Credit: Debbi Clark
Kate Thompson
Agent: Kate Burke
Assistant: Sian Ellis-Martin
Biography: Kate is an award-winning journalist, ghostwriter and novelist. She spent five years’ working on national newspapers such as the Daily Express and Daily Mail, and also on all the major national woman’s magazine titles.
Over the past seven years, she has concentrated on writing ten fiction and non-fiction titles. Her debut novel, SECRETS OF THE SINGER GIRLS, was a Sunday Times bestseller in 2015, with first week sales of over 10,000. It has recently been optioned by Bandit Television.
Kate's first non-fiction book ,which uncovers the lives of extraordinary women of wartime East End, THE STEPNEY DOORSTEP SOCIETY, was published by Penguin (Michael Joseph) in February 2019 and reached number one in the history categories on Amazon.
Hodder will publish THE WARTIME BOOK CLUB in February 2024.
THE WARTIME BOOK CLUB
Historical, 512 pages, Hodder, Feb 2024
Jersey, 1943. Once a warm and neighbourly community, now German soldiers patrol the cobbled streets, imposing a harsh rule on the people of the island.
Grace La Mottée, the island's only librarian, is ordered to destroy books which threaten the new regime. Instead, she hides the stories away in secret. Along with her headstrong best friend, postwoman Bea Rose, she wants to fight back. So she forms the wartime book club: a lifeline, offering fearful islanders the joy and escapism of reading.
But as the occupation drags on, the women's quiet acts of bravery become more perilous - and more important - than ever before. And, when tensions turn to violence, they are forced to face the true, terrible cost of resistance . . .
THE LITTLE WARTIME LIBRARY
Historical, 496 pages, Hodder, Feb 2022
London, 1944.
Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While the world remains at war, in East London Clara has created the country's only underground library, built over the tracks in the disused Bethnal Green tube station. Down here a secret community thrives: with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café and a theatre offering shelter, solace and escape from the bombs that fall above.
Along with her glamorous best friend and library assistant Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. But as the war drags on, the women's determination to remain strong in the face of adversity is tested to the limits when it seems it may come at the price of keeping those closest to them alive.
SECRETS OF THE HOMEFRONT GIRLS
Saga, 432 pages, Hodder & Stoughton, July 2019
Britain may be at war, but on the home front keeping up morale and keeping up appearances go hand in hand. For the young women working on the lipstick production line at Yardley's cosmetics factory, it's business as usual.
Headstrong Renee Gunn is the queen of the lipstick belt - although her cheeky attitude means she's often in trouble. When Esther, an Austrian refugee, arrives at Yardley's, it's Renee who takes her under her wing and teaches her to be a true cockney.
But outside of the factory, things are more complicated. Lily, Renee's older sister, has suddenly returned home after six years away, and is hiding a dark secret. Meanwhile Esther is finding life in England more difficult than expected, and it's not long before Renee finds herself in trouble, with nowhere to turn.
In the face of the Blitz, the Yardley girls are bound together by friendship and loyalty - but could the secrets they are hiding be the biggest danger of all?
THE STEPNEY DOORSTEP SOCIETY
Non-Fiction, 336 pages, Michael Joseph, February 2019
The unsung and remarkable stories of the women who held London's East End together during not one, but two world wars.
Meet Minksy, Gladys, Beatty, Joan, Girl Walker . . .
While the men were at war, these women ruled the streets of the East End. Brought up with firm hand in the steaming slums and teeming tenements, they struggled against poverty to survive, and fought for their community in our country's darkest hours.
But there was also joy to be found. From Stepney to Bethnal Green, Whitechapel to Shoreditch, the streets were alive with peddlers and market stalls hawking their wares, children skipping across dusty hopscotch pitches, the hiss of a gas lamp or the smell of oxtail stew. You need only walk a few steps for a smile from a neighbour or a strong cup of tea.
From taking over the London Underground, standing up to the Kray twins and crawling out of bombsites, THE STEPNEY DOORSTEP SOCIETY tells the vivid and moving stories of the matriarchs who remain the backbone of the East End to this day.