Hope Street : Book I : Tales From Edwardian Portsmouth

From 1897 until the outbreak of WW2, May Miller wrote a diary. Recipes, flower arrangements, homemade cosmetics, lovers, friends, family and enemies, jostle with gossip and told with saucy, black humour. This is her story. May left home to work as a maid in a big house on the hill, looking down on Portsea. Intelligent, handsome, and ambitious, she achieved her plans only through a series of mishaps. Serendipity forces May to seize any and every opportunity. She’s a fighter. What would have cast many in similar positions to abandon hope, May battles to save herself and her family from poverty and the looming workhouse. May wins that battle. Now she wants more than just freedom from poverty. She wants the security of wealth. Never again would she accept a vulnerable position. If she lost, she had no one to blame but herself – and that baggage Emily Babcock . . .