Campion Family Books in Order

The Campion family novels follow a large Liverpool clan as they face the years before and during the Second World War. Each book picks up the lives of different Campion women and their relatives, showing how one extended family copes when war arrives on their doorstep.

Across the Mersey begins with twin sisters Jean and Vi, who could not be more different. Jean is proud of her hardworking husband and their children, even if money is always tight. Vi enjoys a newer house, nicer clothes and the status that comes with her husband's position on the local council. When war looms, both households must decide whether sons should enlist and younger children should be evacuated, while their glamorous younger sister Francine returns home with secrets of her own.

In Daughters of Liverpool fresh faces take centre stage. Determined young Katie arrives in the city for a secretive wartime posting and is billeted with a Liverpool family whose son Luke is a Dunkirk veteran nursing invisible wounds. While teenage twins in the household push against every restriction, bombs begin to fall on the docks and everyone has to learn quickly what truly matters.

The Heart of the Family and Where the Heart Is move deeper into the war years. The Campions debate whether to send the youngest twins out of the city for safety, even as the girls themselves start to dream of lives that do not necessarily match their parents' wishes. Cousin Bella, once more interested in nights out than nappies, finds herself running a creche and confronted with the needs of other people's children. Lou Campion joins the WAAFs, chafing against strict rules yet determined to prove herself.

In When the Lights Go On Again the tide of war is finally turning, but the home front is still dangerous. Lou has transferred to the Air Transport Auxiliary and ferries aircraft across the country, facing real personal risk on every flight. Her twin Sasha, traumatised by an earlier bombing, struggles to look ahead to a peaceful future. Back in Liverpool Katie receives an unexpected letter from Luke that forces her to decide whether she can rebuild trust after heartbreak.

Taken together, the Campion books offer a rich, multi generational portrait of a Liverpool family tested by evacuation, service life, bombing and romantic upheaval. The novels blend family rows and kitchen table humour with scenes of real peril, always coming back to the idea that loyalty and love are what carry people through. Readers who like long running sagas where familiar characters step forward and back across several volumes will find plenty to enjoy with the Campions.