When young Betty is abandoned at the age of five, her life takes a turn she could never have imagined. Found by Martha Evans, a kind-hearted servant, and brought into the Bromley home as Martha’s Little One, she makes an unlikely friend in Will Bromley, the young son to the heir to the Bromley estate. Yet, when Will’s cruel father, Harold, inherits the household, darkness descends, shattering their sanctuary.

With Will destined to wed socialite Olive Hanson, their future looks grim. But Olive isn’t blind to the special bond between Will and Betty, and in a malicious act, she orchestrates a plot that leads to Betty’s ultimate downfall.

Accused, betrayed, and heartbroken, Betty finds herself cast out, alone and friendless, standing at the doors of a bleak workhouse. There she faces an enemy from her past, who harbours a chilling secret about Betty’s true parentage.

As Christmas approaches, a web of secrets, betrayals, and shattered hopes unfold. The Little One’s Christmas Dream is a tale teeming with drama, where love is pitted against insidious deceit, and where the spirit of Christmas could either be a beacon of light or the final blow in a life riddled with hardship. Can Will find a way to defy his family and redeem his one true love? Will Betty uncover the dark secrets of her past and find a new path to happiness? In a world of shifting loyalties and unrevealing truths, one fateful Christmas could change everything.

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Now a major ITV series, The Long Call, adapted for television by screenwriter Kelly Jones and starring Ben Aldridge.

The Long Call is the No.1 bestselling first novel in the Two Rivers series from Sunday Times bestseller and creator of Vera and Shetland, Ann Cleeves.

In North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his father’s funeral takes place. The day Matthew turned his back on the strict evangelical community in which he grew up, he lost his family too.

Now he’s back, not just to mourn his father at a distance, but to take charge of his first major case in the Two Rivers region; a complex place not quite as idyllic as tourists suppose.

A body has been found on the beach near to Matthew’s new home: a man with the tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

Finding the killer is Venn’s only focus, and his team’s investigation will take him straight back into the community he left behind, and the deadly secrets that lurk there.

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