Nadine Dorries books in order

County Mayo, Ireland, 1947.

In the worst winter in living memory, Ruby Flynn is rescued from the tiny cottage on the Atlantic coast where her family has perished. She is one of the storm orphans, taken in by nuns to be educated for a life in service. Now she must find her own way in the outside world.

The FitzDeane family have a thriving shipping business in Liverpool and they also own beautiful Ballyford Castle in Mayo. When Ruby is appointed as their nursery maid, a dangerous attraction to the young Lord FitzDeane begins to grow. Soon the tragedies and secrets that link her family to his will threaten to overwhelm them.

The darkest sins cast the longest shadows.

Heartbreaking, gripping, and life-affirming, this story, based on Nadine's own childhood background, is set in the Catholic community in 1950s Liverpool, where young men and women, fleeing the poverty of rural Ireland, have come to seek a better life. 

Jerry and Bernadette are determined to better themselves for the sake of their children—except that the plan goes wrong and Jerry is left alone to bring up their daughter.

Can his broken spirit be mended by the warmth and love of the people of the Four Streets? Not since Jeffrey Archer burst on to the scene has a celebrity MP produced such a commercial first novel.

In the Four Streets in Liverpool, a dreadful murder has been committed, and 14-year-old Kitty Doherty is pregnant with the dead man's child.

This secret is so dangerous that her mother, Maura, and the redoubtable Kathleen, her best friend Nellie's grandmother, decide the girls must be spirited away quietly to Ireland to await the birth of the baby.

But back in Liverpool, the police are not giving up their search for the truth. Somewhere, in this tight-knit Irish Catholic community, someone must know something. Someone surely will talk one day. The streets are alive with gossip and rumor and it isn't easy to keep a secret that big.

Christmas morning, 1963: 15-year-old Kitty Doherty gives birth in a cold, unfriendly Irish convent. She knows her beautiful baby boy presents a huge danger to her family's Catholic community back in Liverpool's Four Streets. When her baby is adopted by a wealthy family in Chicago, Kitty considers the problem solved. But soon it's obvious the baby is very sick and only his birth mother can save him.

In Liverpool, a charismatic new priest has arrived. As the Dohertys cope with the tragic consequences of Kitty's pregnancy, the police seem close to solving the double murder which rocked the Four Streets to the core. But now all that is about to be put at risk once again.

Summer is coming to the four streets – but so is trouble, especially for its redoubtable women, who've struggled through a bitter winter to put food on the table. The Dock Queen Carnival is only weeks away, but there's no money for the usual celebrations. No sign of a tramp ship with illicit cargo to be quietly siphoned off by the dockers.

Peggy Nolan, with seven boys and a husband too lazy to work, has hit rock bottom and is hiding a terrible secret. Little Paddy, her mischievous eldest, is all too often in trouble, but he'd do anything for the mother he loves. How can he save her from selling herself on the streets – or worse?

Maura and Tommy Doherty always looked out for any neighbor in trouble, especially Peggy, but they're far away, running a pub in Ireland, and corrupt copper, Frank the Skank, is moving into their old house on the four streets. Can anything bring them home in time?

It is 1953. Five very different girls are arriving at the nurses' home in Lovely Lane, Liverpool, to start their training at St Angelus Hospital.

Dana has escaped from her family farm on the west coast of Ireland. Victoria is running away from a debt-ridden aristocratic background. Beth is an army brat and throws her lot in with bitchy Celia Forsyth. And Pammy has come from quite the wrong side of the tracks in Liverpool.

The world in which they now find themselves is complicated and hierarchical, with rules that must be obeyed. Everyone has their place at St Angelus and woe betide anyone who strays from it.

But when an unknown girl is admitted, after a botched late abortion in a backstreet kitchen, a tragedy begins to unfold which will rock the world of St Angelus to its foundations.

The nurses of Lovely Lane—Dana, Victoria, Pammy, and Beth—are now in their second year and are about to face some truly harrowing and difficult times on the wards.

St Angelus needs a new assistant matron, but the members of the Liverpool District Hospital Board have overruled Emily Haycock and Dr Gaskell in their choice. Enter the mysterious Miss Van Gilder from somewhere down south.

The life of St Angelus is soon disrupted as her proposals turn the running of the hospital upside down and threaten the jobs of the domestics and porters. But Miss Van Gilder harbors a dark and dishonest secret, and the staff—who are used to looking after their own—set out to uncover it.

Will they do so in time, before her meddling begins to affect the morale of the nurses and put the lives of their patients in danger? For one very sick little boy, especially, it will be touch and go.

Noleen Delaney is one of an army of night cleaners at St Angelus Hospital. Son Finn has done something unheard-of and passed his Eleven Plus exam. How on earth will they pay for his books, his grammar school uniform, and shoes?

