It is 1939, and great changes come running to meet them all, snatching at their innocence and steadfast convictions and tossing them far away. Alice, Ben and Guy travel overseas, serving in the same war but on very different battlegrounds. For those who stay behind, Judith, Louise, Claire and Daphne, the struggle is to preserve the home, to keep things going, no matter what. But the sudden insecurity of the war confuses them. it gives them new strengths and fresh dreams, but leaves them still furiously hunting for a future, hoping that the old familiar beliefs will be patiently waiting for them to catch up again.  In the second volume of Mary Hocking's excellent trilogy, England joins the world in its march to war, sweeping along the members of the Fairley household, their relations and friends.

Indifferent Heroes (Abacus Books)

Literature & Fiction

MARY HOCKING

Contemporary

Abacus Books (Sphere)

As the 1939-1945 war slows to a clumsy halt, a trembling world holds out its arms to welcome peace back home again. Alice Fairley, her friends and her family are surprised to find themselves so unprepared for peacetime. In a way, it's like starting all over again: all the things one was confident about have disappeared or changed shape somehow, while things which were acceptable, or even pleasant, now seem different, dull, irksome. Noisy whispers of spy-rings and foreign conspiracies provoke shockwaves of malice and stinging intolerance. The world has grown up. Quickly, they discover that the battle is not over yet . . . persistent spectres of duty and guilt pick their victims indiscriminately.

Welcome Strangers (Abacus Books)

Penguin

As a child of seven, Richard of York, the future King Richard the Third, watched an even younger child coping determinedly with a large boarhound. Never again was Richard to have so clear a view of Henry Tudor, who, twenty-six years later, was to cost him his crown and his life at the Battle of Bosworth Field.  Mary Hocking tells a story of kingship and king-making, of the entrenched rivalry between the houses of York and Lancaster, and of the lives of these two young claimants to the throne. Richard, a man of sharp wit and formidable energy, was a vigilant, unrelenting king, with little gift for friendship and only meagre support outside his native North Country. Henry, too, made no bid for popularity. He had learnt early on to expect little of life, and during his years of exile he remained patient, forbearing, yet shrewdly calculating, until the opportunity for action came.  The 'integrity' of Henry, the 'villainy' of Richard and the mystery of the Princes in the Tower are reassessed in this absorbing novel, which creates a sense of history through convincing portraits of the men and women who made it. Mary Hocking has written not only a record of the last dramatic years of the Wars of the Roses but also a perceptive study of the trials and triumphs of human ambition.

He who plays the king

Genre Fiction

Chatto&Windus

Good Daughters

What's so special about a son? Why doesn't she care about her daughters?'  Mary Hocking brings good humour and sympathy to her depiction of the Fairley sisters growing up in their close-knit West London neighbourhood before, during and after the war. Here, in the first novel of a trilogy, the girls are sheltered in a world whose traditions of hard work and frugality are upheld by their Methodist father, Stanley, and their strong quiet mother, Judith. But, as love comes to Louise and adventures tempt Alice and her friend, unease lurks and terrible rumours travel from Germany - auguries of the catastrophe to come.

The very dead of winter

Sparrow

Literary

Severn House Publishers Ltd.

Safari West

Travel

Europe

Churchtown Technology

A Particular Place

Virago Press Ltd.

<p>This work examines the growing interaction between private enterprises and public officials to challenge foreign trade barriers. Building on more than a hundred interviews with former and current trade officials and private attorneys in the United States and Europe, Gregory Shaffer calls attention to the ways in which well-organized private parties are using the World Trade Organization's legal system to advance their own commercial ambitions, and how public officials increasingly are dependent on their assistance.</p>

LETTERS FROM CONSTANCE

GOOD DAUGHTERS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MARY HOCKING. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MARY HOCKING