1. The Boy Made of Snow

A Wanstead writer who secured publishing deals around the world for her first novel is celebrating the launch of her paperback this week.

Chloë Mayer, who was raised in the area and returned as an adult, saw her book The Boy Made of Snow published as a hardback in November.

The Boy Made of Snow is set in a sleepy English village in 1944 and revolves around a mother and her young son who befriend a German Prisoner of War. But the child is obsessed with fairy tales so sometimes struggles to tell the difference between fantasy and reality – and one day he tells a terrible lie that leads to tragedy and murder.

Chloë said: “I’ve loved writing ever since I was a little girl and always knew I wanted to write a novel. It took me a while to get around to it, but I got there in the end.

“I didn’t really believe it would ever be published though, so this past year has been a dream come true.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw my books displayed on a table in Waterstones. It was such an emotional moment for me, I was close to tears!”

The 38-year-old attended Wanstead Church School in the High Street when she lived with her family at The Green, and, after several years working abroad in the US and Japan, she returned to the area in 2013.

She now lives just off Kingfisher Avenue and combines freelance journalism for national newspapers with writing her second novel.

The Boy Made of Snow is available at bookshops or through online retailers. To find out more, visit chloemayerauthor.com

2. Diary of an Irish Mother

Set in London in 1983, Diary of an Irish Mother offers a snapshot into the hectic life of Vera Byrne. Her daily struggle to hold everything together, bringing up three difficult teenagers, going to work, a DIY nightmare, a ‘lazy’ husband, car trouble… the list goes on.

Vera’s daughter, Fiona Byrne, says: “My mother was a Tottenham resident for over 20 years and when the diary was written, in 1983, we were living in Tottenham - that is where I was born and grew up.

“The diary charts a whole year and there are lots of references in the book to places in Tottenham and Spurs. The diary is very funny and witty.

“My mother passed away in 2014 and the diary has been published for the first time this year. There are still lots of people living in Tottenham that would have known my mother.”

To find out more visit verabyrne.com

3. Pieces of Me

Natalie Hart, from Walthamstow, is a writer and qualitative researcher, specialising in conflict and post-conflict environments. She has worked extensively across the Middle East and North Africa, including a year in Baghdad where Pieces of Me is set. Natalie has a BA in Combined Middle Eastern Studies (Arabic and Spanish) from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster.

Pieces of Me is a poignant and engrossing novel about love and family ties, and how they are affected by global and personal conflict. Natalie offers a different and lesser explored view of war from a female perspective through her central character Emma, a civilian working in Iraq, who later in the novel becomes a military wife. The book is extremely authentic, the author Natalie Hart is a writer and qualitative researcher, specialising in conflict and post-conflict environments. She began her career aged 22 working in Baghdad, where the novel is set.

In the book Emma did not go to war looking for love, but Adam is unlike any other. Under the secret shadow of trauma, Emma decides to leave Iraq and joins Adam to settle in Colorado. But isolation and fear find her, once again, when Adam is re-deployed. Torn between a deep fear for Adam’s safety and a desire to be back there herself, Emma copes by throwing herself into a new role mentoring an Iraqi refugee family. But when Adam comes home, he brings the conflict back with him. Emma had considered the possibility that her husband might not come home from war. She had not considered that he might return a stranger.