Showing results by author "Annie Murray" in All Categories

A tale of hardship and social injustice, Miss Purdy's Class by Annie Murray is a heartfelt saga with strong emotional relationships at its heart, read by actress Annie Aldington. In the New Year of 1936, Gwen Purdy, aged twenty-one, leaves her home to become a schoolteacher in a poor area of...

August 1939. Genie Watkins, a Birmingham kid, would love to have a proper happy family like her Italian friend, Teresa. But Genie hasn't reckoned with the outbreak of war, her already rocky family being split up and the strangely liberating effect it all has on her mother . . . Under Birmingham...

Beautiful, dark-haired Lily has been abandoned in a Birmingham slum as a tiny child. With few clues as to her identity she endures a childhood of loneliness and loss. At eighteen she applies for a post as nanny with the family of a Captain Fairford, a soldier in Ambala, north India and his...

Black Country Orphan is a moving story of the courage and strength of women, by the Sunday Times bestselling author Annie Murray. The early 1900s: Cradley Heath, a town in the Black Country near Birmingham and centre of the world’s chain-making trade. Lucy Butler, a young girl crippled by a...

It is 1942, and after a childhood of suffering in Birmingham, Maryann Bartholomew has built a life of happiness and safety with her husband Joel and their children, working the canals on his narrowboat, the Esther Jane. But the back-breaking work and constant childbearing take their toll on...

What could tear the sisters apart? Sisters Margaret and Annie lost their mother years ago, they long for her every day. Their frightfully protective father keeps the girls close but he can’t protect them forever . . . When a scandal rocks the family, the girls are forced to leave their home...

Anna Craven grew up captivated by stories of her mother's childhood in Birmingham and of Kate's friend, Olivia. Theirs was a magical friendship and Anna always regretted that, with Olivia's tragic death during the war, she would never meet the woman her mother loved so deeply. But when Kate dies, she leaves her daughter one final story: the whole truth of her life with Olivia Kemp. Anna is shocked to discover how little she really knew about the mother with whom she once felt so close.

For Rose Lucas, a spirited, intelligent girl born into a large family in the slums of pre-war Birmingham, life is hard. But through her friendship with Diana, daughter of a vicar from middle-class Moseley, she learns to aspire to a different and better existence. But life seldom follows dreams, and after losing a love she has fought hard for, and after travelling in Italy, she returns to Birmingham with her hopes shattered. But Rose's powerful spirit will not be defeated.

Birmingham, 1858. Dora, a spirited young maid with a vivid imagination, finds solace in the library of the esteemed family she works for. But when a forbidden love leads to a secret that could ruin her, Dora has no choice but to leave the only place that has ever offered her security and...

This is a collection of 18 essays on a variety of occult-themed topics, covering the full spectrum of classic esoteric and related subjects, which include Hermeticism, alchemy, magic, the Kabbalah, ancient wisdom and philosophy, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and spiritualism, by some of the most notable and prominent names in the history of those subjects.

Abandoned at birth, little Mercy Hanley shows a fierce determination few others can match. Her inner fire burns brightly, even in the harsh conditions of turn-of-the-century Birmingham. For behind Mercy's pale and haunting face, there is a mind of steel, as her harsh foster mother, Mrs Gaskin...

Jessica Hart's life is changed forever with the death of her mother. Her manipulative new stepmother tries to force her into marrying an older man, and to Jess, a bright, pretty, young girl who dreams of finding true love, the idea of being trapped in a loveless marriage is unthinkable. So she escapes to Birmingham to her Aunt Olive, the last remaining connection to her mother. But Jess' security is threatened when she meets a friend of the family and falls passionately in love.