London in the 1960s, and the city is swinging - what could be more exciting than being eighteen? But there is a dark side to Soho. . . Angie is eighteen years old, and, with the help of a mini skirt, a pair of false eyelashes and a tube of pale pink lipstick, has made herself into a beauty. She's living in London in the Swinging Sixties, and knows she's in the best city in the world at the best possible time. She's got that world at her pretty, white-booted feet as she dances the night away with every handsome bloke on the booming, strobe-lit floor of the Canvas Club. She's heard all the scare stories of course, about what drink, drugs and discotheques can do to young girls, but Angie knows she's different. After all, she's only playing around. But that was before that rainy night, when Angie got into the big, shiny car, leaving her friend Jackie in Soho to find her own way home. **

To the outside world seventeen year-old identical twins Babs and Evie Bell are as close as two sisters can be. In fact they are as different as chalk and cheese. Babs is the sensible one, taking on responsibility for the house, and for their dad, Georgie `Ringer' Bell, who has sunk into drunken, self-pitying despair ever since his wife Violet did a runner with another man. By contrast Evie's prime object in life is having a good time - and at the moment that involves Albie Denham, a well-known local crook. Apart from organising illegal dog racing, Albie, a natural spiv, has no visible means of support, but when war breaks out he is in his element. Babs senses Albie is drawing her carefree sister closer to the edge of real trouble. And it is not long before she is proved all too right. . . **

Our Street is the perfect companion to Gilda O'Neill's bestselling My East End. This book focuses on the lives of Londoners in the East End during the Second World War. Showing the concerns, hopes and fears of these so-called 'ordinary people' Our Street illustrates these times by looking at the every day rituals which marked the patterns of daily life during WWII. It is an important book and also an affectionate record of an often fondly remembered, more communal, way of life that has all but disappeared.

The Flanagans, the Tanners and the Lovells all live on the top floor of the Turnbury Buildings - a crumbling Victorian tenement in the heart of London's East End. Nell Flanagan is a decent, hardworking woman, married to Stephen, a tough, heavy-drinking brute of a man, who works as a casual in the docks - when there's work available. Nell has hidden the abuse she has suffered at his hands from her young children, although most of the neighbours realise what's going on. The Tanners think she must be asking for it, but Martin Lovell has always admired Nell. When he sees Stephen actually attacking Nell, he can stand back no longer, but his actions have repercussions for all the families... Set in 1936 against a backdrop of civil war in Spain, the threat of fascism in western Europe, and the privations of the Depression at home, Rough Justice is the first novel in a dramatic new series about the lives, loves and losses, the fears, hopes and desires, the failures and triumphs of the families who live and work in and around Turnbury Buildings. **Review "If you enjoy a good saga, Rough Justice is a strong beginning to a promising series" First magazine About the Author Gilda O’Neill enjoys a dedicated readership for her novels of East End London life. 

'Every page is a delight. Every chapter made vivid by a writer who has poured heart and soul into her book'. Val Hennessy, Daily MailThe East End of London - cockneys, criminals, street markets, pub singalongs, dog racing, jellied eels ... it is a place at once appealing and unruly, comforting and incomprehensible. Gilda O'Neill, an East Ender herself shows there is more to this fascinating area than a collection of cliched images. Using oral history and more traditional sources she builds up a powerful image of this community - bringing to us, with wit and honesty, the real story of London's East End

A COMPASSIONATE, DRAMATIC SAGA OF LIFE IN THE EAST END IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. Ginny has a dream. A huge, pillared house with a sweeping staircase, white and perfect. But life, in reality, is different. She is barely more than a child when her family is killed in the Blitz. Marriage to handsome, charming Ted seems like the answers to her prayers. But Ted is a bully, and violent, and Ginny finds she is trapped, emotionally and practically, reliant on a man who hates the sight of her. Then she meets the glamourous Leila and is introduced to a brave new world. Leila shows her how - if she plays her cards right - she can make her dreams come true.

The lights of London seem bright to Kitty Miller, but their sparkle soon fades when she finds herself alone and destitute, at the mercy of those that inhabit the fog-bound streets and alleyways of the East End. Until the feisty young prostitute, Tibs Tyler, takes her under her wing, and the two girls, one dark, one fair, set themselves up as a music hall act. As they desperately try to break free from Tibs's violent pimp, and to avoid the educated and wealthy yet sinister Dr Tressing, they are also hoping to make a new life for themselves as the new century breaks.About the Author Gilda O'Neill was born and brought up in the East End. She left school at fifteen but returned to education as a mature student. She wrote full-time and continued to live in the East End with her husband and family. Sadly she died on 24 September 2010 after a short illness. From AudioFile In the dark desperation of a London winter's night, Kitty Miller throws herself off a bridge. Carole Boyd takes listeners to a time and place exotic in poverty and hopelessness--the reeking streets of the Victorian East End. As a reluctantly rescued Kitty becomes reabsorbed into that milieu, a wealth of characters and voices pours from Boyd: Tibs, a "bride" of the streets and her pimp, Jack; an entrepreneur from the northern mining districts and his partner; and the elegant doctor whose offers of help allure the struggling quartet. Their adventures and the magic in Boyd's voice sweep them toward the wonder of the approaching millennium. S.B.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

All big-hearted Katie Mehan ever wanted was health and happiness for her family and the love of her husband, Pat. But as work at the docks gets scarcer and the political unrest of the 1930s begins to impinge on them, she wonders if even this is too much to ask. Especially when Pat begins to show the strain in gits of temper aimed, to her astonished fury, at Katie herself. Meanwhile their 16-year-old daughter Molly is getting an increasing amount of attention from boys in the area, in particular from the masterful and confident Bob Jarvis. But Jarvis has a darker side - his links with the violent Blackshirts. And when Molly meets another boy, Jewish Simon Blomstein, she begins to realise life isn't as simple as she thought it was. . .