When her friend and business partner Edwin Brown dies, it seems like Katherine Carter’s own world has ended. Not only has her closest companion been taken from her, but she’s also lost the successful restaurant they built up together and the comfortable home they shared with her young son, for Edwin has left no will. And his lecherous brother, Gerald, presumes he’s inherited Katherine along with the house.

With little money but full of determination, Katherine escapes Gerald’s violent advances and takes lodgings in Dockhands London. Despite its poverty, the town is full of hope and friendship, and Katherine finally begins to tackle her troubled past. But even as she rebuilds her life around the pie-and-mash shop where she works, a terrible shadow is hanging over the country. Little does anyone know the horrors that 1914 will unleash.

It’s 1935 and Maggie Ross loves her life among the stallholders in Kelvin Market where her husband Tony has a bric-a-brac stall and where she lives, with her young family, above Mr. Goldman’s bespoke tailors. But when one fine Spring day her husband disappears into thin air her world collapses.

The last anyone saw of Tony is at Rotherhithe station, where Mr. Goldman glimpsed him boarding a train, though Maggie can only guess at her husband’s destination. And she has no way of telling what prompted him to leave her so suddenly—especially when she’s got a new baby on the way. What she can tell is who her real friends are as she struggles to bring her children up alone. There’s outspoken, golden-hearted Winnie, her fellow stallholder whose cheerful chatter hides a sad past, and cheeky Eve whom she’s known since they were girls. And there’s also Inspector Matthews, the policeman sent to investigate her husband’s disappearance, a man who, to the Kelvin Market stallholders, is on the wrong side of the law, a man to whom Maggie is increasingly drawn.

A graceful, inspired memoir about building a home from scratch and discovering a true sense of self–in just eighty-four square feet–by Dee Williams, a pioneer in sustainable living and the proud owner of a very tiny house

After a heart condition felled Dee Williams in the grocery store ten years ago, she initially threw herself headfirst back into her old life, which included a pricey three-bedroom house, overtime hours to cover homeowner bills, and a general lack of free time. In the midst of contemplating her future, a new sense of clarity took hold. What was all this stuff for? Mortgage payments and the time-suck of homeownership felt like a waste, and no one has the money or desire to pack it in and live on an island without family, friends, or health insurance.

Discovering the sustainability movement and building her own house was just the beginning of building a new life. Williams can now list everything she owns on one sheet of paper, her monthly bills amount to about eight dollars, and it takes her ten minutes to clean the entire house. It’s allowed her to slow down, scale back, spend more time with family and friends–and given her the freedom to head out for adventure, or watch the clouds and sunset while drinking a beer on her (yes, tiny) front porch. Without escaping to the wilds or going off the grid, Williams achieved a happy balance of the normal and the radical and created a new model for simple, practical living.

Part how-to and part why-to, The Big Tiny is not just a memoir of that “aha” moment posttrauma but an utterly seductive meditation on what it means to build the good life and the right life, every day.

When a naïve encounter at a coronation party leaves sixteen-year-old Janet Slater pregnant, there’s no question in her scandalized parents’ minds of her keeping the baby. Bundled off to a home for unmarried mothers in South London, Janet is about to face the hardest moment of her sheltered life alone. Forced to give her tiny daughter up for adoption, Janet promises her that one day, come what may, she’ll find her.

In the years that follow, it seems that however hard Janet tries, it is a promise that is impossible to keep. Nonetheless, she builds her life around her secret, and Paula, her lost daughter, is never far from her thoughts. Finally, her searching pays off, and the road to their longed-for reunion seems clear—but then a new shadow falls across the fragile happiness of both their lives.