Böcker av Mary Jane Staples

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 trap. The house was 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.

Excitement is running high in the Adams family. Mr Finch, after a long career in secret government work, is to be knighted. Chinese Lady is overwhelmed by the excitement, her grandson Paul, working for the Young Socialists, is ashamed about it all, and Sammy is waging war against denim jeans.

Over a long and hazy summer - the summer of 1939 - the two young people met, always at lunchtime, and never allowing their friendship to progress too far. Then, as the clouds of war gathered over Europe, Jonathan got his call-up papers.

It was June 1916 when Sergeant Boots Adams of the Royal West Kents, together with his men, was billeted on the Descartes farm in Northern France.

Everyone liked Sergeant Joe. Quite a few people wondered why he didn't get married. But it wasn't until he bumped into Dolly Smith that he met a girl who made an impression on him. She was running from a vicious-looking thug and a sinister foreigner who seemed to think she had stolen something valuable.

The Pearly Queen was really Aunt Edie. Everyone loved Aunt Edie - but especially the Andrews family. Jack Andrews was having a tough time. Jack and the children managed as best they could, but things were pretty tough when Aunt Edie turned up. Aunt Edie was warm, generous, kind, and, above all, she was their very own Pearly Queen.

The beginning of a wonderful saga telling the story of a Cockney family in peace and war from multi-million copy seller Mary Jane Staples. Will the Adams family - gutsy, tough and cheeky - pull through?Down Lambeth Way is the first in Mary Jane Staples's Adams Family series.

It is 1953 - Coronation year - and like all of Cockney London the members of the Adams family are looking forward to the celebrations.

From autumn 1941 to the first months of 1942, the war continued to affect the lives of the Adams and Somers families. It was not so much the war, however, as a succession of tragic domestic events that brought a sad and little girl called Phoebe into the care of Susie and Sammy Adams. Much needed to be done to cure little Phoebe of her sadness.

Boots and Tim both made it safely back, but of Bobby there was no sign, and the family all feared the worst. In a farm some miles from Dunkirk, however, Bobby was alive but injured, and trapped by the advancing Germans.

The continuation of a wonderful saga telling the story of a Cockney family in peace and war from multi-million copy seller Mary Jane Staples.

There was a new family in Browning Street, Walworth - the Harrisons.

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 night in Walworth. Slightly against his better judgement he took them in. A few days later he found that - somehow - he had become the unofficial guardian of Horace and Ethel.

But Ethel's involvement with the poet was to end more dangerously and dramatically than either she or Horrace had imagined and several quite startling events were to happen before Horrace and Ethel's affairs were resolved.