A moving and emotional final novel from bestselling author, Ruth Hamilton.In Ruth Hamilton's final novel For the Love of Liverpool, Kate Owen is a woman fleeing from the past. Leaving a rewarding job in London, she's uprooted her life and given away her daughter to keep them both safe. Damaged from a traumatic event that broke her family apart, she attempts to find peace in the city she now calls home: Liverpool. It's there she meets the seemingly eligible Alex Price, who offers her a glimpse of a happy future she thought could never exist. But there are those in London who can never forget what she did, and worse, believe she holds the key to the unfinished business she left behind in the capital. They intend to track her down by whatever means necessary and until they're gone she will never find peace and be reunited with her daughter.Growing closer to Alex, the layers of their lives are peeled away and Kate realizes he is also hurting from...

The Chandlers had been making candles in Bolton for five hundred years, and had given their name to the village of Chandlers Green. The dynasty, now in decline and ruled by Richard Chandler, is reduced to an unhappy household and a few tenanted properties. But Richard continues to behave as though he were lord of the manor. Jean, his wife, is terrified of him; his aunt, Anna Chandler, has moved out of the house and is writing a history of candlemaking; his grown-up children despise him, but fear for their mother if they were to leave home. And now Richard's arch-enemy, Alf Martindale, is planning to move into his village, and Richard knows that the past is catching up with him fast. A crisis forces him to leave his manor for a while, and he has no way of knowing that Jean is arming herself against his return. The past and the present are about to come together in a way that can only end in tragedy... **

Three novels of love, loss and family secrets, from Liverpool's best-loved author.Mersey View: After a long, broken marriage, Lucy Henshaw decides to leave home and start afresh in a beautiful house overlooking the Mersey. With a new life come new friends, but when Lucy's husband falls ill she realises she may not be as far from the past as she thought, and she may need her new friends more than ever.The Liverpool Girl: At the outbreak of World War Two, Eileen's daughter Mel refuses to be evacuated. So Eileen and Mel move away from the street and family they love and face an unknown future together. Thus begins a journey of forbidden love, tragedy and a city left crumbling into the craters by the Luftwaffe. Their lives will never be the same again.Lights of Liverpool: Three families in Liverpool; the O'Neils, the Allens and Tess and Don Compton. Each is struggling to keep their families together. But behind the three families, two...

Would they finally find happiness in Liverpool? In 1930, Bridget O'Brien, a young widow with two children, fled her brutal and bigoted father and headed for Liverpool and an arranged marriage with a man she had never met. Her destination, the famous Scotland Road, was noisome and terrifying and a far cry from the clean air and flowing rivers of the only country she had known, Ireland. When she met her middle-aged bridegroom, Sam Bell, whose twin sons were older than she was, her sense of isolation only increased. Anthony, one of her so-called stepsons, also held out the strong hand of friendship, but Liam, the favourite of his father, had the power to terrify her. Liam was cold, compelling, mysterious and antagonistic. He was also a priest.

It was 1950. Magsy O'Gara, her husband killed in the war, plodded through her daily routine as a hospital cleaner, dedicating all her spare time to Beth, her genius daughter. Pursued by men who admired her great beauty, she was determined to remain a widow. Nothing was to divert her from her gruelling schedule. Her goal was simple: Beth would become a doctor. Beth, however, wanted a normal life – a brother, a sister, a stepfather who might make her wonderful mother happy. So Beth was delighted when a personable man began to court Magsy. Across, the road at number 1, Nellie Hulme, trapped in a world of silence, watched the other two Saturday girls. Deaf since infancy, Nellie had a secret so huge that it amused her. What would folk have thought had they known her true position in life? And why did she 'hear' in her dreams?

Letting go of the past to grasp the future... Andrew Sanderson, brilliant surgeon and renowned musician, is still grieving the death of his beloved wife Mary when his younger daughter turns up on the doorstep having left her wealthy and philandering husband. It's not long before the house is overrun with daughters, grandchildren, sons-in-law and a boisterous stray dog called Storm. At Andrew's time of life, is this really what he needs? One thing is sure, home is a lot more interesting than it once was, and things have certainly changed from when he was a boy growing up in a town that nestled in the arms of inland Lancashire's lush moors. As he reminisces about his past and the love he once shared with his wife Mary, Andrew starts to realize that there is indeed a new road to be travelled; he just has to let go of his grief and embrace tomorrow...

