RACHEL BILLINGTON

Occasionally panoramic, more often intimate, in Clouds of Love and War author Rachel Billington balances a detailed and highly researched picture of the life of a Second World War Spitfire pilot with the travails and ambitions of a young woman too often on her own. The result is both a gripping story of war and a sensitive story of love, a love that struggles to survive.Eddie and Eva meet on the eve of the Second World War. Eddie only wants to be a flyer, to find escape in the clouds from his own complicated family. However, the Battle of Britain makes a pilots life a dangerous way to flee reality. Eva has her own passionate longing: to become a painter. When Evas Jewish mother disappears to Germany, she is left alone with her elderly father. Both Eddie and Eva come of age at a time that teaches them that happiness is always fleeting, but there are things worth living or dying for.Through the connecting stories of these young people and their wider families, and against a background of southern county airfields, London, Oxford, Dorset and France, Rachel Billington brings the world of war time England, now eighty years in the past, back to life.

A woman lies unconscious on the carpet of a smart Westminster apartment, one red high-heeled shoe has fallen off... A younger woman lies with her eyes closed, half-hidden under a drinks cabinet... Her fingers clutch an empty bottle... What happens when a mother withholds her love? When she has no love to withhold? When she sees her three daughters as obstacles to her own formidable career? This is the story of three sisters, Millie, Di and Cleo. They are the war babies. Growing up in a world still in turmoil, hungover from war, the sisters struggle to leave behind their mother and build their own lives. Each sister is lost in her own world where extreme need leads to extreme behaviour. Then a tragic event forces Cleo, the youngest and wildest, to become the catalyst to smash the pattern. Who will adapt and survive in this new world? Who will find peace? From London to New York and to Vietnam, the focus shifts from one sister to the next, putting human nature, its flaws and its virtues, under the spotlight. With elements of a psychological thriller, Rachel Billington observes her characters with clinical detachment, but also with wit and understanding. Yet there is hope at the heart of this story which will leave the reader wondering long after the final twist is revealed.

Durante una mattinata di tranquillo shopping Lydia, la giovane protagonista, viene accoltellata dal commesso del negozio dove sta facendo la spesa. Le ferite fisiche, anche se gravi, guariranno, piu difficile sara la cicatrizzazione delle ferite psicologiche. A complicare le cose e il rapporto che si instaura tra la vittima e il suo aggressore, Patrick, uomo piacevole ed elegante, un classico insospettabile. L'autrice ha scelto la tecnica del racconto parallelo: a capitoli alterni seguiamo la storia di Lydia e quella di Patrick. Lydia e una giornalista, Patrick in carcere e diventato un giornalista, i due finiscono per lavorare nello stesso giornale. Il romanzo e ispirato a un fatto di cronaca.

An utterly gripping page-turner SPECTATORHeartache, soul searching and finger pointing swirl around this complex tale of a dysfunctional, yet powerful family DAILY MIRRORA gripping tale to satisfy all lovers of a finely twisting plot DAILY TELEGRAPHOne cool March morning in London, MP Leo Barr is told that his brother, Charlie, is dead. He has hanged himself from a chestnut tree in the grounds of a mental hospital. His family reacts in different ways. Charlies mother, Imogen, sees no point in pretending that life is still worth living - he was always her favourite. Leo and his lawyer brother Roland fight, as they always have over Charlie. The fourth brother Ron, a Catholic priest, must break the news to Charlies wife, presently in HMP Holloway. In the days following Charlies death the conflict builds among members of this diverse and complex family. Who really loves whom? What are the motives behind Rolands fixed antagonism towards Charlie? Is Leo right to put his career on the line? Above and between them all is the larger-than-life figure of Charlie. He follows no rules, not even about dying, and it becomes clear that his tragedy is only part of a web of mystery and deceit that connects them all.LIES & LOYALTIES is a powerful human drama, at the heart of which one family - divided by rivalry and frustrated love and forced, at last, to learn the truth about themselves.

Pacy and occasionally steamy ... perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoonYOU MAGAZINEA beautifully written tale ... 4 Stars DAILY MAILBillingtons perceptive portrait of the complications of modern life is a Jane Austen for the 21st century GOOD BOOK GUIDEShe is in the front rank of those who write of womens livesTHE TABLETAlice Lightfoot is far too young to be a widow and a grandmother. Perhaps shed been too young to be a wife, although she was happy enough at the time. Now, nearly three years after her husbands death, the world suddenly seems to be changing.Her daughter expects Alices life to revolve around her grandchild, Lily, and everyone else seems to think that Alice must be looking for a new husband - after all, shes such a WIFE. There doesnt seem to be space to decide what Alice wants for herself: does she want a man around, or would independence give her the full life she craves?Alice is a woman at a turning-point, coming out from the protection of a long marriage into the hurly-burly of the wider world. She has far-reaching choices to make and the seriously unexpected to face...

