Books by Elizabeth Waite

Carla Scofield has looked after her family since she was a teenager but it's never been a bother because there isn't anything she wouldn't do for those closest to her. Warm, friendly, and with the ability to make everyone around her laugh, she carries her burden proudly.As the years roll past, Carla sees life around her change dramatically. Wartime brings new challenges and a new job for Carla in a sewing factory, and she shines. It also brings with it love and Carla has a chance at real happiness - but not everyone is rooting for her. With Christmas ahead of her, and her sights set firmly on love and the future, will she be too distracted to sense the danger before it's too late?An East End Christmas is an emotional, compelling and page-turning story that will be perfect for fans of Katie Flynn, Annie Groves and Carol Rivers.

When Janey has to leave her home after her stepfather beats her up so badly her mother fears for her safety, she finds herself in a children's home deep in the Sussex countryside. Unused to open space, fields and love she soons settles in and the friends she makes quickly become her new family. But, at the age of sixteen, Janey has to leave the home and is found a job in Balham as a housemaid. She feels abandoned again and the job is awful. Lonely and miserable, things get even worse when Janey falls ill with influenza and nearly dies. Although she recovers, Janey's situation doesn't improve until she meets Christy, a blind woman, and is employed as her companion. The two women become friends and when Janey meets Christy's son, Charles, she soon realises that she has fallen in love with him. But Charles is married and Janey fears that she will never find the happiness she has always longed for...

Linked through marriage to three brothers, the Underwood women prove time and again that they are a force to be reckoned with.Jodie has travelled a hard road to reach her own prosperity, despite her husband's constant unreliability. Yet she can't bring herself to fully sever ties with John. But now with a potential new love waiting nearby, Jodie must make a decision she has been avoiding for too long.Widowed at a young age, Lariane believes her marriage to Rick was perfect. He also left behind twin daughters, but is Lariane sacrificing their future happiness by looking for perfection? Will another man ever be good enough to fill Rick's shoes?Dee has everything she ever wanted: a husband she adores and a beautiful little girl. But she knows that her family's happiness is founded on half-truths. How long before she must come clean with those she holds most dear?Heartfelt and captivating, Three Brave Women is a story of loyalty, family and finding strength when all seems lost.

Like most people in London in the impoverished 1920s, Joan Baldwin has her crosses to bear. Her biggest one by far is her husband: a good-for-nothing drinker and gambler, but one day he perishes in a fire of his own drunken making and Joan is set free. As a maid, her talents at sewing are noticed and encouraged and when her kindly employer dies leaving her 200, she takes another plunge - setting up Distinct Designs, which soon becomes a thriving fashion establishment.But will she ever be successful in love? When she meets Eric Roussel, a charismatic businessman it looks like happiness will finally be hers. Is he everything he's cracked up to be? With an exotic, foreign background, he's certainly different. Just how different is something that Joan is only just beginning to learn . . .

When Annie's father is killed after being run over by a bus, Annie decides she can't let the two children her father took in as lodgers with their mother (now vanished) be taken into care and inevitably separated. Instead, with the help of her Grandmother, Rhonda, who lives nearby, Annie uses what little money her job at the local cafe affords her and her inheritance from her father to raise Ronnie and Mary herself. Annie continues to search for the childrens' parents but she soons discovers that Ronnie and Mary have different fathers and that Ronnie's father will not take Mary, only his son. Again the children face separation unless Annie can come up with a solution.With the help of her lodger, Jack, with whom Annie falls in love, Annie begins her battle to adopt the children but various obstacles promise to make her fight a hard one...

Flame-haired Wimbledon girl Joan Harvey could not have chosen a worse time to fall in love with Matt Pearson. With no end in sight to the Second World War, and Joan discovering she is pregnant, a rushed marriage is her only option, despite her family's reservations.Then, on a visit to Matt's family in the East End, a street accident results in Joan going into premature labour. As her baby is born, a bomb plunges the hospital into darkness, before Joan has even had a chance to look at her son...No one is happier than Joan to see the end of the war. Finally she and Matt can begin to behave like a normal family, and bring up their son and two daughters. But then a call from a solicitor brings astonishing news, about the day Joan's son was born, that is set to change Joan's life for ever...

In 1951, the whole of London thrills to the Festival of Britain, but not Evie Smith. Mistress to Ted Hopkins these thirteen years, marriage is still little more than a dream. Ted has always resigned himself to caring for his bed-ridden wife in Lytham St Ann's, only seeing Evie and their two girls for a few weeks every year.Then, just as Evie finds she is pregnant with their third child, Ted takes his wife abroad for new medical treatment. Five years passing with no word from him, Evie selflessly devotes herself to bringing up her daughters under the loving and protective gaze of her mother Flossie and stepfather Jim, until one day she meets and falls for charming George Higgins, a popular businessman with an almost endless supply of gifts for her family.Tragically, George is killed saving his mother from a fire, leaving Evie lonelier than ever... but through grief may lie her chance of finding lasting happiness.

John, Rick and Derrick Underwood are the most handsome trio of brothers in town and it takes three exceptional women to convince them to settle down.For Jodie, marrying John seemed exciting and romantic at the time but the reality of life is proving too much. Jodie loves her husband but she doesn't know how much more she can take of his dishonest ways.Rick's marriage to Laraine is filled with love and adventure; their life is blissful - until one day it delivers a cruel blow. Everything begins to unravel and Laraine isn't sure she's strong enough to survive.Dee is smitten with her husband, Derrick. He does all he can to provide for her so when he's sent away to sea, she knows she will be all right. But suddenly she stops hearing from Derrick - where is he?From the 1950s all the way through to the 1980s, Three Brides For Three Brothers is a nostalgic story of love and loyalty during the most testing of times.