Mary Jane Staples

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: Pride Of Walworth: Description:
There was a new family in Browning Stree, Walworth p the Harrisons. Respectable and well-belhaved, the only thing unusual about them was that Mr Harrison was never there. He was sailor, said Ma Harrison, away fighting priates in the China Seas. Actually 'Knocker' Harrison was in Marsham Gaol - he had unfortunately burgled a lady's suite when she happened to be there. Pa wasn't really a very good burglar. When youn Nick Harrison, eldest son and heir of Ma and Knocker, met Annabelle Somers h found himself in a very difficult situation. For seventeen-year-old Annabelle was a peach of agirl, was related to the highly respectable Adams family, and was relly quite keen on Nick, very interested in him and in his family. What with keeping Annabelle at arm's length in case she found out abotu Pa, and with the problems of runing the Browning Street Roves football team (the ball was owned by Chrissie Evans who laid down her own rules about the team) Nick sometimes wondered if his life would eve be sorted out.

Title: The Young Ones: Description:
A sequel to Two For Three Farthings.

Title: Rising Summer: Description:
Tim Hardy was three when his parents were killed in a train crash and he went to live with his Aunt May, first in New Cross, and then to Walworth where the living was cheaper. They managed splendidly - and then came the war. Tim Hardy became Gunner Hardy and Aunt May spent most of her nights in the Walworth air raid shelters with Tim keeping an eye on her whenever he was able. When he got posted to Suffolk he wasn't too pleased - Suffolk was Country, not like London at all. But in fact there were a lot of things about Sheldham that rminded him of home - the Walworth evacuees for a start. those of them that weren't creating havoc in the Suffolk village were creating havoc in Tim's life. Minnie Beavers - ex-Camberwell - was fifteen, pert, pretty, and wildly in love with Tim. She was determined to inveigle him into marriage the minue she was old enough. Tim was equally determined to escape and choose his own girl. By the time Tim had gone away to fight the war, and Minnie had joined the WAAF, a great many things had changed in both their lives.

Title: The Camberwell Raid: Description:
The Adams family get embroiled in a local bank raid.

Title: The Last Summer: Description:
The Adams family prepare for war.

Title: Family At War: Description:
Wartime bravery, love and tragedy come to the Adams family

Title: Fire Over London: Description:
The wartime blitz hits London - and the Adams family

Title: Tomorrow Is Another Day: Description:
Joy and tragedy befall the Adams family in wartime.

Title: The Way Ahead: Description:
More wartime adventures for the Adams family

Title: Churchill's People: Description:
The Adams family fights on

Title: Bright Day, Dark Night: Description:
The Adams family defiant - escaping from blitz torn London

Title: The Homecoming: Description:
The Adams family gets to grips with peacetime.

Title: Appointment At The Palace (adams Family): Description:
A big day for the Adams family

Title: Year Of Victory: Description:
At last - the end of the war is in sight for the Adams family.

Title: The Homecoming Plus Sons And Daugthers: Description:
Omnibus edition THE HOMECOMING: It is 1946 and with the war at last over, the younger members of teh Adams family are coming home. SONS AND DAUGHTERS: By 1949 With Sammy and Boots steadily rebuidling the old family firm, life in Walworth has nearly returned to normal for the Adams family. However, .....

Title: Sergeant Joe: Description:
A wonderful Saga of Cockney Life.

Title: Echoes Of Yesterday: Description:
June 1916 Sergeant Boots Adams of the Royal West Kents, with his men are billeted on the Descartes farm in Northern France. In a short break from turmoil and the horrow of the trenches.

Title: The Ghost Of Whitechapel: Description:
The shadow of Jack the Ripper returns to the East End.

Title: Missing Person: Description:
The house in Caulfield Place, off Browning Sreet in Walworth, was haunted, or at least that's what the street kids said. So when two men, a woman, and a parrot moved in, everyone was very interested, especially fourteen-year-old Cassie Ford, who was particularly fascinated by the parrot. And it was just about this time that Mr Finch, Chinese Lady's husband, and Boots's stepfather, began to get mysterious telephone calls. Mr Finch had never told the rest of teh Adams family - except for Boots - the secrets of his past, or what kind of work he did for the government, and he decided not to tell them about the slightly sinister telephone calls either. It was when he took CHinese Lady on a summer's day jaunt in his Morris motorcar that things began to happen. For, in the Hog's Back Hotel, chinese Lady went to the cloakroom, and when she came back Mr Finch had vanished. It took all of Boots's ingenuity to discover what had happened, and Cassie's knowledge of teh Caulfield Place parrot was to prove a vital clue in unravelling the mystery.

Title: The Pearly Queen: Description:
The Pearly Queen was really Aunt Edie. She was thirty-ni9ne, had a good job in a factory, lived in a flat just off Camberwell Green, and had never married. Her fiance had drowned in the Thames when she was a girl and since then she had been on her own, through not from choice. Everyone loved Aunt Edie - but sespecially the Andrews family.

