Showing results by author "Catherine Cookson" in All Categories

Sep McGilby always said that Emily Kennedy had a happy face. And at 16, Emily had a lot to be glad about. She loved working as maid-of-all-work for the McGilbys, the only cloud on her horizon was her anxiety about her delicate younger sister, Lucy. But when Mrs McGilby dies, and Sep is killed in an accident soon after, Emily and Lucy must leave South Shields to look for work, which they find at Croft Dene House.

Only after returning from his well-attended funeral did Fiona Bailey realise just how much she would miss Davey Love. Despite her initial doubts and prejudices about this rough-hewn Irishman, towards the end of his life she had discovered qualities about him she had previously overlooked. Above all, it was his inherent kindness that she had failed to discern when she and her husband had first met Davey and his wayward son, Sammy. 

Two older brothers had taught Nancy Ann how to look after herself well enough, and she could hold her own with the roughest of the village children. But soon she had to muster her courage and fortitude to the full when the far greater challenges of a controversial marriage thrust her into womanhood and into a whole new world of conflict and tragedy which had to be faced and overcome. 

When Connie buys a house on the moors, she has to negotiate with the abrupt Vincent O'Connor. She soon discovers that mystery is a way of life for Vincent, who has an increasing influence on her life. Then the shocking truth about the man with whom she shared many years of her life comes to light.

When Cissie Brody was 15, fever swept the English countryside, killing her parents and leaving her to care for her nine younger siblings. Rejecting the offers of town officials to care for the children in the workhouse, Cissie is determined to keep the family together and moves them to a cave-like dwelling place on the Fells.

Annabella LaGrange was the only child of a wealthy family, owners of a glassworks in the North-East of England. When Annabella was seven, she thought the world a delightful place to live in, and only occasionally wondered why her parents never took her beyond the gates of their magnificent country estate. When she was ten she decided that the seclusion didn't really matter because when she grew up she would marry her handsome cousin Stephen and never be lonely again.

Tilly was first a rich man's mistress, then a frontier wife, and now a widow. With her two children, half-blind Willy and her adopted daughter, Josefina, Tilly returns to Highfield Manor, where she'd started her life working as a nursemaid all those years ago. But Tilly is now a rich woman with Highfield, the estate and mine all hers. At 35, she is white-haired, but as spirited and as magnetic to men as ever. Her reputation as a witch continues to grow among the villagers, ever hostile and suspicious, but she is supported by faithful friends and warm memories.

Cock Shield Farm, 1881. After Molly Geary finds herself pregnant with landowner Angus McBain's child, she is left distraught and ruined. Dishonoured by being the secret mistress of McBain, she must find an alternative suitor to save her reputation, or else the threat of being discarded looms. McBain devises a plan to claim his employee, Davie Armstrong, as the father to Molly's child. Leaving the pair forced to marry, the issue appears resolved. But with secrecy comes consequences, and young Molly realises she is tied in a web of lies beyond what she could imagine.

Life on the Fifteen Streets was a continual struggle for survival. John O'Brien grew up in abject poverty, confined to the hardships of the Fifteen Streets. Labouring on the city's docks and trying to keep his loved ones safe from the drunken wrath of his father and brother, this is the only way of life he knows. Then John O'Brien meets his sister's teacher.

Known for the wit of her writing, Catherine Cookson was the UK's most widely read novelist during her lifetime. When her Estate discovered this never-before-published memoir in the attic of her home, it was an astonishing find. Before I Go is the definitive story of her life, in the author's own candid words.

Each generation of the Mallen family has been cursed with a dramatic white streak in their jet-black hair. Barbara does not have the visible streak to identify her as a Mallen, but she has spent her life trying to forget her parentage - and the horrific circumstances behind her birth. When her triplets - the Mallen litter - were born, she hoped that it would herald a new beginning. But it seems that one of her sons bears the Mallen streak - and that the Mallen curse will never die out....

Rodney Prince, a doctor who chose to work amongst the poor of Newcastle to the shame of his beautiful wife, has never seen a girl look more out of place in the grime of the Fifteen Streets than Kate Hannigan. Her beauty and intelligence far outshine that of his hard, brittle and calculating wife. As their paths continue to cross, Rodney cannot fail to be drawn towards her. But as an unlikely romance blossoms, their controversial love affair fuels vicious gossip amongst the denizens of the Fifteen Streets.

Invalided out of the army at the end of the Second World War, Matthew Wallingham wonders what place there is in a new social order for a blind man, even if he is a decorated war hero. He has the sympathy of family and friends, but it seems the only person who can help him is his nurse, Liz. When he arrives home, however, he realises that his family have their problems too.

Even as a child Barbara was beautiful, but as her beauty grew so did the affliction which shadowed it. She was becoming deaf. Yet living in an almost silent world protected her from what could be a worse affliction - to know the truth of her own origins. Barbara had another protector in Anna Brigmore, who knew that truth and was haunted by the thought it must one day be revealed to this girl she cherished like her own child. And among the surrounding hills and valleys of Northumberland, it was a long-relished scandal....

Set at the turn of the century, this is one of Catherine Cookson's most unusual novels, powerfully portraying a woman dangerously driven by desire and ambition.

When Kate Mitchell was offered the job of part-time secretary at Tor-Fret, a lonely old house on the Northumberland fells, she had no idea that the household was composed only of men. Her employer, Maurice Rossiter, an embittered victim of polio, was subject to alternate fits of temper and depression. Even so, Kate found it difficult to understand his peculiar hatred of his elder brother Logan, on whose charity Maurice was obliged to depend. But when she accidentally stumbled upon Maurice with Logan's fiancée, she became aware of some of the secrets of Tor-Fret.

The cinder path which led from the Northumberland farmhouse would always symbolise defeat for Charlie MacFell. People saw him as a born loser who always got the dirty end of the stick. At the root of the matter were boyhood humiliations by his brutal father - but was that all there was to Charlie MacFell Then an opportunity emerges for Charlie to display his inner strengths and integrity, and to give the lie to those who had thought him to be of no account.

Tilly Trotter has devotedly served Mark Sopwith at Highfield Manor for twelve years. She is his wife in all but name. Theirs is a scandalous yet happy arrangement. But when Mark dies, Tilly is left pregnant with his illegitimate child. Cast out of the manor house by Mark's spiteful grown-up daughter, Tilly is forced to face the prejudices of the local village. No stranger to hardship, she makes do as best she can, but when a villager's vicious attack leaves her baby son, Willy, half blinded, she knows that it is time to leave her native Tyneside.

There were plenty around Fellburn who said Maggie Rowan was as plain as a pikestaff, a woman consumed with jealousy at her sister's good fortune in marrying well. But Maggie Rowan, with her dogged determination to succeed, had two raging ambitions beneath a cold and forbidding exterior: to become the mother of a child whom she could love and to escape from the life of the miner's cottage to one of the big houses on Brampton Hill. When she marries the easy-going Chris Taggart, her marriage is planned shrewdly and without sentiment.

In the brooding north country hills, a man and a woman fought for the passion they felt for each other that the world branded a disgrace. . .Agnes Thorman - the proud but forlorn mistress of a once-grand estate, whose society forbade her the man who was her equal in all but name. . .Robert Bradley - a gifted craftsman, as visionary and challenging as the dawning new age. He had yet to seize his dream, which could destroy the woman he loved. . .And Milicent Thorman - the strange, wise girl-child fated to play a part in the lovers' unfolding destiny. . .