The basis for the movie starring Kathy Bates, Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that “in helping others I learned to help myself.” Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite the fact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flying and severe claustrophobia. Yet, this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medical technician. Stern tells her story with great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, Woody Allen–ish woman who was “deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people,” but who went out into the world to save other people’s lives as a way of saving her own. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the hands of a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations, hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane—overweight and badly out of shape—had to surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair down a dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a local hospital. Each call Stern describes is a vignette of human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks, yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlying mysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book we follow her as she gets her sea legs, bonds with the firefighters who become her colleagues, and eventually, comes to be known as Ambulance Girl.

Young Maisie Halliday has escaped the grinding poverty of the northern town where she was born and now lives in the glittering world of professional dancing. At the outbreak of the Second World War, she volunteers as an ambulance driver, finding joy both in helping the wounded during the Blitz and also in her friends among the other drivers in the Bloomsbury Auxiliary Ambulance Depot. Maisie is at the Cafe de Paris nightclub when it is bombed. In the chaos, she attempts to help an injured man, and by this charitable act she becomes mixed up in what may well be a murder. A series of incidents, all connected to a handsome, arrogant American, throw Maisie's life into a dangerous spin. Is anything what it seems in wartime? With one serious misjudgement, Maisie risks losing everything she holds dear...

On duty during London's Blitz... As death and destruction fall from the skies day after day in the London Blitz, Australian ambulance driver Lily Brennan confronts the horror with bravery, intelligence, common sense and humour. Although she must rely upon her colleagues to carry out her dangerous duties, Lily begins to suspect that someone at her Ambulance Station may be giving assistance to the enemy by disclosing secret information. Then her best friend, Jewish ambulance attendant David Levy, disappears in suspicious circumstances. Aided – and sometimes hindered – by David’s school friend, a mysterious and attractive RAF pilot, Lily has to draw on all of her resources to find David, and negotiate the dangers that come from falling in love in a country far from home in a time of war... *Make sure you read the next book in the series, Ambulance Girls Under Fire - available now*

In times of war, how do you know who to trust? Celia Ashwin has driven ambulances throughout the Blitz for the Bloomsbury Auxiliary Ambulance Depot. Cool under fire, she revels in her exciting and extremely dangerous job. When her husband, a known Nazi supporter, is released from prison, Celia refuses to return to her unhappy marriage. Instead she joins forces with Simon Levy, a man who appears to despise her, to help a young Jewish orphan. In so doing she discovers that one ruthless traitor can be more dangerous than any German bomber, and that love can cross any boundary. A heartwarming saga about a woman doing her bit for the war effort. Full of wartime adventure, romance and heartbreak, this is perfect for fans of Daisy Styles, Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell

Ê"THERE!" was Joan's triumphant ejaculation as she hastily dashed an address across an envelope and closed her fountain pen with a snap. Picking up a letter she had just finished writing, a happy little smile curved her lips as she read: "Dear Captain and Friend: "Just because I am extravagantly fond of my good old roadster, I am going to pass it on to you. I could not be content to let anyone else have it. When I am in France, doing the work I have dreamed of doing for so long, I shall love to think of you as driving about the big town in 'our' car. Won't you please accept it as a token of my sincere admiration and affection for you? I know that you will becauseyou cannot fail to understand the spirit in which it is offered. You will find it waiting for you in front of headquarters. "When the war is over 'over there' and all's right with the world again, I shall hope to come back to the Corps. I am sure that even after peace comes the Liberty Motor Corps will find plenty to do, and I shall look forward to coming to Attention once more before my dear chief. "Until then, though widely separated, you will be often with me in thought. If I make good in the Ambulance Corps it will be because you showed me the way. So, you see, it's strictly 'up to me' to be a credit to 'mon Capitaine.'