Title: Two For Three Farthings: Description:
Horace was ten, Ethel seven, when Jim Cooper, home from the trenches, minus an arm and just about managing on his own, found them huddled in a doorway on a wet ight in Walworth. Slightly against his better judgement he took them in 'fed them cocoa, and put them to sleep in his bed. A few days later hefound that somehow - he had become the unofficial guardian of Horace and Ethel. It was him, the orphanage, or separation for the gutsy little pair who would have to be farmed out to anyone who would take them, and Jim felt a sudden affinity for the two cheeky cockney kids. The first thing he had to do was find fresh lodgings for them all.

Title: Our Emily: Description:
Emily had been a quite horrible child. Pushy, rough, and none too clean (for it must have been Eimly who passed on her head-lice to the Adams family), she had been the bane of Mrs Adams and her children who lived next door, and especially she had been a trial to Boots, who had avoided here whenever he could. But Emily grown-uip was a different mater. She was still a cockney girl, but now she had a certain elegance, a style. The fighting toughness was still there - and she needed it. For Boots, back from the trenches, was blind, and Emily was to prove the mainstay, the beadwinner, the lover of his life.

Title: The Trap: Description:
When Jamie Blair, twenty-four, unemployed, and back from the trenches, took lodgings at Larcom Street in Walworth, he had no idea he was walking into a trp. The house was owned owned by Henry Mullins, big, burly, and a hard drinker. Henry made life hell for his four stepchildren who looked half-starved and frequently got bashed. Seventeen-year-old Kitty was the one Jamie felt most sorry for. She took the brunt of Henry Mullins' bad temper whilst trying to protect her sisters and brother. When Mullins suddenly died - in somewhat suspicious circumstances - Kitty realised they could be in trouble. If she wasn't careful the authorities would take the younger children away - split the family up. She wasn't having that, not after all they'd gone through, and nice, kind Jamie Blair was the one to save them. Too late Jamie found himself with a ready-made family and a stubborn and fiery young termagant called Kitty who was determined not to let him go.

Title: Down Lambeth Way: Description:
The Adams family of Walworth were poor, cheful, and above all respectable - even though they sometimes had to seek a little help from the pawnbroker. Mrs Adams - affectionately called Chinese Lady by her children - was a widow, her soldier husband having gone, rather carelessly, to a hero's death on the Northwest Frontier. There was Boots, the bright one, and Tommy the quiet one, and Sammy, the nine-year-old wheeler-dealer of the family. There was Mr Finch, the lodger, and dreadul Emily next door, and genteel Miss Chivers with the terrible old mother, but above all there Lizzy. Lizzy was one of teh prettiest girls in Walworth. She was young, and always sounded her aitches, and she cared terribly about being clean and net and .. proper. Lizzy was a peach of a girl. When Lizzy fell in love it was 1914. Everyone was going to be affected, things were going to change. But whatever happened, the Adams family - gutsy, tough and cheeky would come through.

Title: A Family Affair: Description:
1926 was the yar of the General Strike, but Adams Enterprises, under the wily management of Sammy Adams, youngest entrepreneur in Walworth and Lambeth, was doing very well. All the Adams brothers worked in the business, and so did two of the wives, Emily and Susie. There was just one dar cloud on the horizon -the impending rial of Gerald ponsony. Boots had been the one responsible for catching the murderer, and Ponsoy hated Boots and, indeed, the entire Adams family. He was determined to get his revenge and make them suffer. When a dapper, quiet, but rather odd lodger turned up at Doreen Paterson's house, nobody thought anything was amiss. It never occured to Doreen - who worked for Boots in Adams Enertprises and thought him just wonderful - that a strange lodger might be plotting the downfall of teh irrepressible, outrageous, and larger-than-life Adams clan.

Title: The Lodger: Description:
Maggie Wilson was only thirty-three, but life in the teeming streets of Walworth was not that easy in 1908 - not if you were a widow with four young daughters. It was pretty much a hand-to-mouth existence and without the lodger Maggie really wouldn't have managed at all. Constable Harry Bradshaw thought the Wilsons were a gutsy and brave little family - from the youngest and cheekiest, Daisy, up to the legant Trary, thirteen-years-old and quite the young lady. But the one who won most of his admiration was Maggie hereself, fighting her lonely battle against total poverty. And his fears for her concerned more that just their lack of money. For a murderer was loose in South London - a rather sinister strangler who obviously knew the lcoal streets and alleys very well indeed. A full scale investigation was put in hand, and Harry was told, in particular, to inquire into any new lodgers who had moved into the distric. And there was something very peculiar indeed about Maggie Wilson's lodger.

