The Widow Ginger

It is 1954, the year Roger Bannister won the four-minute mile. Rosie, and her beloved Auntie Maggie are opening up their café in Old Compton Street for Uncle Bert's breakfast special when the Widow Ginger comes to call.

The Widow Ginger, an ex-GI with ice-cold blue eyes, is especially scary. He has unfinished business with Uncle Bert - business that includes being cheated on his share of a 'liberated' lorry-load of guns and explosives during the War - and he intends to make sure he now gets paid in full.

And this isn't all: the lovely Luigi appears to be suffering from a severe case of unrequited lust; Bert and the local Mafioso Maltese Joe have had an acrimonious falling-out; and, most worrying of all, Rosie's best friend Jenny has begun to keel over mysteriously in the school playground.

With a cast of colourful characters with wonderful names like Sugar Plum Flaherty and Bandy Bunion, Soho streets so authentic you can lean out and touch them, and a story that will make you laugh and cry, The Widow Ginger is another heart-warming novel that will establish Pip as the queen of London saga-writers.