MARGARET FORSTER

A brilliant follow-up to HIDDEN LIVES, this account takes up the story of her gritty, northern father, Arthur. Margaret's father was not a man to answer questions - least of all questions about life and death. So she attempts to answer them for herself, as she looks back at his life and indomitable character - from the perspective of his ninth decade - evoking incidents from her childhood, his working life and stubborn old age, trying to make sense of their largely unspoken relationship, and of his tenacious hold on life, and on his family. His life, and that of her sister-in-law, Marion, were ordinary, and apparently unremarkable, but when faced with death lives like these become strangely precious, Margaret Forster marvels at the tenacity of the human spirit, at its capacity to fight to the bitter end. PRECIOUS LIVES is her most personal book yet: an intimate, true and wonderful memoir about living and dying.

What do men run away from? Not war, not physical hardship, but the day-to-day emotional demands of impossible domestic situations. Thats womens work. This is a story of female courage, where black comedy turns to disturbing pathos revolving around the rights of an indomitable woman

Margaret Forster presents the 'edited' diary of a woman, born in 1901, whose life spans the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s her story moves on to social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London. Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women's lives from WWI to Greenham Common and beyond. A triumph of resolution and evocation, this is a beautifully observed story of an ordinary woman's life - a narrative where every word rings true.

Georgy bears her fate bravely as she alternates between playing the fool and humbling herself before Meredith, her pretty, callous flatmate, although when James, middle-aged socialite and self-imposed Uncle, asks Georgy to become his mistress, she is tempted to accept.

Born in Carlisle in 1887, brought up in a childrens home and by reluctant relatives, Evie, with her wild hair and unassuming ways, seems a quiet, undemanding child. But there are, as she discovers, unanswered questions about her past. The two girls have only one thing in common: both were abandoned as babies by their mothers.

Catherines mother died when Catherine was just a baby girl, leaving nothing but her perfect reputation to live up to. But then Catherine finds a box addressed to her, filled with objects seemingly without meaning - three feathers, an exotic seashell, a painting, a mirror, two prints, an address book, a map, a hat, a rucksack and a necklace.

Talks about the fictional adventures of an early 20th-century painting and the women whose lives it touches. This novel opens with bold, passionate Gwen, struggling to be an artist, leaving for Paris where she becomes Rodins lover and paints a small, intimate picture of a quiet corner of her attic room.

Desperate to escape herself and her past, she changes her name, packs up her London home and moves to a town in the North of England where she knows no one.But one of her new neighbours, Nancy, is intrigued by her. And as hard as Tara tries to distance herself, she starts to drop her guard.Then a letter arrives. An old friend wants to meet up. Struggling to keep her old life at bay, Tara soon discovers the dangers of fighting the past.