The Bells of Bournville Green
Author: Annie Murray
Format: Paperback, 130mm x 197mm, 346g, 512 pages
Published: Pan Macmillan, United Kingdom, 2012
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 Chocolate Girls, and set in 1960s Birmingham, this is a story of families whose lives are entwined, of belonging and loss... and of a young woman's search for transforming love.
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 ten other successful novels, including, most recently, Where Earth Meets Sky. Annie Murray has four children and lives in Reading.
Author: Annie Murray
Format: Paperback, 130mm x 197mm, 346g, 512 pages
Published: Pan Macmillan, United Kingdom, 2012
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 Chocolate Girls, and set in 1960s Birmingham, this is a story of families whose lives are entwined, of belonging and loss... and of a young woman's search for transforming love.
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 ten other successful novels, including, most recently, Where Earth Meets Sky. Annie Murray has four children and lives in Reading.