The Coronation Party

Summer, 1953. The sun is shining on Little Green Street, the bunting is being brought out, and Britain is getting ready to crown its new Queen. Except Helen Jones doesn't feel much like celebrating. Her father passed away last year, on the very same day as King George. Life hasn't felt the same ever since. Her husband Tad has a plan. As the newly-appointed chair of the small town's Coronation Tea Party committee, he's hoping that the day will be the perfect moment to bring a spark of joy back to their little family - and to the whole community. But then Helen gets a letter from her mum in London, and she realises she has a bigger dream - she's going to go to see the new Queen...

Norma Curtis was born and brought up in North Wales and wrote her first short stories for a teenage magazine. Her first unpublished novel, Torchwood, was made into a screenplay and her first published novel, Living it Up, Living it Down won the Romantic Novelist Association's New Writers' Award and was chosen for the WHSmith Fresh Talent promotion. After publishing Striking a Balance and The Last Place You Look, she became chairman of the Romantic Novelists' Association and it was in this capacity that she met Queen Elizabeth II at a reception at Buckingham Palace.