The Summer House

England 1918. Young Lady Helen believes her parents when they say she will never find a better husband than Richard - 'brave, handsome, wealthy, such a charming man and quite a catch'. But when her soldier husband returns to war, Helen begins to wonder just who it is she has married - his letters home are cold and distant - and Helen realises that she has made a terrible mistake. And that's when Oliver Donovan enters her life. They begin an affair that leaves Helen pregnant and alone, and she is forced to surrender her precious baby. Over twenty years pass and a second war is ravaging Europe, but that is not the only echo of the past to haunt the present. Laura Drummond is now caught in a tragic love affair of her own and when she is forced to leave London during the bombings, she turns to the mother she never knew.

Born in Singapore of a Dutch-South African father and an English mother, MARY NICHOLS came to England when she was three and spent most of her life in different parts of East Anglia. She had been a radiographer, school secretary, editor for one of the John Lewis Partnership house magazines and an information services manager for an open learning company, as well as a writer. From short stories and articles for a variety of newspapers and magazines, she turned to writing novels. Mary wrote historical romance for Mills & Boon as well as family sagas. She was also the author of The Mother of Necton, a biography of her grandmother, who was a midwife and nurse in a Norfolk village between the wars. Mary died in 2016.