Molly and Bernie have been friends forever. As young girls they left Ireland seeking new beginnings in Liverpool. Now they are marrying their sweethearts and looking forward to enjoying the lives they've worked so hard to build. But as the Liverpool Blitz begins, it seems as if their dreams are about to be destroyed. Night after night, horrific bombing tears the city apart. As wives and mothers, both women know that they could face great tragedy. But they also know that their friendship, and their love for their husbands and sons, will give them the strength to find the happiness they deserve...

Best friends Bernie and Molly are just seventeen when they set off from Ireland in 1928, heading for Liverpool. They quickly find jobs and rooms; soon both women are in love with local men. Tragically, though, Bernie is widowed when she's still barely an adult, while Molly has chosen a bad 'un and faces the deepest shame when he deserts her. But this difficult start only reinforces the bond between the women, and gives them the strength to build a brighter future...

Eve and Eddie Dobson have been running the George pub in Liverpool for over twenty years. Now the Depression is taking hold and, with money in short supply, it's galling for Eve that the barmaid they can barely afford spends the day making eyes at Eddie rather than pulling her weight behind the bar.

At least her three daughters have never been a worry to Eve. Lily's dreams of going on the stage haven't led her into trouble, so far. Sarah seems content to slog away as a waitress, while Maggie's gently directing her devoted boyfriend to the altar. But when Eddie's flirtation with the hired help takes an unexpected turn, everything changes, leaving none of Eve's family untouched... and calling on all the strength of a mother's love.

Mary McGann's marriage has always been difficult, thanks to her husband Frank's drunken, jealous nature. Only because the little money he earns in the docks keeps food in the mouths of their children is Mary prepared to put up with him. But when Frank throws them all out on the street, Mary flees to her family in Dublin. There she meets Richard O'Neill, a handsome though solitary man. Despite the attraction between them, Mary's not looking for love, and when she hears that Frank needs her, she returns to Liverpool, foreseeing a future of yet more hardship. But there are surprises in store. Though tragedy and danger are looming, a brighter horizon lies beyond - if Mary's prepared to be strong and take the chances that come her way.

Maddy and Martin Brennan have a good marriage and two healthy children, Jess and Patrick. When Martin's lost at sea, though, Maddy's in for a shock: it transpires that her home is mortgaged and the family's finances are in a perilous state. Beaten down by a bitter feud with her brother and by her son Patrick's troublesome behaviour, Maddy carelessly steps in the path of a runaway horse and loses her life. It's left to young Jess to make something of the future. From near destitution she launches a business of her own, earning back the prosperity and respect her mother had in the end lost. But heartache lies ahead, and when love is on offer, is the man who wants Jess's heart worthy of it?

For Mary Callaghan marriage has brought heartaches and disappointment. But with it have come joys, the greatest of which are her daughters, Daisy and Nell. Mary longs for them to have the one thing denied to her - a husband who will offer them kindness, security and love. But when Daisy confesses she's pregnant, Mary knows the future looks grim, for the father's a rough, pleasure-loving man. As Nell watches her sister sink into bitter poverty, and as the world around her grows more uncertain, with war more likely by the day, risking all for love seems to Nell a foolish game...

Maddy Kiernan knows her situation is desperate. With her parents dead, her brother Thomas is left as guardian to her and her sister Carmel, and Thomas, Maddy is all too aware, only cares about himself. When his plans to marry the daughter of the Protestant canal agent backfire Thomas takes off to Liverpool, leaving the girls to fend for themselves. Taking the momentous decision to follow their brother, Maddy leaves for Liverpool. Within days the girls are destitute, reduced to living in a cellar, their money gone. Eventually, Maddy finds work as a maid to an old lady, becoming her unpaid companion and sole beneficiary of her will. But Maddy has to promise not to marry until the woman who has rescued her and her sister dies. When Maddy meets a young seaman she realises she may have to choose between love and that promise...

For Katherine Donovan the slums of Dublin are a lonely place. Her father, a pawnbroker, is the most hated man in the district, and Katherine an outcast. Her only friend is tiny Ceppi Healy, underfed, irrepressible and, the youngest in a neglected family of eight, as much an emotional orphan as eighteen-year-old Katherine. Then, one night, the unthinkable happens. Katherine's father is murdered, a victim of local revenge for an act of cruelty even she couldn't have anticipated. Fearing for her life, Katherine flees, taking with her the desperate young Ceppi. Liverpool is her longed-for haven and, with the last of her father's money, she rents a lodging house in a street decimated by the sinking of the Titanic. But, far from finding a refuge for herself and little girl she promised to protect, she realises she has put them into the path of terrible danger...

For the inhabitants of Liverpool's Milton Street a steady income and a roof over their heads are luxuries. The Ryan family have barely grown accustomed to such things when a fire destroys their father Jack's modest coal haulage business, leaving Jack broken and his family facing ruin. They're forced to turn to Conor, Jack's brother from Ireland, a man whose noisy joviality seventeen-year-old Ellen Ryan suspects hides a mean viciousness. She's right, and with her mother sick and her half-sister Annie becoming increasingly feckless, it's down to Ellen to fight Conor's tyranny. But when Annie disappears, leaving her baby on their doorstep, Ellen begins fear for herself and for the life of the innocent child she has learnt to love...

Thrown into the workhouse at the tender age of six, Hannah Peckham soon learns how hard the world is, but she emerges determined to make the most of what little life has given her. But the deprivations of workhouse life have left her ill-prepared to fulfil her new position in a prosperous Liverpool household. Naively she falls in love with a man she can never have. And when her illusions are finally shattered, she rushes into the arms of hard-drinking Alfie Duggan and a violent, poverty-stricken marriage from which there seems no escape - without unthinkable consequences...

Tessa O'Leary is the only daughter of a family of fatherless boys. When her mother dies she's her brothers' lifeline to survival. So for Tessa the privations of war are just another battle to be fought for a young woman who was born fighting...

Elizabeth Harrison is oppressed by her shopkeeper mother's snobbish expectations and it seems that the coming war could offer her an escape from her family's emotional ties - but at what cost?

THE TIES THAT BIND is the unputdownable story of two young girls in the slumlands of war-wracked Liverpool, bound together by a friendship that surmounts disaster, poverty and heartbreak...

Blue-eyed, blond-haired, full of smiles and sweetness, even as babies twins Kate and Evvie Greenway captured the hearts of Liverpool's Scotland Road slumlands. But now they are almost adults the two girls find that being pleasant, popular and blessed with a loving family isn't quite enough. For they've both fallen for men who will break their youthful hearts...

But these sorrows are nothing compared to the tragedies that await them and so many others when the Great War breaks out. Determined to do their part, Kate and Evvie sign up for nursing training and are despatched to the Front, a terrible world far from the life-affirming energy of their homes. Can anything, hope, love or the bond that has always united the sisters, survive all that lies in store for them?