The Bermondsey Bookshop


Book Description

'Happiness had never been something she'd looked for. A quiet day with no insults or wallops, that was the best she could imagine.' London, 1920s Kate Goss lives in a freezing cold garret, bullied by her aunt and cousins. She dreams of being rescued by her handsome father. No one knows where he is, or what he is doing, just that he is sure to come back a rich man. By the time Kate is seventeen, she has learnt to cope alone. When her aunt throws her out, she finds a job as a cleaner in the Bermondsey Bookshop and Reading Room. Here she will discover a world she never knew existed. But trouble is never far away and long-held secrets are about to burst into the open, ensnaring her in a web of lies and violence. Will she ever be able to escape? Praise for The Bermondsey Bookshop: 'Poignant and intensely emotional' BOOKISH JOTTINGS 'A fabulous, fascinating read' VANESSA FELTZ 'I simply couldn't put it down' THE BOOKBAG 'A must-read' OK MAGAZINE




Seven Years' Harvest


Book Description

Short stories, poems and miscellaneous articles.




Consent


Book Description

“Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” -- The New York Times Already an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer—a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked. Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity. Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world. At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Vanessa, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story, offering her perspective of those events sharply known. Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a thirteen-year-old girl to become involved with a fifty-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older. Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales and French history and her personal life, Vanessa offers an intimate and absorbing look at the meaning of love and consent and the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives. Ultimately, she offers a forceful indictment of a chauvinistic literary world that has for too long accepted and helped perpetuate gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual abuse of children. Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer "...One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. [...]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch." -- The New Yorker "Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity." -- The Times (London) "[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways." -- Slate "Lucid and nuanced...[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere." -- Los Angeles Review of Books ”A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer...This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.” -- Publishers Weekly "Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation." -- Booklist "A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way...[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer." -- Kirkus




Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts


Book Description

Heartwarming and gritty, the life and loves of a factory girl in Bermondsey, during World War One.




Victorian London


Book Description

From rag-gatherers to royalty, from fish knives to Freemasons: everyday life in Victorian London. Like its acclaimed companion volumes, Elizabeth's London, Restoration London and Dr Johnson's London, this book is the product of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life so often left out of history books. This period of mid Victorian London covers a huge span: Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the public utilities - Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities - Peabody, Burdett Coutts - and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the position of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, such as Peter Jones and Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs. The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan.




The Bermondsey Bookshop


Book Description

Kate's childhood is haunted by the mystery surrounding her mother's death. When she finds a job as a cleaner at The Bermondsey Bookshop, will she find all the answers she needs?




Hattie's Home


Book Description

A passionate and heartwarming saga from the bestselling author of CUSTARD TARTS AND BROKEN HEARTS. January 1947. The war is over. But London is still a wasteland. After eight years in the ATS, Hattie Wright returns to a Bermondsey she doesn't recognise. With so few jobs, she reluctantly takes work at the Alaska fur factory – a place rife with petty rivalries that she vowed never to set foot in again. But while she was a rising star in the ATS, Hattie's work mates are unforgiving in her attempts to promote herself up from the factory floor. After journeying across the world to Australia to marry her beloved, Clara is betrayed and returns penniless, homeless and trying to raise a child in the face of prejudice. While war widow, Lou, has lost more than most in the war. Her daughter and parents were killed in an air raid bomb blast and her surviving son, Ronnie, is fending for himself and getting into all kinds of trouble. The lifelong friendship these women forge while working in the fur factory will help them overcome crippling grief and prejudice in post-war Britain and to find hope in tomorrow. PRAISE FOR HATTIE'S HOME: 'Mary transported me right into the heart of Bermondsey and the damage, heartache and devastation the war had left behind. The sights, smells, wreckage, the poverty, it was all so real. Yet even in such dark times friendship and the community shines through' Dash F, Netgalley reviewer. 'If you want a real taste of East London life before 1914, and the horrors and occasional laughs the times could bring – this is a must read' Mark Ryes, Amazon reviewer. 'This is an absolute joy from start to finish and it's clear that Mary Gibson has a passion for history and a good yarn! I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the reality of life for women in the period leading up to the Great War without the safety net of the Welfare State to fall back on. It's one of the best historic fiction books I've read in a long time' History Geek, Amazon reviewer. 'Gritty, heart-felt and very real. Gibson really gives you a clear understanding of what life was like... If you are a fan of Nadine Dorries you will love this' Rachel, Amazon reviewer. 'I found myself laughing and crying along with the characters, in my opinion certainly worth 5 stars!' Shelley, Amazon reviewer.







Journey Through a Small Planet


Book Description

In 'Journey Through a Small Planet' Emanuel Litvinoff recalls his working-class Jewish childhood in the East End of London. With vivid intensity, Litvinoff describes the overcrowded tenements of Brick Lane and Whitechapel, the smell of pickled herring and onion bread, the rattle of sewing machines and chatter in Yiddish.




Biscuits


Book Description

Every day we pass a thousand people in the street or squash up against strangers in the underground. Like every city, London is teeming with life: diverse, beautiful, messy, incongruous life, and every face seen fleetingly in the crowd carries a story or two. Some are sad, some are funny, some are boring, but none are ever quite what you would guess. In Biscuits, Jenny Robins takes a look at a handful of women's stories in the city as they defy and comply with our expectations, and as they step out of the cookie cutter mould of what it means to be a woman today.