Bøker av Catherine Cookson

When Kate Mitchell was offered the job of part-time secretary at Tor-Fret, a lonely old house on the Northumberland fells, she had no idea that the household was composed only of men. Her employer, Maurice Rossiter, an embittered victim of polio, was subject to alternative fits of temper and depression.

For between the two families raged a violent and bitter feud - a feud so powerful that the very name of Cadwell made Ralph Batley seethe with uncontrollable fury. Into this stormy atmosphere came Linda Metcalfe, a young agricultural student, who innocently became involved in the tension between the two households on the day of her arrival.

Whether writing of priests or doctors, or looking back to episodes in her Tyneside childhood, the author displays all the qualities that have made her one of the world's most widely-read and best-loved novelists.

Bill and Fiona Bailey are eagerly awaiting the arival of their first child... Catherine Cookson uses her unique gifts to splendid effect in this heartwarming story.

Angus has ambitious plans for his future, plans that had never included Vanessa - until now .

The woman who presented herself at the offices of the respectable firm of London solicitors was frail, and her clothes hung off her body. She asked to see the firm's senior partner, Alexander Armstrong, who was amazed when her learnt her name. For Irene Baindor was a woman with a mysterious past.

Dr Rodney Prince has never seen a girl look more out of place in the grime of the Fifteen Streets than Kate Hannigan. And as their paths continue to cross, Rodney cannot fail to be drawn towards her. But as an unlikely romance blossoms, the union fuels vicious gossip amongst the denizens of the Fifteen Streets.

his only comfort during the dark years of the Depression when he is faced with both unemployment and a nagging, ambitious wife. His only hope is that Mary will one day find a way to escape the grinding poverty of the Tyneside slums.

John Emmerson was a lonely man. 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 .

Volume 2 opens with a seventeen-year-old Mary Ann struggling with the painful business of growing up as her first love, Corny Boyle, leaves for America. It follows her through her eventual marriage to Corny, and the joys and trials of being a wife, and a mother to six-year-old twins, Rose Mary and David.

And once the rug of his comfortable old habits had been yanked from under him, Rooney found that life was much more complicated than he had imagined!THE NICE BLOKEHarry Blenheim had always been known as 'the nice bloke' an inoffensive man whose existence many thought was as dull as ditchwater.

An autobiography which presents a story that revolves around the author's mother. It offers an account of living with hardship and poverty as seen through the eyes of a sensitive child and woman.

She could still scarcely believe her eyes, even if it was a long-overdue honour - after all her husband Rod had done for the town. There were a lot of Gallachers around Fellburn, and all were equally incredulous.

Fanny McBride was a cheerful and indomitable Tyneside widow with a large, cheerful family. Being a woman of resource, Fanny took on a job at the local 'Ladies', which was to prove a surprisingly stimulating experience. Then there was her long-standing feud with Mrs Flannagan, the problem of the favourite child's unsuitable marriage, and others.

At the end of the Second World War, Matthew Wallingham returns to his family home, blinded by his injuries and uncertain about his future.

This novel tells the story of a young girl, Lizzie, who was rescued from the streets and given the chance of a new life. Lizzie blossomed into a woman with ideals and expectations, and began to realize that she no longer needed the support of the man she had once regarded as her saviour.

This collection is set against the background of places already familiar to Catherine Cookson's readers - the North-East, the South Coast and London, with a time-scale stretching from the 1920's to the modern day.

This volume contains two novels by Catherine Cookson, "The Long Corridor" and "Kate Hannigan".

But then the past erupted into the present, forcing Ralph to change his attitude to Linda and resolving the whole Batley/Cadwell heritage of folly... THE FEN TIGERDeep in the wild fen country, Rosamund Morley lived a cloistered, poverty-stricken existence with her sister Jennifer and her alcoholic father.

But he could not have known that someone else was planning a different kind of revenge, and that the outcome would shake the very foundations of the Overmeer family. The Blind Years, another of Catherine Cookson's part-mysteries, part-love stories, once again displays her consummate skill at portraying the nuances of family conflict.

Ward Gibson knew what was expected of him by the village folk, and especially by the Mason family, whose daughter Daisy he had known all his life.

It had never been the best of marriages. There was something potentially explosive just below the surface of life at Wearcill House, but when that explosion came it was in a totally unforeseeable and devastating form, plunging the Coulsons into an excoriating series of crises out of which would come both good and evil.

It is the early 1920s and Kate Hannigan is happily married to Dr Rodney Prince, who has willingly accepted her illegitimate daughter, Annie, as the eldest child of their household. Everything seems to be going well for the Prince family, but soon spiteful rumours about Kate's earlier life seem to haunt both her and Annie.

The events of this novel, set on the Northumbrian coast in the 1960s, take place over one day, a period during which everyone involved discovers that the consequences of an innocent meeting between two young people are far more significant than the event itself.

Only after returning from his well-attended funeral did Fiona Bailey realise just how much she would miss Davey Love.

Fourteen-year-old Marie Anne Lawson, fleeing from something she could not bear to see, fell and broke her ankle. She was discovered by a local man, known as "the branded man" because of a disfigurement. This is the story of two women and the mysterious man who was to influence both their lives.

In this sequel to Catherine Cookson's collection of essays and poems, "Let Me Make Myself Plain", she offers a further selection of thoughts, recollections and observations on life - and death - together with more of the poems she prefers to describe as "prose on short lines".

The day Joe Remington brought his new bride to Fell Rise, he had already sensed she might not settle easily into his home just outside the Tyneside town of Fellburn.