Rachel Billington Livres

Three women, born at the outbreak of World War II, who've grown up in widely differing circumstances, form an improbable friendship that sustains them through forty years. Connie is the youngest member of a large Irish family and Ireland's too small to contain her. She is beautiful and impulsive. Men love her, while she roars through life, never looking before she leaps - sometimes onto rocks. Nina is English and middle-class, the shy, thoughtful, daughter of an army officer. She marries her boyhood love and has two children before realising how unfulfilled she is, and that painting is her true passion. Fay is American and Jewish, the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor. She's the ambitious one, who fulfils her dream of becoming a doctor before admitting a darker, more complex side to her nature. Through love, marriage, children, work, divorce and tragedy, this is a beautifully written and compelling novel of friendship.

On a bright summer's day in West London, an attractive, young woman is viciously stabbed by a stranger and left for dead. Her attacker is caught and sent to prison. Lydia's body slowly heals, leaving thin white scars, while her mind's repair takes longer.

An emotional, gritty family drama exploring the power of frustrated love and intense sibling rivalry - from the acclaimed author of ONE SUMMER and A WOMAN'S LIFE

A poignant and compelling story of three lives torn apart by the Battle of Gallipoli. Arthur Tarrant, an Oxford graduate headed for his uncle's law firm, changes path leaving behind his fiancee Sylvia and joins the army, destined for Gallipoli. There, his life becomes entwined with that of Fred Chaffey, a country boy from Dorset. Glory tells of the fatal errors made by the leaders of the army, the heroism of the men, and the struggles to understand the situation while nurturing relationships in the most strange and difficult of circumstances.

Set in 1822 during Chile's fight for independence, the story follows British Admiral Thomas Cochrane and widow Maria Graham. As they navigate their brief but intense connection, both seek solace after losing their spouses. The narrative is inspired by historical journals, though no evidence of romance exists.

Occasionally panoramic, more often intimate, in Clouds of Love and War author Rachel Billington balances a detailed and highly researched picture of the life of a Second World War Spitfire pilot with the travails and ambitions of a young woman too often on her own. The result is both a gripping story of war and a sensitive story of love, a love that struggles to survive. Eddie and Eva meet on the eve of the Second World War. Eddie only wants to be a flyer, to find escape in the clouds from his own complicated family. However, the Battle of Britain makes a pilot's life a dangerous way to flee reality. Eva has her own passionate longing: to become a painter. When Eva's Jewish mother disappears to Germany, she is left alone with her elderly father. Both Eddie and Eva come of age at a time that teaches them that happiness is always fleeting, but there are things worth living - or dying - for. Through the connecting stories of these young people and their wider families, and against a background of southern county airfields, London, Oxford, Dorset and France, Rachel Billington brings the world of war time England, now eighty years in the past, back to life.

A woman lies unconscious on the carpet of a smart Westminster apartment, one red high-heeled shoe has fallen off... A younger woman lies with her eyes closed, half-hidden under a drinks cabinet... Her fingers clutch an empty bottle...What happens when a mother withholds her love? When she has no love to withhold? When she sees her three daughters as obstacles to her own formidable career? This is the story of three sisters, Millie, Di and Cleo. They are the war babies. Growing up in a world still in turmoil, hungover from war, the sisters struggle to leave behind their mother and build their own lives.Each sister is lost in her own world where extreme need leads to extreme behaviour. Then a tragic event forces Cleo, the youngest and wildest, to become the catalyst to smash the pattern. Who will adapt and survive in this new world? Who will find peace?From London to New York and to Vietnam, the focus shifts from one sister to the next, putting human nature, its flaws and its virtues, under the spotlight. With elements of a psychological thriller, Rachel Billington observes her characters with clinical detachment, but also with wit and understanding. Yet there is hope at the heart of this story which will leave the reader wondering long after the final twist is revealed.