Jenny Kane: Coffee, cupcakes, chocolate and contemporary fiction / Jennifer Ash: Medieval crime with hints of Ellis Peters and Robin Hood

Tag: Boldwood Books

Opening Lines: Winter Wishes for the Home Front Nurses by Rachel Brimble

I’m delighted to be able to share the #openinglines from the latest in the Home Front Nurses series with you today.

Written by good friend, and fabulous writer, Rachel Brimble; Winter Wishes for the Home Front Nurses follows the personal and professional lives of nurses, Freda, Sylvia and Veronica as they help Bath recover from Germany’s attack on the city in the previous April.

Blurb

An uplifting story of courage, friendship and love against the odds, perfect for fans of Lizzie Lane, Rosie Clarke, and Call the Midwife.

Winter, 1942.Secrets abound for the Home Front Nurses, but will one of them be able to tell the truth about her past before Christmas?

As the weather turns cold, and the war rages on, Veronica Campbell finds herself loving her job as a home front nurse more than ever. She’s spending time with her beloved best friends Sylvia and Freda, as well as assisting on life-saving operations with her fellow nurse Betty Wilson, and feeling valued and happy.

But at home, she wishes things were different. Because even cosied up by the fireside of her lovely little house, there’s a man who lives on her street. Someone she’d once thought she could trust, who – five years ago – had violently attacked her. His threats to her remain, but she’s been terrified into silence.

But everything changes when Betty needs somewhere to stay for Christmas, and Veronica impulsively suggests she move in with her. But can she trust Betty enough to let her guard down and tell her what happened that fateful day? Because if she doesn’t… will Betty be put at risk too?

Here are the first 500 words…

Chapter One: Veronica

Bath, August 1942

‘V! Wait for us! Have you heard the news?’

Startled from her worries, Veronica Campbell halted near the hospital entrance and spun around as her best friends and fellow nursing colleagues, Sylvia Roberts and Freda Parkes, hurried towards her, their faces stricken.

Tension immediately stiffened Veronica’s shoulders. What now? It sometimes felt, for the last three years of war, Europe had been battered with an endless stream of shock, horror and loss, even if Britain remained stalwart in its patriotic humour and tenacity.

Sylvia’s brown eyes were wide, and her bright auburn hair glowed beneath the rays of the lowering August sunshine as she came to a stop in front of Veronica. ‘The Duke of Kent is dead!’ she exclaimed. ‘Killed in a plane crash in Scotland.’

‘What?’ Veronica looked between her friends. ‘The King’s brother is dead? Was the duke in Scotland? I thought—’

‘No.’ Freda’s eyes were shadowed with sadness. ‘It would probably be easier to comprehend if he’d been killed in an air attack, but he was being flown to Iceland to visit the RAF stations. Offer moral support, I assume.’

Veronica frowned, her previous distraction of where she had to go and who she had to see in the next hour momentarily quieted. ‘That’s just awful.’

‘Well, it must be true,’ Sylvia said. ‘The press do not write about the Royal Family lightly.’

‘Apparently,’ Freda interrupted a second time, ‘the duke and the entire crew onboard were killed when the plane crashed into a hillside, which was off course from where they should have been headed. Goodness knows why. Anything could have happened, I suppose. Probably just a terrible accident.’

Sylvia blew out a heavy breath. ‘I’ll always remember when Queen Elizabeth said she felt she could look the East End in the face, after Buckingham Palace was bombed. God knows what she’ll say to the nation after losing her brother-in-law in such a horrible way.’

Veronica closed her eyes.

Here she was fretting about visiting Officer Matthews – one of the kindest men a girl could know – when the war continued to take more and more lives, day after day. What did it matter that she was visiting a man she suspected loved her… even if she didn’t love him, when people were dying every day? Whether royalty or pauper, Hitler gave no preferential treatment and the deaths of the duke and his entire crew would undoubtedly cheer the German leader up no end.

She opened her eyes and looked past her friends towards the hospital doors.

Eric Matthews had always been kind and considerate towards her, despite all he had been through and all he had done. And not just during the time he was serving, but from the day he had walked so unexpectedly – so anonymously – into her life.

Tears pricked her eyes and Veronica quickly blinked them away before Sylvia or Freda noticed. Yet the self-loathing evoked by the vile truth of what Eric knew about her would not deter…

***

You can buy the latest Home Front Nurses novel from all good retailers, including:  https://mybook.to/winterwishes

Bio:

Rachel lives with her husband in a small town near Bath, England and they have two adult daughters.

She is the author of 35 novels and has been published by Harlequin Mills & Boon, Kensington Books, Harper Road Press and more. She now writes for Boldwood Books and books 1 and 2 of her latest series, The Home Front Nurses, have been Amazon bestsellers with book 3, Winter Wishes for the Home Front Nurses released in August 2025.

Rachel is also the owner of The Writer Printable Co, an Etsy shop offering printables to help new authors on their journeys to writing success.

Link: https://thewriterprintableco.etsy.com

To sign up for her publisher’s newsletter, click here: https://bit.ly/RachelBrimbleNews

Website: https://bit.ly/3wH7HQs

Twitter: https://bit.ly/3AQvK0A

Facebook: https://bit.ly/3i49GZ3

Instagram: https://bit.ly/3lTQZbF

BookBub: https://shorturl.at/nrxFJ

Many thanks for sharing your opening lines with us today, Rachel.

