1964. Best friends Sandra and Linda live on a housing estate in Essex. They are mods: they have the clothes, a coffee bar with a juke box and Ready Steady Go! on television on a Friday night. And they have the Corn Exchange, where the best bands play. But the world around them is changing fast. Against the backdrop of the Ban-the-Bomb marches and clashes between mods and rockers, it's time for Linda and Sandra to grow up. As Sandra blindly pursues a marriage proposal from local badboy Danny - who spends more time in jail than out - Linda finds herself disatisfied and drawn towards causes she knows are worth fighting for. Then she meets enigmatic Sylvie - an ostracised, troubled young woman who has made all the wrong choices, but knows a lot about life outside the estate. Linda finds herself pulled in two directions and must make a choice, unless the trouble she finds makes the choice for her.

For the young women living in Boston's North End in 1908, the Saturday Evening Girls Club is an escape from the drudgery of daily life. For Caprice, Ada, Maria and Thea, it's the one time each week the friends can be together. They support each other's dreams and help each other navigate romances and family clashes, cultural prejudices, loss and heartbreak. Through it all one thing is certain - they could not get through it all without their friendship, and the Saturday Evening Girls Club.

The handmade ceramics of the Paul Revere Pottery, often enlivened with stylized images of animals, flowers or abstract patterns, are best known today by the name of the girls' club whose members created the wares: the Saturday Evening Girls (SEG). Local reformers organized this club in 1899 to provide cultural activities for young Italian and Jewish immigrants of Boston's North End. Under the guidance of designer and illustrator Edith Brown, and as a way of helping with difficult family finances, the group soon turned to crafts. Before long, SEG ceramics had caught on, and were being sold through department stores in cities throughout the Eastern United States; though their success was largely curtailed by World War I, the pottery continued to operate until 1942. Today, SEG ware is highly collectible. Art and Reform offers a briskly written, handsomely illustrated introduction to this episode in Boston's cultural history, discussing the role of the SEG club in the life of the city's immigrant community and its ties to education reform and the Arts and Crafts movement. The book presents some 50 examples of the ceramics themselves, mostly by Sara Galner, one of the group's most gifted members, showing the wit, charm, quiet beauty and lasting influence of these remarkable decorative objects.