Catherine Cookson

An Englishwoman's battle to hang on to her family's bankrupt estate. She is Beatrice, one of four daughters of a gambling landowner who died in debt. By hook or by crook, Beatrice intends to hang on to her patrimony, her schemes including marriage and busting other people's marriage. By the author of The Year of the Virgins.

Set in early twentieth century England, this is the story of Annie Hannigan, a girl who, through her mother's marriage to a wealthy country doctor, went from rags to riches. A flaxen haired, blue eyed beauty, Annie has her share of heartache when the boy she loves, Terence MacBane, seems elusive and out of reach. Her heartbreak is compounded when a vicious acquaintance, Cathleen Davidson, makes it her business to try and see that Annie and Terence...

Set in Catherine Cookson's native northern English countryside, My Beloved Son is the wonderful, compelling story of a loving family dominated by one woman's suffocating desires. A novel of obsession and the search for true love, My Beloved Son is vintage Cookson. Ironically, it is Ellen Jebeau's love for her son that threatens the family. She had married a man who did little but dream, and then died, leaving her a legacy of debt and a five-year-old...

Portrays a whole rich vein of English life from the heyday of the Victorian era to the stormy middle years of the present century.

As World War I approaches, Foreshaw Park, the run-down estate of the once-wealthy Thorman family, is the setting for the burgeoning romance between the Thormans' elder daughter, Agnes, and hired-hand Robert Bradley.

Presiding over the working-class laborers at her candle and blacking factories, as well as her own family, headstrong heiress Bridget Mourdant is at the center of this multigenerational saga of two brothers and their legacies.

Two orphans, one of whom is deaf and dumb, struggle to stay alive by relying on their own wits and food stolen from a formidable recluse.