Dragon Land (44 page)
Authors: Maureen Reynolds
Margaret popped her head around the door. âIs that Mary-Beth? I thought I heard the door.'
Jonas sighed. âHeavens, Margaret, you could hear her in China.'
He was standing lounging against the door frame and I felt a strong urge to go and kiss him.
âIsn't it strange the traits we pass on to our children,' he said. âThere's Peter, who loves horses like his grandfather, and Mary-Beth, who loves clocks like your mother.'
I gave him a kiss as I passed. âYes, and she has your imagination, Jonas O'Neill. Little clock people indeed,' I said as I went to wind up Granny's grandfather clock.
As I passed my dad's photograph in its frame, I thought back to my meeting with Andy Baxter a few months earlier. He looked so happy as he introduced me to his wife and two children. They had just received their keys for a new house in Kirkton and were looking forward to a new life.
I recalled his first visit to the house, and I remembered how my father had saved his life and how some good had come out of the carnage of the trenches and the Great War. My father died a hero, but then he had always been a hero to me.
I gave him a smile in passing.
Voices in the Street
The Sunday Girls
Towards a Dark Horizon
The Sun Will Shine Tomorrow
Teatime Tales from Dundee
McQueen’s Agency
A Private Sorrow
Indian Summer
First published 2014
by Black & White Publishing Ltd
29 Ocean Drive, Edinburgh EH6 6JL
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
This electronic edition published in 2014
ISBN: 978 1 84502 792 6 in EPub format
ISBN: 978 1 84502 743 8 in paperback format
Copyright © Maureen Reynolds 2014
The right of Maureen Reynolds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay
Also by Maureen Reynolds
McQueen’s Agency
Also available in paperback
When Molly McQueen returns home after an unhappy time in Australia, she needs a new challenge. As the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II lifts the spirits of post-war Britain, Molly opens her brand-new venture, McQueen’s Agency. Hiring out temps to local businesses, Molly soon finds it tough going, until a lucrative job comes in which almost seems too good to be true. On her first day working for Lamont’s Antiques, Molly senses that something isn’t right. She’s determined to get the job done, until she gets caught up in a web of intrigue and deceit that puts her life in grave danger.
A Private Sorrow
Also available in paperback
It is autumn 1954 and after the success of Molly McQueen’s detective agency, she decides to add a new branch for domestic disputes. It is not long before one of the newly hired employees, Maisie, uncovers a riveting mystery by accident while visiting a client.
Vera Barton’s husband Dave and young daughter Etta went missing in 1930. After Dave’s body was found, everyone assumed the worst. But decades later, Molly reluctantly agrees to take up the search for the long-lost child and ends up unravelling a tale of misery and revenge, laced with family secrets and heartbreak.
Indian Summer
Also available in paperback
There are lots of changes happening at Molly McQueen’s detective Agency. Biggest of all is that Molly herself must decide whether or not she should move to Australia to be with her family. If she does, it will mean the end of the Agency she has dreamed of and worked so hard to build.
Before she decides on her future, however, Molly enjoys a trip to Pitlochry Festival Theatre to see her old friend Deanna on stage. But when she goes for a walk through the hills at Killiecrankie she comes across a frightening scene. An elderly man has tumbled down a hill and has serious head injuries. As her friend goes for help, Molly stays with the man and tries to comfort him, convinced he does not have long to live. Then, unexpectedly, he hands her a pouch and tells her to ‘warn them’.
Little does she know that those words and the pouch the man has given her will set in motion a chain of events leading to one of the most challenging cases of her career.
The Sunday Girls
The first part of a trilogy,
The Sunday Girls
records the changing fortunes of the Neill family during the 1930s’ Depression in Dundee. Daughter Ann is a bookworm and would love to stay on at school but, following the death of her mother, she is forced to help support the family by taking a job as a housemaid. The contrast between rich and poor, at a time when jobs were as scarce as hens’ teeth, is heart-wrenchingly drawn.
These were the hardest of hard times for the whole country, but the collapse of the jute industry meant Dundee was particularly badly hit and Maureen Reynolds skilfully paints a realistic picture of what it was like to live through them.
With her acute ear for dialogue and her ability to tell a cracking tale, Maureen Reynolds also shows how, despite the hardship, fun, friendship and even love were to be found for the Sunday girls, four girls who all happen to have been born on a Sunday.
Towards a Dark Horizon
Towards A Dark Horizon
follows on from
The Sunday Girls
. Though the legacy Ann Neill inherited from her employer, her family is offered some respite from their lives of hardship. However, the Neills still find nothing straightforward, as war with Germany looms and their own lives seem headed for a similarly dark horizon.
Full of dark family secrets but also warm familial love,
Towards A Dark Horizon
will delight fans of Maureen Reynolds’s effortless way with a good yarn, eager to know what fate has in store for Ann and Lilly Neill and their father Johnny, as well as the Ryan clan and the budding relationship between Danny and Maddie.
The Sun Will Shine Tomorrow
Maureen Reynolds’ moving family saga which started with
The Sunday Girls
and continued in
Towards a Dark Horizon
now concludes in
The Sun Will Shine Tomorrow
.
As war continues to rage across Europe, the family are worried about Rosie, who is pregnant and suffering from terrible morning sickness. Meanwhile Johnny goes to Orkney with the Home Guard, where he suffers a fractured skull in a fall. When he eventually gets home Rosie is feeling better but then suddenly goes into labour.
Meantime, Ann Neill is thrilled to be meeting up with Greg again when he gets a 48-hour pass. But instead of meeting him as planned, Johnny asks her to go to the hospital with Rosie and tells her he will explain later. Ann realises that she and Greg are growing apart and finds out later that he has met another girl at Bletchley Park.