Janette Jenkins

London, 1899. A young girl is abandoned by her family and finds lodging and work assisting a doctor. But Jane Stretch is no ordinary girl, and Mr Swift is no ordinary doctor.

Little Bones

Originally published: London: Chatto & Windus, 2012.

It's 1899 and a young girl is abandoned in London by her feckless family. She finds lodging and work assisting a doctor. But Jane Stretch is no ordinary girl, and Mr Swift is no ordinary doctor. Jane does her best to keep up with the doctor, her twisted bones throbbing, as they hurry past the markets, stage doors and side shows to appointments in certain boarding houses across town. The young actresses who live there have problems, and Mr Swift does what is required, calmly and discreetly. Grateful to her benefactor and his wife, Jane assists him and asks no questions - the desperate women not minding that it is a cripple girl who wipes their brows. When this unlikely pair becomes involved with Johnny Treble, a rakish music hall star, and the police come knocking, it seems that Jane's spell of good fortune is unlikely to last...

A short, sparkling novel about the twilight years of Noël Coward''s life, by the author of Angel of Brooklyn. On a secluded hillside in Jamaica lies Firefly, Noël Coward''s peaceful retreat. Here, between sundowners and sunsets, brandies and cigarettes, the seventy-one-year-old Coward whiles away his days -- a comforting, frustrating pattern of unwanted breakfasts, reluctant walks, graceless dips in the pool -- in the company of his manservant Patrice. Both of them dream of a London that is long-gone or imagined: Noël''s peopled with glamorous friends -- Redgrave, Olivier, O''Toole -- and Patrice''s a picture-postcard vision of elegance and opportunity. Set over a series of summer days in the early 1970s, Firefly flits through Coward''s dreams and memories, his successes and regrets, against a sultry, seductive backdrop of blue skies and glistening water. Colourful and contemplative, this is a moving and poignant portrait of old age and friendship, and a life well lived.

Firefly

It is January, 1914 and Jonathan Crane returns home from his travels with a new American bride, former Coney Island showgirl Beatrice. In the remote Lancashire village Beatrice is the focus of attention, the men captivated by her beauty, the women initially charmed by tales of her upbringing in Normal, Illinois with her father, an amateur taxidermist, and her brother, a preacher, although she will take the story of how she became the Angel of Brooklyn to her grave. But when the men head off to fight in the Great War the glamorous newcomer slowly becomes an object of suspicion and jealousy for the women who are left behind and as the years pass, and their resentment grows, Beatrice's secret proves to be her undoing. Beautifully observed, tragic, funny and so evocative that you can taste the candy floss at Coney Island and feel the chill of wartime England, Angel of Brooklyn is an extraordinary, heartbreaking story.

Angel of Brooklyn

American bride, Beatrice, finds it hard to adapt to life in the north of England. She shares stories of her past with the other women except for how she became the Angel of Brooklyn. The years pass, the men are still not home and Beatrice finds her old life catches up with her. From the Hardcover edition.

Janette Jenkins

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