Two Penn Orth Of Sky

Two penn'orth of sky is all you can see from dirty, cramped Nightingale Court where Emmy lives with her widowed mother. Her main aim in life is to escape and she sees marriage as her best way out. When Peter Wesley, First Officer aboard a cruise ship, proposes, she accepts eagerly. The Wesleys have a baby, Diana, and all seems set fair for the small family, but Peter is killed and Emmy left penniless. She and Diana are forced to move back to Nightingale Court. Emmy has to take work as a waitress but she becomes ill and when suitors appear, Diana detests them all... A tale of hardship, heartbreak and hope from a beloved storyteller, Two Penn'orth of Sky is classic Katie Flynn and sure to delight every one of her readers.

Two sisters. A broken childhood. A heartbreaking journey. The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable ... In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot. Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother. For Barbie, twelve years younger, the journey was to be more perilous but, spurred on by her sister's courage and her desperate desire to be reunited with her mother, she joined Eva on a journey no child should ever have to endure. Over three hundred miles across a country ravaged by a terrible war, they encountered unimaginable hardship, extraordinary courage and overwhelming generosity. Against all the odds, they survived. But neither sister came out of the journey unscathed ...

Roger McGough, Levi Tafari, Willy Russell, Terence Davies, James Hanley, George Garrett, J.G. Farrell, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, Beryl Bainbridge, Jimmy McGovern, Alan Bleasdale, Helen Forrester, Lyn Andrews, Margaret Murphy, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell... no matter what the genre Liverpool seems to have generated some of the most provocative and interesting writers of the last seventy-five years. Intended to mark and celebrate Liverpool’s 800th birthday in 2007 and its status as European City of Culture in 2008, this collection of essays and interviews addresses the wide range of writing that has emerged from Liverpool from the 1930s to the present day. It asks if there is a distinctive Liverpool voice, and if so, how it might be identified. Featuring interviews with Liverpool-born film director and novelist, Terence Davies, (Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes and The House of Mirth), Roger McGough, Willy Russell and Levi Tafari along with contributions from leading cultural critics such as former NME journalist and Mojo magazine founder Paul Du Noyer and award-winning poet George Szirtes, Liverpool Writing will be of interest to readers fascinated by the influences on and of the city dubbed ‘the Centre of the Creative Universe’.

It is a cold night and Sylvie Dugdale is weeping as she walks by the Mersey. A figure approaches and, dodging aside to avoid him, she falls into the river. Constable Brendan O'Hara, just coming off duty, sees the girl's plight and dives in to rescue her. He is dazzled by her beauty but Sylvie's husband is in prison and the closeness that Brendan soon longs for is impossible. Sylvie has to escape from Liverpool, so Brendan arranges for her to stay with his cousin Caitlin in Dublin until it is safe to return. There she meets Maeve, a crippled girl from the slums, who will change all their lives when a little girl is lost ...

Liverpool, 1902. Bill and Isobel Logan scratch a living by selling their shrimps around the streets, but Amy, their youngest daughter, hates the smell, about which their neighbour, Paddy Keagan, constantly taunts her. When Isobel dies, Bill marries Suzie Keagan, a good-looking widow but lazy and selfish. The Keagans move in and tension begins to mount ... Amy is desperate to get away. She takes a room-share in the city centre but Liverpool is in turmoil with strikes and riots, and life is hard for young girls. Furthermore, Amy's visits home are spoiled by the presence of the hated Paddy ... A warm and moving story of young people and their loves and jealousies, played out against the hardship and humour of their Liverpool background.

Young Kitty Drinkwater lives in Paradise Court, just off Burlington Street. Life is tough in Liverpool in the years after the First World War and Kitty is always hungry and dressed in rags. As the eldest child, she is the scapegoat for her feckless, drunken mother. She dreams of a better life... Lilac Larkin's prospects, by contrast, are very different; she is beautiful, self-possessed young woman, and even when her pleasant job as a lady's maid comes to an end and she starts work in a bag factory, she is sure that her life will be full of promise and excitement... So when the two girls meet by chance in a millinery shop, neither can have any idea what changes in their lives the encounter will bring nor how strangely fate will work to bring them together once more.

It takes courage to overcome the odds... Liverpool 1928: abandoned by her mother at a very young age, Dot McCann lives a lonely life with her distant aunt and uncle. A cuckoo in the nest, she spends her days trying to keep out of trouble. When Dot overhears a conversation whilst playing in the street, her life changes for ever. What she discovers could send one man to prison and another to the gallows. In a desperate attempt to right a wrong, Dot teams up with runaway orphan Corky, Emma, a local jeweller whose shop has been burgled, and Nick, a handsome young reporter investigating the crime. But Dot and Emma have been recognised and they soon find themselves in very real danger. Will they uncover the truth before it’s too late?