Ferry Girls Books in Order

The Ferry Girls stories take place on the choppy waters between Gosport and Portsmouth, where small ferries shuttle workers and sailors back and forth even as bombs fall on the harbour. With many of the male crews away at the front, young women step in to run the boats, battling tides, blackouts and air raids to keep the town moving. Into this world walks Vee Smith, who is carrying a dangerous secret.

Vee has grown up with her mother on a smallholding near Southampton, always aware that their German surname could mark them out as enemies in a country at war. To avoid internment they obtain false papers, and Vee reinvents herself as an ordinary English girl. When local tensions rise and threats close in, she bolts for Gosport, hoping the anonymity of a busy naval town will keep her safe.

Working on the ferries gives Vee the sense that she is finally doing something useful for the war effort. The shifts are long and often cold, but she soon bonds with the other ferry girls, sharing jokes, worries and dreams as they guide passengers across the harbour in blackout conditions. Nights out dancing in Gosport give them brief flashes of freedom, a chance to forget the sirens and searchlights for an evening.

Complications come in the shape of the ferry skipper, an unhappily married man Vee cannot help caring about, and in the shadowy figures from her past who may not be as far away as she hopes. A charming fixer who once helped her obtain false papers, and neighbours who despise anything German, threaten to drag her secrets into the open. If her true identity is exposed, both Vee and her mother could lose the fragile safety they have built.

Against this tense backdrop the book is as much about loyalty and belonging as it is about danger. Vee must decide whom she can trust, what home really means, and how far she is willing to go to protect the people who have taken her in. Around her, the other ferry girls deal with their own troubles, yet they rally together when it matters, proving that solidarity on the home front can be as brave as any act on the battlefield.

Readers can expect a mix of harbour life, romance and the gnawing fear of being seen as the enemy in your own town.