It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elzunia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF.

Suffolk, 1939: Julia Compton has a beautifully well-ordered life. Once a promising musician, she now has a handsome husband who pays the bills, a young son she adores and a housekeeper who takes care of her comfortable home. Then, on the eve of war, something unexpected happens. She falls in love. Cut off from family and friends, Julia loses everything. Penniless and denied access to her son, she is cast adrift in wartime London with her bohemian filmmaker lover, Dougie.

London, 1941. The East End Angels - Frankie, Bella and Winnie - are settled into life as ambulance crew members at LAAS Station Seventy-Five. The threat of air raids and other atrocities are a constant worry, but life continues regardless, and the weight of responsibility weighs heavy on each of them. Frankie's grandfather is unwell, and she promised him she would always look after Ivy, her stepgrandmother, but things between the two women are becoming increasingly strained. And then Frankie discovers something that turns everything she thought she knew about herself on its head.

Yesterday was Alice’s wedding day. She is thousands of miles away from home when she wakes to see a wave on the horizon,taller than her guest house on Kanyakumari beach. Her husband is nowhere to be seen. On the other side of the world is Alice’s mother, Violet. Forced to leave the idyllic Wiltshire village, Imber, after it was requisitioned by the army, Violet is haunted by the shadow of the man she loved and the home that lies in ruins.

July 1942, and 23-year-old nightclub singer Kate Watson has made a home for herself in bomb-blitzed London. A motley crew of friends has replaced the family she's not spoken to in years. Until Kate's sister Sarah walks back into her life, asking her to return home to Dorset for one month to look after her daughter, Lizzie. Reluctantly Kate agrees, though it means facing the troubled past she hoped she'd escaped. 

The Adams family were poor, cheerful and, above all, respectable. There was Mrs Adams, a widow having lost her husband in the Boer War; Boots, the bright one; Tommy, the quiet one; Sammy, a wheeler dealer in the making; and Lizzy. Lizzy was a real pearl - one of the prettiest girls in Walworth. Then Lizzy falls in love it is 1914. War is coming, and everyone is going to be affected. Will the Adams family - gutsy, tough and cheeky - pull through? Down Lambeth Way is the first in Mary Jane Staples' Adams Family series. Their story continues in Our Emily.

Winter, 1942. Brenda and Joyce are just two of the girls who have joined the Women’s Land Army and are doing their bit for the war effort. But after months working on farms in the Yorkshire Dales, they’re looking for a fresh challenge. Despite the bitter cold of their new billets high in the remote fells, their fear for those away fighting, and concern for family and friends, there is warmth to be found in faces old and new, and plans for a jolly Christmas are afoot.

In the summer of 1913, the world seems full of possibility for four very different young men. Young Jean-Baptiste dreams of the day he'll leave his Picardy home and row down-river to the sea. Earnest and hard-working Frank has come to London to take up an apprenticeship in Regent Street. His ambitions are self-improvement, a wife and, above all, a bicycle. Organ scholar Benedict is anxious yet enthralled by the sensations of his synaesthesia.

Underground, we are at once isolated and connected. We avoid eye contact and conversation while our lives literally intersect with those of strangers. As we stand on the tube, it becomes possible to travel far further than expected - and this sense of possibility lies at the heart of this stunning collection. Twelve writers explore life on the London Underground through eleven short stories and one memoir, commissioned to mark the opening of the Elizabeth line in 2018.

It is 1946, and the eve of the harshest winter for a hundred years. Servicemen are pouring home from the war to a land beset by stringent food and job shortages and a desperate housing crisis. As anti-Polish refugee propaganda reaches its height, Wladyslaw Malinowski, a young veteran of Monte Cassino, now stranded in a resettlement camp on the Somerset Levels, attempts to start a new life on a withy farm in the middle of the wetlands.

1936. George Street, West Yorkshire, houses a gleaming, brand-new telephone exchange where a group of capable girls works the complicated electrical switchboards. Among them are Cynthia, Norma and Millicent, who relish the busy, efficient atmosphere and the independence and friendship their jobs have given them. But when Millicent connects a telephone call for an old friend, and listens in to the conversation - breaking one of the telephonists' main rules - she, and then Norma and Cynthia too, become caught up in a story of scandal, corruption and murder.

It is June 1940, and as the bombs fall the women at home must dig deep. Tucked on the edge of the Lake District lies Mary Vale, a Mother and Baby Home open to unmarried women and their children. But tensions arise when three very different women walk through the doors.

A life of poverty in a cramped pit cottage is all that 17-year-old Ruby Dinsdale has known. Even with her father and younger brother working at the coal mine, money is tight. Her mother, Mary, is skilled at stretching what little they have, but the small contribution Ruby makes from her job at the local pub makes all the difference. So when Ruby is sacked, and Mary becomes pregnant again, the family's challenges are greater than ever. When charming Miner Gordon begins to court Ruby, it seems as though happiness is on the horizon.

August 1941: As war sweeps across Britain and millions of men enlist, women must fight the battle on the home front. Fran always thought she would marry her childhood sweetheart and live in Massingham, the beloved pit village she has always called home. But the opening of a munitions factory in the north-east of England presents a new opportunity. Against her father's wishes and with best friends Sarah and Beth by her side, Fran signs up to join the ranks of women at the factory. It's dangerous work, but the friends discover that their lives are only just beginning. 

The Sweet family have run the local bakery for as long as anyone can remember. Twins Ruby and Mary Sweet help their widowed father out when they can. Mary loves baking and has no intention of leaving their small Gloucestershire village while Ruby dreams of life in London. But as war threatens, there will be changes for all of the Sweet family, with brother Charlie off to serve and cousin Frances facing evacuation. But there will be opportunities, too, as the twins' baking talent catches the attention of the Ministry of Food.