SynopsisAnnie Byrne was born during one of the worst winters Lancashire ever remembered. When the doctor finally got through the nine-foot drifts of snow, mother and daughter were in a pretty bad way, but both the new-born Annie and her exhausted mother - a spinner in the cotton mill - were fighters, tough and determined not to let the world knock them down.They needed to be tough, for when Annie's father was killed in the war, Nancy married again. And Eddie Higson - once he'd courted and won Nancy Byrne - turned into a nightmare of a man, terrorizing the young girl with one secret evil after another.She had two friends who helped her through these bad years. Martin Cullen, rough, uneducated, loyal, who knew he wasn't good enough for her, and David Pritchard, the doctor who had supported her through the worst times and who had bad problems of his own.Together they watched her grow into a beautiful young woman, desperately fighting the legacy of her childhood.

When Bernard Walsh moved his family from Bolton to Liverpool he did not expect the past to pursue him. But then Theresa Nolan, consumptive, angry and bent on revenge, arrived in the city and settled within three miles of Bernard's new home.While Theresa wrought havoc from the Mersey to the moorlands of Lancashire, two innocent children trod paths separated by fate yet joined by blood. Against a backdrop of dissent and violence, the two young girls began to wend their often troubled routes towards the tranquillity and comradeship of the Corner House.

In 1946, Alice Quigley returns to her childhood home on Penny Lane, having lost her house in Bootle and three sisters to the bombs that fell over Liverpool. Estranged from her husband Dan, who suffered from two strokes triggered during the Blitz, she finds comfort in living closer to her remaining sister, Nellie, and a cast of new neighbours. But they too have problems of their own: Vera Corcoran fears for her life at the hands of an abusive husband and Olga Konstantinov fled Russia to seek a new life in Britain. But even though the bombs have stopped falling, tremors still rock the family when Alice's reviled mother is kicked out of Nellie's home and seeks vengeance. Despised by her daughters, Elsie Stewart was a cruel mother and forced their father to an early grave. Alice is desperate to start a family of her own and be a much better example to her own children. But will it be with the man she's married to? And when visions from the past resurface, she soon uncovers a...

Laura Starling, now wealthy and successful, has survived a bitter past. She fled from a tyrannical mother into the clutches of a sadistic man. She endured poverty, fear and pain. Then along came Ben Starling, older, wiser, who smoothed her path and gave her love and security. But now Ben has become a stranger who has slipped beyond her reach. As her stability threatens to disintegrate once more, a thin, waif-like girl from Liverpool thrusts her way into Laura's life - a girl who is to prove a link with the past. But no one can help Laura make the decisions that will alter the course of her existence. As the September starlings gather, Laura realises she must take courage and forge her own future.

What possible connections might exist between an aged man who used to sell shoes, some ladies of the night, three abused schoolboys, two nuns, two police officers, a philanthropist, a serial killer, a drugs cartel, Lime Street Station and a mansion in Southport in whose grounds donkeys and horses are kept?The answer lies in love, friendship and the determination to endure all the way to the winning post.Eve, owner and madam at Meadowbank Farm, is keen to secure a deal that keeps her in pocket and her clients happy. But is she a match for Babs, a 'Baby Girl' in this house of ill repute? Babs has her own agenda, and in order to fulfil her dream of a decent life, she must first overcome Madam Eve.Meanwhile, a deranged killer walks the Dock Road. 'Inspired' by a vision, he seeks to clean up Liverpool. When he finds Eve's farm, he plans to cast his net on what promises to be a great catch.

Eccentricity is the family byword for the Compton-Milnes - The Compton-Milnes are eccentric, to say the least. A marriage between Gus, a reclusive but brilliant professor, and Lisa, a promiscuous cosmetic surgery addict, has produced Ben, an OCD-riddled genius, and his self-sacrificing sister Harriet, while Gus's acerbic invalid mother rules over them all from her attic throne room. But when Lisa's lover turns on her, the family must pull together to survive . . .

An absorbing tale of the strength and heartbreak of family ties - Winter, 1940. Anna MacRae is only five years old when her mother dies in childbirth and she is left with twin baby sisters. Anna is a gifted child, with a warm personality to match, but not so her sisters – and as, through the years, their pranks turn to stealing, bullying and worse, Anna must learn to cope with them if she is ever to find happiness of her own.