Picture House Girls Books in Order

The Picture House Girls books move the action from factories and ferries into the soft darkness of a wartime cinema. In Gosport's Criterion Picture House, films offer an escape from rationing, raids and bad news from the front, and the staff who work there see the community at its highest and lowest points. For young usherette Connie Baxter, the cinema becomes both a refuge and the stage for the most complicated years of her life.

In The Picture House Girls Connie arrives in Gosport after her mother is killed in a bombing raid on nearby Portsmouth. She moves in with her practical Aunt Gertie, who works as a cleaner at the Criterion and helps Connie secure a job showing patrons to their seats. The work might seem simple, but the staff room is full of strong personalities, from sharp tongued Queenie at the ice cream stand to a lecherous manager whose wandering hands make every shift a test of nerve.

Outside working hours Connie is drawn into the orbit of Ace Gallagher, Gertie's lodger and a man with fingers in more than one black market pie, and Tommo Smith, a charming taxi dancer who earns his living waltzing ladies around the floor. Between them, and the endless stream of on screen romances flickering across the big screen, she begins to wonder what kind of love story she wants for herself. All the while the war grinds on, bringing air raids, shortages and hard choices.

I'll Be Seeing You continues Connie's journey as the conflict drags into 1943. On the surface she seems to have everything she once dreamed of, a man who claims to adore her, a busy job at the cinema and a close circle of friends. Yet strain lurks underneath, and when her difficult cousin Marlene returns home, old jealousies and buried secrets bubble up. Connie has to look more closely at Ace, her own compromises and the kind of future she is building.

Across the sequence the glamour of Hollywood is always contrasted with the cramped reality of life in a bomb damaged town. The stories are full of music, gossip and stolen kisses in the back row, but they do not shy away from grief, betrayal and the ways war can twist people's choices. At the centre stands Connie and the other picture house girls, learning to rely on one another as much as on any romantic lead.

These novels are a love letter to the power of movies to comfort and distract, and to the women tearing tickets and shining torches in the aisles while history plays out outside.