McCluskey Saga Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Forget-Me-Not Child | 2017 | Buy |
| Child on the Doorstep | 2018 | Buy |
| As Time Goes By | 2021 | Buy |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| A Little Learning | 1998 | Buy |
| Love Me Tender | 1999 | Buy |
| A Strong Hand to Hold | 1999 | Buy |
| Pack Up Your Troubles | 2000 | Buy |
| Walking Back to Happiness | 2002 | Buy |
| Till the Sun Shines Through | 2004 | Buy |
| Danny Boy | 2004 | Buy |
| Daughter Of Mine | 2005 | Buy |
| Mother’s Only Child | 2006 | Buy |
| To Have and to Hold | 2006 | Buy |
| Keep the Home Fires Burning | 2010 | Buy |
| Far From Home | 2012 | Buy |
| If You Were the Only Girl | 2012 | Buy |
| A Girl Can Dream | 2014 | Buy |
| Another Man’s Child | 2015 | Buy |
Sullivan Family Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| A Sister’s Promise | 2007 | Buy |
| A Daughter’s Secret | 2008 | Buy |
| A Mother’s Spirit | 2009 | Buy |
| The Child Left Behind | 2009 | Buy |
Anne Bennett was born in the Horsefair district of Birmingham, England, the daughter of Irish immigrants. She taught in schools north of Birmingham for many years before a spinal injury ended her teaching career and left her in a wheelchair. She relocated to North Wales and began writing full time, publishing her first novel, A Little Learning, in 1998. She moved to HarperCollins in 2001 and has been known as “Birmingham’s Queen of Fiction” for her steady output of historical sagas rooted in the city’s working-class neighborhoods.
Bennett’s novels draw on her own family background, centering on Irish immigrant families navigating poverty, wartime, and social upheaval in early twentieth-century Birmingham. The McCluskey Saga follows Angela McCluskey from Ireland to Birmingham through the Great War and its aftermath, while the Sullivan Family series traces multiple generations across both countries during World War I and the Blitz. Her standalone novels cover similar ground — women facing impossible choices during wartime, family separations, hidden secrets, and the slow work of survival.
Her writing returns consistently to the question of what holds families together when everything else falls apart. Poverty, war, shame, and institutional cruelty push her characters to their limits, but the stories are grounded in the resilience of ordinary women who refuse to give up on the people they love.