Chocolate Girls

Pretty seventeen-year-old Greta has never known a stable family life. With no father, and loathing her mother Ruby's latest boyfriend, Greta finds life hard at home and is happiest at work with her friends at the Cadbury factory in Birmingham where she is popular with the boys. Life takes a turn for the worse when her missing vixen of a sister Marleen turns up during the freezing winter of 1962. Greta soon decides that her only way out is marriage, but all too soon she discovers that life with her old class mate Trevor is not a ticket to freedom and happiness. She finds herself on the streets, pregnant and homeless . . . She is taken in by her mother's old friends, Edie and Anatoli Gruschov. In Anatoli, Greta finds the father she has never had. Kindly Edie loves to mother people and is desperately missing her son David and his family who have settled in Israel. But the love and security of this haven is soon shattered by appalling tragedy, which affects all the chocolate girls and their children and changes life forever . . . Continuing the saga begun in Annie Murray's Chocolate Girls, and set in 1960s Birmingham, The Bells of Bournville Green is a story of families whose lives are entwined, of belonging and loss . . . and of a young woman's search for transforming love read by Annie Aldington. The stunning sequel to the bestselling Birmingham saga The Chocolate Girls Annie Murray was born in Berkshire and read English at St John's College, Oxford. Her first 'Birmingham' novel, Birmingham Rose, hit The Times bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently written many other successful novels, including A Hopscotch Summer, Soldier Girl and the bestselling Chocolate Girls. Annie has four children and lives near Reading.

A heart-warming tale of friendship and family This warm-hearted and gritty chapter for the Chocolate Girls packs in all those ingredients—relationships, romance, the uncertainties of wartime and human compassion—which have made this series such a delicious treat for all saga fans “Homecoming for the Chocolate Girls” is the heartfelt and dramatic conclusion to Annie Murray's Sunday Times bestselling series following the lives of the women and girls who worked at the Cadbury Factory in Birmingham. 1946: The war might be over, but for the Gilby family there are still battles to be fought at home... For Birmingham and the Gilby family the war years have been a time of great change. With husband Len having left her for another woman, Ann Gilby is finally free to follow her heart. While the neighbors may be scandalized by having a divorcee in their midst, Ann is determined to rise above the local gossip and make a happy home with her former sweetheart, the father of Ann's youngest child. Daughters Joy and Sheila are lucky enough to have their menfolk back home, but Joy's husband has returned a broken man from his experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. And Sheila's husband is finding his wartime adventures and travels have made Birmingham feel small by comparison. Then there's Anne's youngest child, Martin, who is still coming to terms with learning who his real father is, as well as having secrets of his own...