, she had found work as a buffer girl polishing cutlery in the city's famous trade. With the help of a friend, Nell, Emily eventually set up her own buffing business employing those with whom she had once worked.Married to Thomas Trippet - 'Trip' to his friends - they plan to build a life together, but when Lucy, Nell's daughter, disappears it seems that the menace from the past is never very far away. Trip is now a partner with his half-brother in the Trippet family's cutlery manufacturing business, but their success is threatened by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Can Emily keep their family and friends safe from the shadow of unemployment?And then comes the threat of another war . . .

The Buffer Girls is an inspiring tale of love, heartache and ambition from bestselling author Margaret Dickinson. It is 1920 in the Derbyshire dales. The Ryan family are adjusting to life now that the war is over. Walter has returned home a broken man and so it falls to his son and daughter, Josh and Emily, to keep the family candle-making business going. The Ryan children grew up with Amy Clark, daughter of the village blacksmith, and Thomas 'Trip' Trippett, whose father owns a cutlery business in Sheffield. Romance blossoms for Josh and Amy while Emily falls in love with Trip, but she is unsure if the feeling is mutual. Martha Ryan is fiercely ambitious for her son and so she uproots her family to Sheffield, but all Josh wants is to continue the family business and marry Amy. As the Ryans do their best to adapt to city life, their friendly neighbour, Lizzie, helps Emily find employment as a Buffer Girl polishing cutlery at a local factory. It turns out that it is Emily who is best equipped to forge a career but, as time goes on, problems and even dangers arise that the Ryan family could not possibly have foreseen.