Showing results by author "Catherine Cookson" in All Categories

Motherhood is every woman's right and the natural outcome of a happy marriage. But what then when a normal and beautiful young woman is forced to recognise, after two years as the wife of a country parson in the north of England, that her marriage will never bring her the fulfilment she desperately needs? Grace Rouse is faced with this situation and, like many other women before her, she seeks to escape a mounting sense of frustration and despair by turning from the husband she has tried in vain to love to the comfort and release offered by another man.

Gravedigger John Gascoigne lives in Downfell Hurst with his wife, Florrie, their three children and his mother, Gran. John is a deep thinker but extremely taciturn - a man of few words and many grunts. Which is why everyone is alarmed when he's hit on the head by a cricket ball, and it suddenly seems as if the words won't stop. What's more, he says he is talking to Saint Christopher - only no one else can see the saint, and they're beginning to worry John's not quite right in the head.

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. In this engaging sequel, Hamilton has vanished from Maisie’s life, and in the days after the death of her second husband she takes comfort from the company of a cheerful, bright-eyed little cockney boy named Harold. 

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.

It seemed the clouds that had darkened so much of Maisie’s early life had finally cleared away. Freed at last from a disastrous marriage, she had also become a best-selling author with her very first book - all about Hamilton, the remarkable horse her imagination conjured for solace through the long years of an unhappy marriage. Hamilton proved to be a real guide, philosopher and friend over many years. Now she was to be married again, and Hamilton marked the occasion by taking a wife himself - a mare called Begonia. 

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.

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.

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.

To outsiders, Dr Paul Higgins' life appeared to be happy and contented. Everyone had a good word for him and his home life appeared to be ideal. At 36, Bett Higgins could still pass for a much younger woman, not just in looks but in the way she loved the company of people half her age. A grand couple, some might say. But once the surgery was closed and the curtains drawn, the façade that Paul and Bett Higgins presented to the world concealed a welter of hate and ill-conceived bitterness that had grown worse with the passing years.

Deep in the wild fen country, Rosamund Morley lived a cloistered, poverty-stricken existence with her sister Jennifer and her alcoholic father. She was the prop and stay of the family - and it was she who ran for help the night her father set his bed alight after a drinking bout. That night was to change the course of Rosamund's life - for, fleeing through the woods, she met Michael Bradshaw, the man she christened the 'Fen Tiger'.

When the Gallachers received an invitation from the Duke of Moorshire to attend an evening at Lea Hall, Maggie was overwhelmed. She did not see the invitation as the rock on which she was to perish; nor was she prepared for the reaction of her family. But had Maggie, or any of the Gallachers, foreseen how it would turn out, how irrevocably it would change the lives of the family she loved so dearly, she would have torn that invitation into tiny pieces and thrown them all on the fire.

When Fred Carpenter suggests to his wife, Sally, that they should take a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads, she is filled with trepidation. Nevertheless she summons her courage and they and their bull-terrier Bill set off, with Fred at the helm of Dogfish Three. Sally's misgivings are soon justified, as a series of disasters - human, nautical, and canine - threaten to ruin their holiday. Then everything changes as they make friends with the boating fraternity and encounter the remarkable 15-year-old Rosie, whose family history stirs their curiosity and sympathy.

His full name is Joseph Rooney Smith and he works for the corporation of one of the Tyneside towns as an ‘M.P.’. This has nothing to do with the Houses of Parliament, but is short for ‘Muck Pusher’: Rooney is a dustman. A shy man, Rooney has one aim in life – a comfortable home, but with a difference – he did not want a wife. As a result, Rooney spends his time dodging women; his canniness becomes the envy of his mates and the despair of predatory widows and single women.

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. At seven years old he was earning money from odd jobs and by 14 he was in full-time work. By the time he was 19, he had escaped the factory to become a rent-collector. Now, at 23, ambition was in full flow and he was always looking to bigger and better games to play.

In this, the third novel of a trilogy, the atmosphere in the Bailey household was alive with anticipation. It was not only because Christmas was approaching or even that Bill Bailey was tackling the biggest project of his career. No, all the excitement was because in two weeks’ time, Fiona Bailey would give birth to a baby, the first arrival since Bill had married Fiona as a young widow, already mother of Mark, Katie and Willie, and with the adopted Mamie now part of the family circle.

John Emmerson was a lonely man. He had a wife, a son, friends, but he was isolated from all the people and events around him by the tragedy of his past. Then he met Cissie, and for the first time his loneliness eased a little. Cissie was everything that his wife Ann was not. She was warm, compassionate and generous. And she was quick to sense the needs of a desolate unhappy man. But Cissie was also a young widow: poor, and with a young son to support. And John Emmerson was one of the town's leading solicitors - a man of importance whose every move was watched by the local dignitaries. . .

Prudence Dudley was a woman who appeared to have everything: an undeniably attractive woman who had already achieved considerable success as a novelist. Yet she remained at odds with life after her sad rejected childhood and a more recent deeply wounding emotional crisis. Nearing a breakdown, Prudence seeks support from her staunch and supportive Auntie Maggie, and flees to her rented cottage in the Lake District. They encounter the owner of the cottage, aggressive and overbearing David Bernard Michael McVeigh. In time, Pru comes to learn that his iron façade is not the whole man.

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. Now, in late middle age, her ambition is yet to be satisfied. She wants to see her brood living in the house where she was in service as a young girl. The apple of Hannah's eye is her pretty younger daughter, Rosie, who has just returned home after a spell in London.

Set against the Northumbrian coast in the 1960s, the events of this love story take place over one day: a day during which everyone involved discovers that the consequences of an innocent meeting are far more significant than the event itself.

In Battenbun, Northumberland, there live four Puddleton men - Grandpop, Old Popo, Pop and Peter. Three of them have two things in common: a squint in one eye and in the other, a glint for the opposite sex. Peter, his mother's only joy, has no squint and no eye for women either - until one day a customer calls at his garage on the edge of the village. The village hadn't seen anything like her before, and wasn't certain it wanted to, and from the moment of her arrival, things began to happen. An eel is found in a pond where none had been known to visit before.