Catherine Cookson

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....

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

The Victorian Sabbath was not without problems for some of those committed to its strict observance. Nancy Ann Hazel, the young and high-spirited daughter of a country parson, suffered from her father’s lengthy Sunday sermons....

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....

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

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....

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....

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....

Her name was Hannah Boyle, but to the people of the village she would always be 'The Girl' - Matthew Thornton's bastard. Savagely treated by Matthew's wife, Anne, she fled for protection to the devil-may-care horse-dealer, Ned Ridley, who had earlier befriended her....

Beatrice, de oudste dochter van de welgestelde Simon Steel, neemt zonder enige moeite het huishouden in huize Dennenlust over wanneer haar moeder overlijdt. Bij het overlijden van de vader des huizes, is ze tot in de puntjes voorbereid om het huis en de grond eromheen over te nemen.

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....

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. Then John O'Brien meets his sister's teacher....

Now that her brood had left the nest, Fanny McBride, a large, cheerful and indomitable Tyneside widow, had time to sit by her window and watch the goings-on outside. There was plenty to keep her occupied....

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....

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....

Catherine Cookson’s well-loved novels Hamilton and Goodbye Hamilton tell the story of Maisie, who invented an imaginary horse to keep her company through the long years of an unhappy marriage, and before she became a best-selling author....

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....

Bill Bailey, the rugged Liverpudlian, was now a fully fledged Tyneside building contractor, as staunchly loyal to his squad of workmen as they were to him....

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....