Jean Jarvis was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, a market town in the East Midlands and part of the Portland estate within the Dukeries. Her working life has been spent in schools in Worksop and Sheffield. She lived through the time when Britain was recovering from World War II. It was the time of Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & His Comets. She met and married the curate and became his wife and mother of two children. During this time, she met John Betjeman, a friend of her husband. She acquired his fun name, “The Smasher”. Her love of art and music continued throughout her life, and she became a church organist. Her love of painting is a set of fourteen stations of the cross, which was on show for a short time in Derby Cathedral. This is the story of a long and happening life, told in slices.
Jane is a New Yorker to the core, city-based and career-driven. But when her teenage daughter Natalie falls in with the wrong crowd at her Manhattan school, Jane's British husband Andrew decides to relocate from new York to a small village on Britain's Cumbrian coast, buying a vast and crumbling former vicarage. Jane hates everything about her new life: the silence, the solitude, the utter isolation. Natalie is no better, and their son Ben struggles in his new school. Even worse, Jane's difficulties create new tensions between her and Andrew. When Jane finds a scrap of an old shopping list, she becomes fascinated with Alice James, who lived in the vicarage decades before. The Vicar's Wife takes readers on an emotional journey as two very different women learn the desires of their hearts - and confront their deepest fears.
Filled with saucy wit, surprising twists, and unforgettable lovers, the latest novel in award-winning and USA Today bestselling author Vanessa Kelly’s captivating historical romance series puts the most levelheaded Kendrick at the center of a passionate and perilous adventure. Will appeal to fans of Hannah Howell, Julia Quinn, and the Bridgerton series. It’s Christmastime in Edinburgh, but Lady Samantha Penwith’s secret mission takes no holiday: the Highlands-born lass vows to find the assailants who murdered her beloved husband, founder of a charitable school for orphaned boys. On her latest undercover excursion, she closes in on a pair of armed attackers and interrupts another assault, then disappears into the darkness, leaving the lone victim mystified—and lucky to be alive . . . Braden Kendrick may be the sensible brother, yet the dedicated doctor routinely ignores the dangers of his late-night calls to the city’s slums. But when a fleet-footed rescuer saves his life, he’s determined to uncover the stranger’s identity. And once he does, he’ll find himself facing his own past loss for the first time—and more than willing to risk his heart again, just in time to make the Clan Kendrick’s Christmas celebrations more festive than ever . . . Praise for The Highlander’s English Bride “A thoroughly satisfying happy ending.” —Publishers Weekly “A whirlwind of fun with the lightness of cotton candy. . . . There are few better choices than than this bubbly romance that delivers a heartwarming happily ever after.” —BookPage
In the contemporary world, where Christians are a minority in their populations, 'mixed marriages' have become an increasing and increasingly important phenomenon. There are many books written on married and family life for Catholics married to Catholics. But for Catholics married to Christians of other churches? For Catholics married to members of other faiths. For Catholics married to partners of no religious faith? Anita Dowsing writes with great perception of the rewards as well as the difficulties and challenges that such a marriage can bring - of how mutual love between partners, and mutual respect for each other's position, can deepen not only the marriage itself, but the Catholic partner's own faith. This book will bring new hope and insight to many in the same or a similar situation, to marriage counsellors, and to pastoral clergy.
Two series of monologues written for BBC television and broadcast in 1988 and 1998, along with 'A woman of no importance', an earlier monologue first televised in 1982.
In this colourful memoir, from 1950’s childhood to the COVID crisis, Brian Mountford describes his life as a priest, which has spanned a period of immense social change and seen the secularisation of Britain to the point where 52% of the population say they have ‘no religion’. Opening with a vibrant account of London in the Sixties, he moves to Cambridge college life in the Seventies, Suburbia in the Eighties, and thirty years as Vicar of the ‘most visited parish church in England’, the University Church, Oxford. Rich in humour and anecdote, he unpacks his liberal theological ideas on the way, addressing questions such as God, the meaning of life, sexual ethics, and the relationship between doubt and faith. A central idea is that the abandonment of organised religion has not eradicated spiritual questioning and, following Philip Larkin’s poem Church Going, from which the book takes its title, people of all ages are forever ‘surprising/A hunger in (themselves) to be more serious.’ Both the story and the essay content will fascinate many, many more people than actually go to church.
Chasing a rumor of a clandestine marriage, the reluctant new Earl of Hackwell combs London for his late brother's secret wife and son. Annabelle Harris came to London to find her disgraced sister, the mistress to the Earl of Hackwell. But that Earl has been murdered, Annabelle has his son, and her sister has disappeared again. Now she must clear her sister's name and keep the new Earl from taking the boy away. When their paths converge, the reluctant Earl and the independent spinster find themselves rethinking their goals, and battling the real murderer together. Previously Titled BELLA'S BAND
Two ladies who never expected to marry… Two noble gentlemen, each in need of a wife… LILIANA'S LETTER A promise to his long-dead sister forces Lord Grigsby back into society to broker the marriage of his disreputable nephew to the heiress whose money can save the earldom. Liliana Ashford has been hired to help an heiress pass muster with the ton and snare a titled husband. Though, if she had a magic wand, she’d turn her charge’s fiancé back into the toad he truly was. But she never wished him dead! As the young Earl’s sordid death evokes the scandal of the season, a shadow from Liliana’s own past appears, threatening her carefully crafted world. Grigsby sets about finding his nephew’s killer…and Liliana’s secrets. Meanwhile she scrambles to make a new match for the girl, because finding a husband of her own is out of the question—or is it? COURTED BY THE EARL Chasing a rumor of a clandestine marriage, the reluctant new Earl of Hackwell combs London for his late brother's secret wife and son, anxious to return the title, find the murderous woman, and head back to his regiment. Annabelle Harris came to London to find her disgraced sister, the mistress to the Earl of Hackwell. But the Earl has been murdered, Annabelle has his son, and the boy’s mother, her sister has disappeared again. Now she must clear her sister's name, dodge the handsome new Earl’s investigating, and keep him from taking the boy away. When their paths converge, the reluctant Earl and the independent lady find themselves rethinking their goals, and battling the real murderer together. (PREVIOUSLY TITLED "BELLA'S BAND") Bonus Short Story: THE GHOST OF DEPFORD HALL It’s her mother’s last All Hallow’s Eve. When family, friends, and tenants gather, goblins, ghouls, and ghosts are banned from this All Hallow’s Eve party. Only, no one told the Ghost of Depford Hall!