Title: On Mother Brown's Doorstep: Description:
a good cockney saga about the lives of the people of walworth london

Title: Ups And Downs: Description:
As the 1950s progress, several unexpected happenings ruffle the usually calm atmosphere of Adams family life. Sammy and Boots are troubled by the first stirrings of industrial unrest, as the unions start to flex their muscles and old loyalties change, while an attractive new employee causes Sammy some troubles of a different kind. The older generation are more than a little surprised at what they see around them as society moves on and the lives of the youngsters are being taken over by rock 'n' roll. Young Emily, still only thirteen but old beyond her years, catches the eye of a teddy boy, while Linda is pursued by a smooth-talking young man. But good sense and good luck prevail, and the Adams family find the strength to cope with these challenging times. Follow the story of the Adams family of Walworth in the other novels of Mary Jane Staples, all published by Corgi Books. From the Back Cover As the 1950s progress, several unexpected happenings ruffle the usually calm atmosphere of Adams family life. Sammy and Boots are troubled by the first stirrings of industrial unrest, as the unions start to flex their muscles and old loyalties change, while an attractive new employee causes Sammy some troubles of a different kind. The older generation are more than a little surprised at what they see around them as society moves on and the lives of the youngsters are being taken over by rock ‘n’ roll. Young Emily, still only thirteen but old beyond her years, catches the eye of a teddy boy, while Linda is pursued by a smooth-talking young man. But good sense and good luck prevail, and the Adams family find the strength to cope with these challenging times. About the Author Mary Jane Staples:Mary Jane Staples was born and brought up in the Walworth area of South London. She now lives in Surrey and is the author of over thirty bestselling novels about cockney life, many of which feature the well-loved Adams family.

Title: The Way Ahead: Description:
more war time adventure for the adams family

Title: Out Of The Shadows: Description:
Times move on for the Adams family in east London, and as business prospers, there are new worries to deal with. A young woman arrives who is intent on ruining Sammy Adam's winter fashion show, and Sammy must deal with her unwelcome attention. Boots has to find a solution when one of his female employees tells him about a sinister visitor, and he also does some match-making. But he doesn't realize that his family are being observed, as out of the shadows come dark and mysterious figures from the past who intrude on Boots, Polly and the twins, and his adopted daughter Rosie. Meanwhile Rosie has her hands full as her daughter Emily continues to rebel against everything around her. How will the Adams family cope, as trouble seems to lurk around every corner? From the Inside Flap Times move on for the Adams family in east London, and as business prospers there are new worries to deal with. A young woman arrives who is intent on ruining Sammy Adams's winter fashion show, and Sammy must deal with her unwelcome attention. Boots has to find a solution when one of his female employees tells him about a sinister visitor, but he doesn’t realize that his family are being observed. Out of the shadows come dark and mysterious figures from the past who intrude on Boots, Polly and the twins, and his adopted daughter Rosie.Meanwhile Rosie has her hands full as her daughter Emily continues to rebel against everything around her. How will the Adams family cope, as trouble seems to lurk around every corner? --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From the Back Cover Times move on for the Adams family in south London, and as business prospers, there are new worries to deal with. A young woman arrives who is intent on ruining Sammy Adams' winter fashion show, and Sammy must deal with her unwelcome attention. Boots has to find a solution when one of his female employees tells him about a sinister visitor, but he doesn’t realize that his family are being observed. Out of the shadows come dark and mysterious figures from the past who intrude on Boots, Polly and the twins, and his adopted daughter Rosie.Meanwhile Rosie has her hands full as her daughter Emily continues to rebel against everything around her. How will the Adams family cope, as trouble seems to lurk around every corner? About the Author Mary Jane Staples:Mary Jane Staples was born and brought up in the Walworth area of South London. She now lives in Surrey and is the author of over thirty bestselling novels about cockney life, many of which feature the well-loved Adams family.

Title: A Wartime Marriage: Description:
It is 1918; the Kaiser's empire is about to fall and Captain Harry Phillips, a prisoner of war in a Romanian hospital, has had a very hard time of it. Then, out of the blue, comes an offer he can't refuse, a ticket home to his beloved England and to the arms of his much missed fiancee Elizabeth. But this ticket comes with a heavy price to pay; Harry must marry beautiful, headstrong Princess Irena of Moldova, who's only hope of survival is to leave the country and he must risk both their lives by escorting her back to England. As they set off on their long and treacherous journey with enemies at every turn, Harry begins to realise that Irena is not only dangerous but extremely precious cargo. Will he sacrifice everything for this wartime marriage? From the Back Cover It is 1918; the Kaiser’s empire is about to fall and Captain Harry Phillips, a prisoner of war in a Romanian hospital, has had a very hard time of it.Then, out of the blue, comes an offer he can’t refuse - a ticket home to his beloved England and to the arms of his much-missed fiancée Elizabeth. But this ticket comes with a heavy price to pay; Harry must marry beautiful, headstrong Princess Irena of Moldova, whose only hope of survival is to leave the country. He is forced to risk both their lives by escorting her back to England. As they set off on their long and treacherous journey, with enemies at every turn, Harry begins to realize that Irena is not only dangerous but extremely precious cargo.Will he sacrifice everything for this wartime marriage? By the author of the ever-popular cockney sagas featuring the Adams family. About the Author Mary Jane Staples was born and brought up in the Walworth area of South London. She is the author of over thirty bestselling novels about cockney life, many of which feature the well-loved Adams family.