Catherine Cookson

Roddy Greenbank was brought by his father to the remote Northumberland community of Langley in the autumn of 1807. Within hours of their arrival, however, the father meets a violent death and the boy is left with all memory of his past life gone....

It was a wartime white wedding but it was not a love match. Annie Cooper married George McCabe for one reason only: she was expecting his child. But Annie was a girl of spirit and determined to make the marriage work.

Some women are destined to arouse in men either fierce hatred or insatiable desire. Such a woman was Katie Mulholland....

In the mid-1850s, life for an orphan was grim, as Kirsten MacGregor discovered when her parents died suddenly on a journey to Northumberland, leaving her penniless and alone in the hands of a cruel farmer....

Ever since her mother died, Martha Mary had had to take over the running of her home, a sprawling mansion called The Habitation....

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.

Coming up 16, Tilly Trotter is different from the other girls in her village. Testing times lay ahead for Tilly, often hard to endure and even bringing her the undeserved taint of being suspected of witchcraft....

From the moment Bill Bailey arrived to take up residence at Fiona Nelson’s home in the Tyneside town of Fellburn, he made his presence felt in no uncertain terms....

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....

Annabella LaGrange was the only child of a wealthy family, owners of a glassworks in the North-East of England....

Maisie doesn't understand why her mother can’t love her, but she knows that her life is hard and deeply unhappy. When her stepfather George, the only person she trusts, leaves, Maisie has no protector until she begins to escape....

This collection of stories is set against the background of places already familiar to Catherine Cookson's countless readers....

Someone had once told Emma Molinero, the daughter of an itinerant carnival performer, that she was made for trouble. Her earliest memories were of life with a travelling show - part fair and part circus - that toured the shires at the dawn of the Victorian era....

Cock Shield Farm, 1881. After Molly Geary finds herself pregnant with landowner Angus McBain's child, she is left distraught and ruined....

Rory Connor was a gambling man and he had a gambler's luck. From the day he was born, his mother had known that Rory would be the one to make something of his life....

When Connie buys a house on the moors, she has to negotiate with the abrupt Vincent O'Connor....

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....

The Broadhursts were a mining family and, to outsiders, they appeared to be happy, loyal and united. But it was Jinny—wife, mother, sister—who held them together. Her pride and her strength prevented their fears and hates from overwhelming them....

Proud and canny, ignorant and intensely ambitious, Hannah Massey is a born ruler. Her kingdom may only be a working-class household in County Durham, but within its walls her iron will governs a predominantly male family, her word unchallengeable law....

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....