Bronia Ryan has battled depression since her husband died and now one of her sons is in prison. Her youngest, Lorcan, wants no part of a life of crime, but how can he ever escape? Or protect his mother from her vicious eldest son?

As usual, St Angelus is at the heart of things. Life and death, love and loss, jealousies, rivalries, and betrayals are woven into a rich tapestry in Nadine's great series about poverty, sacrifice and community spirit in post-war Liverpool and the early days of the NHS.

The perfect read for Christmas 2018, from bestselling author Nadine Dorries.

1950s Liverpool: Christmas is the most harrowing time of year for the nurses of St Angelus Hospital.

A brilliant nurse secretly battling a fatal illness over Christmas . . . A starving baby boy abandoned in the freezing cold . . . A cruel, controlling mother, determined to block her daughter's nursing career at all costs . . .

In the run up to Christmas, nurses Pammy and Beth are aiming to win the coveted national decorating competition for the St Angelus children's ward, but drama after drama threatens to upset their plans.

Amid the hardship and poverty of 1950s Liverpool, only the humor and community spirit of nurses and patients will get the Angels through their toughest Christmas yet.

1950s Liverpool.

Christmas is one of the most harrowing times of year for the nurses of St Angelus Hospital.

The Matron takes on Tilly, a new clerk, to ease the load in the busy festive period. Tilly is bright and hard-working, but she is keeping a secret from her colleagues. Everyday Tilly makes a heartbreaking decision – but she has no other choice.

If Matron – with her traditional values and strict discipline – learnt the truth about her new clerk, Tilly's career would be ruined.

Could Matron ever forgive the deceit?

Christmas is coming, but will the doctors and nurses of St Angelus get a chance to enjoy it?

Sister Emily Haycock and her husband are anxiously counting the days until the signing of final adoption papers for their precious baby Louis. But someone has got it in for them and Emily is about to get caught out in a dangerous lie.

Nurse Victoria Baker is heavily pregnant. But as the snow begins to fall, has she made a big mistake about her dates and put the life of her unborn baby at risk?

And who is the figure obsessively watching St Angelus from the shadows? Or the mystery woman who turns up one dark, windy evening, begging for a room?

It is Christmas morning in 1964. For nurse Fionnuala Kennedy, it is work as usual. As she trudges through the cold streets to catch her bus, Fionnuala thinks of the secret which she has been keeping from her beloved mother and father – and of how on earth she is going to break it to them.

She promises herself that she will do it that very evening, when she gets back home. None of the hospital staff are expecting very much to disturb their routine – it is Christmas Day, after all. And indeed, Fionnuala's morning at the hospital begins quietly enough, but then all hell breaks loose, and she is faced with an emergency to rock her world to its foundations.

It is 1846, famine is gripping Ireland and nowhere is it crueller than in Mayo on the west coast. Owen FitzDeane of Ballyford Castle is a good landlord, but even he is powerless to save all his tenants.

When he comes upon a half-dead girl beside the road, he insists on taking her back to the castle, to see if they can save her.

But Eilinora is no ordinary girl and soon superstition and fear begin to swirl around her, while Lord FitzDeane of Ballyford falls deeper under her spell.

Tarabeg is a small village on the West Coast of Ireland. In the aftermath of the Second World War, two women are waiting there for ambitious Michael Malone to return home.

Rosie is the local schoolteacher and most people think she is promised to him. Just a few have guessed that he has secretly begun to woo Sarah, whose brutal fisherman father would kill her if he knew.

Both Rosie and Sarah love Michael, both hope to become his wife and their lives will interweave in a tale of tangled secrets, old promises and new feuds. Michael Malone's choice will have fateful consequences for everyone – especially, in due course, for his young daughter.

Liverpool, 1963.

Mary Kate Malone is seventeen and bitterly unhappy that her father has married again after the death of her mother. On her last day at school, she decides to leave home in Tarabeg on the west coast of Ireland and head for Liverpool to find her mother's sister.

But absolutely nothing goes to plan. Within hours of disembarking, she finds herself penniless and alone, with no place to stay and no idea how she will survive.

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, where old sins cast long shadows, a long-buried secret is about to come to light and a day of reckoning, in the shape of a stranger from America, will set an unstoppable chain of events in motion.

Mary Kate Malone has come to Liverpool from Ireland to seek her fortune, but from the very beginning, things have gone horribly wrong. Now she longs to flee back to her family in Ireland.

But Tarabeg isn't the place Mary Kate remembers anymore. A charismatic American has arrived with plans to change everything and Mary Kate hates him on sight. Worse still, the lies she has told about her Liverpool life are about to come back to haunt her.