Books by Susan Day

As deaths mount during the coronavirus pandemic a retired history teacher reflects on the much greater personal impact of her sister's death 12 years before. Pam Dearly - lonely, grumpy, resentful - uses the lens of lock-down to review her life, her family and her relationship with her sister.

This beautifully understated story, of two working-class girls in the 60's, explores the opportunities and the limitations, hopes and disappointments - and the music - that they grew up with; and the choices they hardly remember making that shaped their lives.

There are families that would fall apart if the truth came out. Jen admires her father and Frank believes that his daughters are happy, but no one in any family knows the whole story. This family has fractured before, and been patched up by secrets and evasions. Now things are about to change.

One wartime morning four girls set out on a bike ride that will bind them together for years to come - through marriage, children and divorce, and even across continents. Many years later they are still in touch, and still trying to understand the tragedy that has been one of the constants in their lives. What did happen to Marcie?

The design revolutions of the early 20th century were woven into the very fabric of the carpets and rugs of that era. This book charts the evolution of carpet design out of the floral effusions of the Victorian salons and into the angular elegance of Art Deco and bold abstraction of Modernism popularized by the machine age.