Rachel Billington Bücher

Three women, born at the outbreak of World War II, who've grown up in widely differing circumstances, form an improbable friendship that sustains them through forty years. Connie is the youngest member of a large Irish family and Ireland's too small to contain her. She is beautiful and impulsive. Men love her, while she roars through life, never looking before she leaps - sometimes onto rocks. Nina is English and middle-class, the shy, thoughtful, daughter of an army officer. She marries her boyhood love and has two children before realising how unfulfilled she is, and that painting is her true passion. Fay is American and Jewish, the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor. She's the ambitious one, who fulfils her dream of becoming a doctor before admitting a darker, more complex side to her nature. Through love, marriage, children, work, divorce and tragedy, this is a beautifully written and compelling novel of friendship.

On a bright summer's day in West London, an attractive, young woman is viciously stabbed by a stranger and left for dead. Her attacker is caught and sent to prison. Lydia's body slowly heals, leaving thin white scars, while her mind's repair takes longer.

An emotional, gritty family drama exploring the power of frustrated love and intense sibling rivalry - from the acclaimed author of ONE SUMMER and A WOMAN'S LIFE

A poignant and compelling story of three lives torn apart by the Battle of Gallipoli. Arthur Tarrant, an Oxford graduate headed for his uncle's law firm, changes path leaving behind his fiancee Sylvia and joins the army, destined for Gallipoli. There, his life becomes entwined with that of Fred Chaffey, a country boy from Dorset. Glory tells of the fatal errors made by the leaders of the army, the heroism of the men, and the struggles to understand the situation while nurturing relationships in the most strange and difficult of circumstances.

Set in 1822 during Chile's fight for independence, the story follows British Admiral Thomas Cochrane and widow Maria Graham. As they navigate their brief but intense connection, both seek solace after losing their spouses. The narrative is inspired by historical journals, though no evidence of romance exists.

Occasionally panoramic, more often intimate, in Clouds of Love and War author Rachel Billington balances a detailed and highly researched picture of the life of a Second World War Spitfire pilot with the travails and ambitions of a young woman too often on her own. The result is both a gripping story of war and a sensitive story of love, a love that struggles to survive. Eddie and Eva meet on the eve of the Second World War. Eddie only wants to be a flyer, to find escape in the clouds from his own complicated family. However, the Battle of Britain makes a pilot's life a dangerous way to flee reality. Eva has her own passionate longing: to become a painter. When Eva's Jewish mother disappears to Germany, she is left alone with her elderly father. Both Eddie and Eva come of age at a time that teaches them that happiness is always fleeting, but there are things worth living - or dying - for. Through the connecting stories of these young people and their wider families, and against a background of southern county airfields, London, Oxford, Dorset and France, Rachel Billington brings the world of war time England, now eighty years in the past, back to life.