A sweeping historical drama, based on the true and enduring love of Thomas Cochrane and Maria Graham.Touching and dashing in equal measure SPECTATORIntense and moving THE LADYRachel Billington imagines their intense relationship in this engrossing novel CHOICEChile, June 1822. Maria Graham, a young British widow, watches as her compatriot Admiral Lord Cochrane sails triumphantly into the Valparaiso Bay, fresh from leading the Chilean fleet to victory over the countrys Spanish rulers.Cochrane, a popular yet outspoken hero of the Napoleonic wars, is drawn to Maria, a woman whose intelligence and spirit of adventure rival his own. Yet their intense and extraordinary relationship must contend with a climate of uncertainty, political turmoil and civil war.Inspired by Maria Grahams own journals, MARIA AND THE ADMIRAL vividly brings to life the story of one woman who tested the limits of society, and of her enduring love for one of the most colourful figures of her age.

The novel is a reflection of the characters lives - vivid, dramatic and sometimes chaotic, with emotional volume turned up to full blast . . . a narrative of striking exuberance and generosity - THE TIMESConnie is the youngest member of a large Irish family and Irelands too small to contain her. She is beautiful and impulsive. Men love her, while she roars through life, never looking before she leaps - sometimes onto rocks. Nina is English and middle-class, the shy, thoughtful, daughter of an army officer. She marries her boyhood love and has two children before realising how unfulfilled she is, and that painting is her true passion. Fay is American and Jewish, the granddaughter of a holocaust survivor. Shes the ambitious one, who fulfils her dream of becoming a doctor before admitting a darker, more complex side to her nature. The female characters are so superbly drawn, so real, that you are reminded of the skill of the female novelists of the 19th century ... [the novels] brilliance lies in a combination of the authors subtle observations - how jealous men can be of their wives friends, for example - and the absence of sentimentality - DAILY TELEGRAPH

Its highly readable and is written with wisdom and compassion Kate Saunders, THE TIMESMoving and poignant STAR MAGAZINEA well-wrought, honest book that is generous with its insights and tender in all the right places DAILY EXPRESSThirteen-year-old Dan hasnt returned home and his parents dont know whether hes run away, been kidnapped - or something worse. For one family the world as they know it is about to fall apart. At first Dan is sleeping rough, revelling in his independence. But with every passing day, his world is becoming darker and more frightening. A hundred thousand children run away each year. Most come back. But will Dan?Dans mother, Eve, a drama teacher, cant focus; his father, Max, only knows how to flee his own demons; and his aunt, Martha, while trained to control difficult situations as a prison officer, struggles to hold it all together. Dans story is told against a grown-up drama of love and shifting loyalties and two sisters who were best friends until Max came between them. Gradually, all three begin to recognise just how badly they have failed the missing boy.Rachel Billington has written a tense and emotional novel about the day-to-day existence of a contemporary family living through their worst nightmare. Anguish and hope move across the pages until the final breath-taking denouement.

This great romance reads like a thriller - BELLAA real emotional roller-coaster of a read, and Billington expertly sustains the suspense - DAILY MAILA heady literary cocktail that hurtles towards its tragic denouement with this authors characteristic flair - EASY LIVINGK, a middle-aged painter, has returned from a hermit-like existence in Chile to attend the wedding of a girl he once loved to the point of obsession. He arrives at the English country church to find it empty and silent. The wedding has been postponed. He drives back to his hotel - a place hed visited many years before - opens a bottle of champagne and with it, a door to the past.When K first saw Claudia fifteen years before, he fell instantly and dangerously in love. He managed to forget he had a wife and a life already full. It was a coup de foudre; he became consumed by her. But Claudia was little more than a child then, twenty-four years his junior, beautiful but unformed. Perhaps it was no surprise that their love proved to be so destructive and ultimately tragic. Now, years later, he returns to find this new bride, his old love, is on the verge of a very different future. But the past, inevitably, awaits them both - and he is determined to take her back there...

GLORY is as near to a British War and Peace as any contemporary novelist is likely to come SPECTATORHeart-wrenching novel of loss, love and survival WOMAN & HOMEA poignant and compelling story of three lives torn apart by the Battle of Gallipoli.Arthur Tarrant, an Oxford graduate headed for his uncles law firm, changes path leaving behind his fiancee Sylvia and joins the army, destined for Gallipoli. There, his life becomes entwined with that of Fred Chaffey, a country boy from Dorset. Glory tells of the fatal errors made by the leaders of the army, the heroism of the men, and the struggles to understand the situation while nurturing relationships in the most strange and difficult of circumstances.