Margaret Thornton 
Sound of Her Laughter 
Troubled affairs of the heart in 60s Blackpool

With two suitors battling for her affections, will Frances listen to her heart or her head? The Sound of Her Laughter is an engrossing saga from Margaret Thornton of a young teacher’s homecoming to Blackpool. Perfect for fans of Nadine Dorries and Dilly Court. It is with mixed with feelings that Frances Goodwin, a pretty young infant school teacher, returns to Blackpool from Yorkshire to look after her increasingly ailing mother, Iris. It’s not long before Frances is frustrated – not just with the severe lack of space at her mother’s small bungalow, but also with constantly having to give an account of her movements. Deciding to expand her horizons to compensate for this lack of freedom, she joins an operatic society where her love of singing and drama is rekindled. However, some real drama enters her life in the form of Adrian Glover, the new local Methodist minister, who visits her school regularly to take assemblies. Kindly, cheerful and completely dependable, Adrian falls in love with Frances and when he asks her to marry him she says yes without hesitation. But the engagement does not go as smoothly as she’d expected. Not only does her mother’s health drastically deteriorate but she also gets to know a new colleague: the distinguished, devilishly good-looking Marcus Avery… What readers are saying about Margaret Thornton: ‘[Margaret Thornton is] one of those writers with a sure skill in creating characters who become real to the reader. Indeed, so much so that they seem to leap out of the pages and make the story of which they’re a part even more compelling”Margaret Thornton is a brilliant storyteller. Her books draw you in, so you feel you know the characters. Hard to put down’ ‘Five stars’