Mary Hocking: 24 books

As the 1939-1945 war slows to a clumsy halt, a trembling world holds out its arms to welcome peace back home again. Alice Fairley, her friends and her family are surprised to find themselves so unprepared for peacetime. In a way, it's like starting all over again: all the things one was confident...

In 1939, as they leave school, Constance and Sheila vow to keep in touch. Posted to Ireland in the WRNS, Constance marries Fergus, a gregarious Irishman. Before long, stifled by domesticity and motherhood, she envies Sheila, writing poetry and married to the fiercely creative Miles. Gradually, however,...

The Alpine tunnel is closed, so two men ignore their orders and head for the St. Bernard Pass, taking them to Italy . . . Later, they learn that if they had obeyed orders, they would have been ambushed. Stephen Mitchell and Dan Burke are British agents assigned to keep an eye on a scientist...

Tom Norris has problems of his own, and chief among them is: who is he? It is a time of general stress and strain, for Tom is Assistant Education Officer to the South Sussex Council, and the County Hall, long threatened by wind and rain on its bleak headland, is about to meet its destruction at the...

On the night Neil Moray is returned as Independent MP for the seaside town of Scotney, William Lomax, editor of the local paper, has a visit from a woman with an unsavoury tale to tell about Moray's campaign manager, Rodney Cope. Much has been made of Moray's personal integrity and his determination...

As a child, Flora (nicknamed 'Pug') used often to visit the Routh family at Lewes. She returns as a young woman, to help the parents with their daughter, Margaret, who has had a nervous breakdown mysteriously linked with Katmandu, and is being treated by the local doctor. Margaret's brother Timothy...

When an antique shop in Holland Park is burgled, the seemingly quiet life of its proprietors, Edward Saneck and George Vickers, is suddenly in the spotlight. Why are the police so interested in a run-of-the-mill burglary, and what does it have to do with a hit and run which happened down the road? Upstairs...

There was a gleam of humour in his eyes, but it was not strong enough to counteract a certain bleakness in the thin face. What was there here for Rose? A Scots lawyer, James Kerr, has been asked by a relative to investigate the rumour that his cousin, Rose, has taken up with 'a young Spaniard'....

'In 1948 Melita Jory ran away with a stranger and was not heard of again. . .' In Polwithian, Cornwall, strangers are always noticed. So when an unknown man arrives in the village enquiring about the Jory family, who have been living on the same farm for decades, news soon spreads. What is...

The theme of The Sparrow is the conflict presented to Ralph Kimberley, a London vicar, by his ardent support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Although a kind, well-intentioned man, he does not realise the effect his sympathies are having on his parish, nor on those who are close to him. His...