This month on My Life in Books, host Red Szell is joined by Joanna Toye, a novelist who cut her writing teeth on the world’s longest-running drama series, The Archers, rising to become its leading scriptwriter, senior producer and its most trusted chronicler. Since 2019, Joanna has been enthralling readers with her Shop Girls series of novels. Set in the fictional town of Hinton, just outside Birmingham in the English Midlands, the series follows the fortunes of the staff at Marlow’s, the town’s department store as they battle to keep calm and carry on during the Second World War. Packed with drama, social history, perseverance and a sense of community, the series has found a particularly receptive audience since the onset of the pandemic. Together, Joanna and Red will explore some of the main themes and plotlines of the series as well as the books that have inspired Joanna as a storyteller. They will also be joined by narrator and voice actor Becky Wright, who brought the audiobook versions of the Shop Girls to life.