Dear Mrs Bird

The Richard & Judy Book Club Pick and Sunday Times Bestseller. Irresistibly funny and moving, Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce is a love letter to the enduring power of friendship, the kindness of strangers and the courage of ordinary people in extraordinary times.'The sweetest, most uplifting, lovely book about courage, friendship, love' – Marian Keyes, author of Grown Ups.London, 1941. Amid the falling bombs Emmeline Lake dreams of becoming a fearless Lady War Correspondent. Unfortunately, Emmy instead finds herself employed as a typist for the formidable Henrietta Bird, the renowned agony aunt at Woman’s Friend magazine. Mrs Bird refuses to read, let alone answer, letters containing any form of Unpleasantness, and definitely not those from the lovelorn, grief-stricken or morally conflicted.But the thought of these desperate women waiting for an answer at this most desperate of times becomes impossible for Emmy to ignore. She decides she simply must help and secretly starts to write back – after all, what harm could that possibly do?'A proper comfort read' – India Knight, author of Don't You Want Me?'A joy from start to finish. Dear Mrs Bird is as funny as it is heartwarming' – John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

A winning wartime romp . . . as hilarious as it is moving. Emmy is truly charming. When her upper lip finally wobbles, the reader’s will, too. In the end, the novel’s spirit is madly winning, and its foregrounding of wartime women seems spiffingly modern., The sweetest, most uplifting, lovely book about courage, friendship, love . . . It'll be huge; it deserves to be, This story of female friendship is just the tonic for that jaded feeling that the world is ugly and mad., If I had only known how much I was going to adore Dear Mrs Bird, I wouldn’t have gobbled it down all at once. Funny, fresh, and touching, Dear Mrs Bird is a treat of a read., A joyfully uplifting and optimistic novel . . . a timely story of courage and good humour in adversity.

AJ Pearce grew up in Hampshire and studied at the University of Sussex. A chance discovery of a 1939 woman’s magazine became the inspiration for her ever-growing collection and her first novel Dear Mrs Bird. She now lives in the south of England.

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