Showing results by author "Judith Allnatt" in All Categories

The story of a young mother who discovers old buried secrets as she goes through her mother's things, all whilst staying in a cottage that centuries before was a silk factory. A beautiful, eerie story of love and memory. If you try to pick up the pieces, sometimes that's when they fall into place. When young mother Rosie gets the news that her mother has died she decides to leave London and head back to her home village.

Hidden in a soldier's tin box are a painting, a pocket watch, and a dance card - keepsakes of three lives. It is 1914. George Farrell cycles through the tranquil Cumberland fells to deliver a letter, unaware that it will change his life. George has fallen for the rich and beautiful daughter at the Manor House, Miss Violet, but when she lets slip the contents of the letter George is heartbroken to find that she is already promised to another man. George escapes his heartbreak by joining the patriotic rush to war, but his past is not so easily avoided. His rite of passage into adulthood leaves him believing that no woman will be able to love the man he has become.

It is 1841. Patty Clare is married to John Clare: peasant poet, genius, and madman. Travelling home one day, Patty is shocked to find her husband sitting at the side of the road, having absconded from a lunatic asylum. Delighted to see him, she is devastated when it becomes clear that John's mental health has deteriorated, and he now thinks himself married twice: to both Patty and his childhood sweetheart. Patty still loves John deeply but he seems lost to her, obsessed with the idealised memory of another woman. She finds herself consumed with jealousy and struggling to cope with her unruly family.