Science has brought us many benefits for our health, our understanding, and our quality of life in all sorts of positive ways. We are all the better for it. But there is also a darker side when science reaches into the shadows. It claims that a fuller knowledge would benefit everyone, it must investigate. But, let’s be honest, some in science have lost their true calling and their ideas and notions come from these darker impulses. Their thoughts become muddled, their path more for themselv...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them is Emma Vane.

In this series we turn the pages of classic short stories to put together the literary building blocks of how a particular genre or theme began, how it built its foundations to become the well-loved and well-worn genre that it is today.Do authors have the same ideas at more or less the same time? Or can they sniff out an opportunity as to which way the tastes of an audience are moving.Success undoubtedly builds success and in literary terms we can more politely say that imi...

In these more welcome days of equality between the sexes we usually forget that the often cited ‘Gentler Sex’ can have dark and disturbing trains of thought that are more than the equal of their male brethren. Indeed, they can manipulate words in a matter of lines from comforting and loving to dark, foreboding and utterly terrifying. These femme fatales really do create stories that leech vile characters into dark and disturbing quite horrific narratives.

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

**Friendship is found far from home. Set in the years before WW2 and travelling from London to the island of Guernsey, The Guernsey Girls is the first in a touching series from Mary Wood, author of The Jam Factory Girls.'Wood is a born storyteller' – Lancashire Evening PostJanuary 1936.** After the hard work of being a maid at Wallington Manor in the lead-up to Christmas, Annie is thrilled at the prospect of going home to Bethnal Green. She has mi...

**The final heartbreaking instalment of The Guernsey Girls wartime trilogy by Mary Wood, bestselling author of The Orphanage Girls series.Their dreams are worth fighting for . . .**Winter, 1941. Olivia’s life in Guernsey is uprooted by the Nazi occupation. Forced to flee in the dead of night, she escapes to London’s East End. As she steps foot in Bethnal Green, Olivia’s former life is there to greet her, and she’s ordered to spy for the British. To find her...

**From Mary Wood, bestselling author of The Jam Factory Girls, comes the second heartfelt installment in The Guernsey Girls trilogy.War separates them, but it cannot dampen their spirits . . .Spring, 1940.** Annie’s new husband Ricky leaves to fight, but she soon discovers battles brewing closer to home. As her sister Janey begins to unravel, only Annie can pick up the pieces – and, with London’s police officers on the front line, she must also step up at work and ...

Brought to you by Penguin.As the Great War rages across Europe, twenty-one year old Ruby Archer decides to ‘do her bit’ at an East End munitions factory. The work is relentless and deafening, but the camaraderie of the other girls carries her through.As the threat of another Zeppelin attack grows by the day, Ruby cannot ignore the abandoned animals scavenging the local streets. She rescues a stray kitten, Tess, and takes in an injured terrier Mac, but when a...

Brought to you by Penguin.With the Great War raging and Christmas on the horizon, can one woman’s bravery save the day?East London, 1916: The Sanctuary Lane Animal Hospital is proving a huge success. For its founder Ruby Archer, this is a dream come true – and her blossoming romance with a local boy is the icing on the cake.But in wartime things change in the blink of an eye. When a heartbreaking tragedy shatters Ruby’s world, suddenl...

**Brought to you by Penguin.New stories are being written at The Little Penguin Bookshop…**Carrie Anderson’s business selling books at her local train station is thriving and, with her beloved Mike returned from war, everything feels as though it is falling into place. That is, until Mike is sent to Washington as a liaison between Britain and America.When her twin brother, Johnnie, a fighter pilot, is injured, and her bookstall falls on hard times, Carrie m...