Cadbury workers get a starring role in a new novel - but it’s not sweet

The world famous chocolate factory in Bournville, Birmingham, is renowned for its delicious chocolate treats.

And with Easter on the way its workers will be bringing joy to youngsters far and wide with their creations. But Sunday Times bestselling novelist Annie Murray has dived in behind the chocolate to create a thrilling story based on lives and loves at the factory during World War II.

Wartime for the Chocolate Girls promises to be gritty and compelling as it tells the story of fictional women and girls who worked at the Cadbury in April 1941.

One of the characters is Ann Gilby who almost lost her life in a bomb blast while serving in the Women’s Volunteer Service is taking stock of what’s really important - her family.

With daughter Sheila back home, and Joy still working munitions at the Cadbury factory and engaged to her soldier sweetheart, home life feels more settled too.

Ann has even come to an uneasy truce with her husband, Len, despite her recent discovery of his infidelity and the fact that he has fathered a child with another woman.

But what Ann has not reckoned with is Marianne, Len’s other woman, turning up on her doorstep - a woman with a mysterious past. Only Ann has secrets of her own and one day soon she knows she will have to tell her youngest child, Martin, who his father really is

Novelist Annie Murray was born in Berkshire and read English at St John’s College, Oxford. Her first Birmingham novel, Birmingham Rose, hit the Sunday Times bestseller list when it was published in 1995.

She has subsequently written many other successful novels, including War Babies and Girls in Tin Hats, and the bestselling novels Chocolate Girls, Sisters of Gold and Black Country Orphan.

Annie has four children, all Birmingham-born, and lives near Oxford.Wartime for the Chocolate Girls, will be published on April 13th by Pan