KEEPING MY SISTERS' SECRETS - with - ALL MY MOTHER'S SECRETS - with - HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER

London: Pan Books, 2017. Book. Very Good. Soft cover. Later Printings. 8vo. 346, 389, 343 pp. Trade paperback format. All three books have light rubbing with faintly creased flat spines; no interior markings. Eva, Peggy and Kathleen were sisters, living in a terraced house on a rough street. As they grew up, they dreamed of escaping their violent father. Peggy was a studious girl who became a Communist. Beautiful Kathleen married an abusive man and later - during the Second World War - fell in love with a GI. Feisty Eva became a thief as a child so she could help their mother put food on the table - and never lost her rebellious streak or her desire to protect her family. As the years passed, the sisters all lived close together, supporting each other through hard times... In the second book, Annie is the eldest daughter of a laundress in Acton, London, raised to keep the rich families of Kensington spick-and-span. As she grows up in poverty in the 1920s and 1930s, her life centres on the family business, working long hours of hard physical labour. When she's not in the laundry she's looking after her younger brother and two stepsisters. But she's haunted by thoughts of her real father and what happened to him. All she knows is that he died in the Great War - her mother will not talk about him, and his very existence is shrouded in secrecy... And in the final book, when Annie marries Harry after years of heartache in a London slum she believes she's found her happy ever after. But the horrors of the Blitz soon threaten everything they hold dear. The terrible sights Harry witnesses as an air raid warden bring back traumatic memories of his time during the First World War. Suddenly Annie finds herself struggling to cope not only with life in wartime and two little children, but also with a husband who seems like a stranger....