Happy reading everyone,

Jenny x

Opening Lines with May Ellis: The Clarks Factory Girls at War

This week, I’m delighted to welcome May Ellis, to share the #openinglines of her massively successful saga, The Clarks Factory Girls at War.

Blurb

Can love blossom in times of trouble?

Life-long friends Louisa, Jeannie and Kate are following in the footsteps of their families, working at the Clarks shoe factory.

But when Britain declares war on Germany, the Somerset village of Street is shaken to its core. The Clarks factory is at the heart of life in the village, but the Clark family are Quakers and pacifists. Before long, there are fierce debates amongst the workers and tensions between those who oppose the war and those who believe the village men should go to fight.

Each of the girls must decide her own position but as brothers and sweethearts leave for France, Louisa is relieved that her sweetheart Mattie, a Quaker, who won’t be signing up. But she’ll soon find that they face fierce opposition at home as well as across the Channel.

Will the girls’ friendship be enough to keep them together, as everything around them falls apart?

A heartwarming and gripping new saga series perfect for fans of Elaine Everest and Rosie Clarke.

 *** 

Most of us have worn a pair of Clarks shoes at some point in our lives. Welcome to the village of Street in Somerset where friends Kate, Louisa and Jeannie work together in the Machine Room at the Clarks boot and shoe factory. The Clark family are major employers in the area, providing jobs for over four thousand workers. As Quakers, the Clarks live by the ethos of service and peace, and the local community benefits from their employers’ philanthropy.

Life is about to change drastically for the Clarks factory girls. The story starts on the day after war has been declared.

First 500 words of The Clarks Factory Girls at War by May Ellis.

August 1914

‘I can’t believe we’ve been at Clarks for two years already,’ said Louisa. ‘Do you remember our first day? We thought we were so grown up, didn’t we?’ She laughed. ‘We were so wet behind the ears. We’ve learned a lot since then.’

Her friends Jeannie and Kate laughed with her as the three of them climbed the stone steps to the Machine Room where they worked on the third floor of the main factory building. Above and below them was a steady stream of women and girls, all heading in the same direction. The three of them linked arms, their heads close together so they could hear each other above the noise of boots on the steps and the women’s chatter, as they’d done every day for the past two years since they started work together on this very day.

‘Oh, my word, I was so scared,’ said Kate. ‘I was so glad you two were with me, or I’m sure I’d have turned tail and run.’

That surprised Louisa, because Kate always seemed so fearless. She was the first to argue, the last to back down and she had the loudest laugh of the three of them. ‘Why were you scared?’ she asked.

Kate shrugged. ‘I stood in the doorway, looking around that huge room. It was noisy and smelly and… I don’t know… overwhelming, I suppose.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Jeannie. She was the quietest of the trio, brought up in a Quaker family, generations of whom had worked for Clarks and worshipped alongside the family who owned the factory. She had a calm and thoughtfulness that Louisa appreciated and didn’t often find amongst her other acquaintances.

‘I always knew a lot of women worked in here,’ Kate went on, ‘including my sister Peg until she got married, but seeing all three hundred of them in the one big room was a shock.’

Jeannie nodded. ‘The smell of the machine oil and the leather made me feel sick. I was sure I’d skewer my hands on the machines the first time I used them, and the foreman scared me to death.’

The industrial sewing machines on which the girls were trained to stitch shoe linings were big and fierce, as was Mr Briars, the foreman. It had taken some getting used to, and many a week had passed before they got the hang of the machines and didn’t lose a good portion of their wages by being charged for wasted thread when they made mistakes and had to unpick their pieces.

‘I’m glad we started together,’ said Louisa, remembering her own nervousness on her first day at work.

‘So am I,’ said Jeannie. ‘Being with you both, my best friends from school, made it more exciting than frightening. And it was lucky Mr Briars used the same system as our teachers of putting girls in alphabetical order, so we got to stay together – Jeannie, Kate and Louisa – J. K. L.’

Louisa squeezed her arm. ‘I …

***

If you’d like to buy a copy of May’s latest novel, you can buy it here:

https://mybook.to/clarksfactorysocial

Author Bio

Readers may have come across May Ellis under her other pen name of Alison Knight. She has been a legal executive, a registered childminder, a professional fund-raiser and a teacher. She has travelled the world – from spending a year as an exchange student in the US in the 1970s and trekking the Great Wall of China to celebrate her fortieth year and lots of other interesting places in between. She founded Imagine Creative Writing with Jenny Kane with whom she organises regular writing retreats.

In her mid-forties she went to university part-time and gained a first-class degree in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and an MA in the same subject from Oxford Brookes University, both while still working full-time.

She signed her first three-book publishing contract with Accent Press a year after she completed her master’s degree. Three further books were published by Darkstroke books in 2020-21. The Clarks Factory Girls at War, written as May Ellis and published by Boldwood Books, is her seventh novel and the first in a five-book series.

This new May Ellis saga series with Boldwood Books focusses on three friends, Kate, Louisa and Jeannie, who work at the Clarks shoe factory in Somerset in the First World War.

Social Media Links

https://www.facebook.com/alison.knight.942

https://www.alisonroseknight.com/

Many thanks to May, for sharing her opening lines.

Happy reading,

Jenny x

 

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén