Последние издания книг Кэтрин Куксон

County Durham, 1830s
When fifteen-year-old Cissie Brodie loses her parents to cholera, she is forced out of the family cottage and left to raise her nine brothers and sisters by herself. Although desperately poor, strong-willed Cissie determines to build a new home for them all, their own little shelter to keep them from the workhouse.
They have friends, but charity cannot always spare them the harsh reality of their struggle and when Cissie attracts the unwanted attentions of a local landowner, her world seems close to collapse.
Can love, when it arrives, teach her not to fear the world beyond the dwelling place?
Catherine Cookson was the original and bestselling saga writer, selling over 100 million copies of her novels. If you like Dilly Court, Katie Flynn or Donna Douglas, you'll love Catherine Cookson.

Cumbria, 1870s.
Just before her fifteenth birthday Jinnie Howlett is offered a position as maid-of-all-work at a farm near the Cumbrian border. She hopes this will be a welcome relief from the workhouse she knows too well.
But when she meets her brutish employers Jinnie realises she has only exchanged one life of drudgery for another. She is grateful when one of the sons befriends her, but it isn't long before Jennie sees how tempting life is beyond her place of work . . .
Catherine Cookson was the original and bestselling saga writer, selling over 100 million copies of her novels. If you like Dilly Court, Katie Flynn or Donna Douglas, you'll love Catherine Cookson.

Davie Armstrong watches as his master, Angus McBain, publicly thrashes young Molly Geary for refusing to name the man who had made her pregnant. And yet, only an hour later, Davie sees the two of them alone in the malthouse, and learns that the child is McBain's. In a whirl of disbelieving rage he overhears them plotting to let him, Davie, take the blame and marry Molly.

Meanwhile, the master's wife is also pregnant. And a few months later the birth of the McBain's son Amos unleashes violence and tragedy at the farm. Born with no legs and emotionally crippled, Amos will learn to wield power of frightening intensity over everyone around him . . .

Money was tight in rural Fellburn in the 1880s, and this perhaps explained why Hector Stewart, only two years after the death of his wife, announced to his children that he was to marry Moira Conelly, a wealthy distant relative from Ireland.

But Moira had not been entirely honest about her background or her finances, and had convinced herself she would be marrying into landed gentry, complete with a lifestyle to which she felt entitled. It was with surprise, therefore, that she first saw the run down farm that would be her new home . . .

Dr Rodney Prince has never seen a girl look more out of place in the grime of the Fifteen Streets than Kate Hannigan. Her beauty and intelligence far outshine that of his hard, brittle, calculating wife. 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. For it is a love that opposes all the concepts of Edwardian society . . .

Kate Hannigan is the partly autobiographical, enthralling story of a controversial love affair, from one of the most talented storytellers of the 20th century.

Mary Walton is the apple of her father's eye; 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. But when a secret is revealed these dreams are shattered and the lives of the Walton family change forever. . .

Spanning Mary's life from the 1930's to the 1970's, Pure as the Lily is a spellbinding, unforgettable tale from one of Britain's most cherished novelists.

Vanessa Ratcliffe is just sixteen, daughter of one of the town's richest men. And in spite of her social standing and convent education Vanessa's provocative manner often draws envious eyes in her direction.

Angus Cotton is a rough diamond, living in filthy Ryder's Row, but as engineer at Affleck and Tate he's worth his weight in gold. Angus has ambitious plans for his future, plans that had never included Vanessa - until now . . .

The Round Tower is a beautifully imagined story of power, love, honour and greed and an award-winning novel from one of Britain's most popular novelists.

Just before her fifteenth birthday Jinnie Howlett is offered a position as maid-of-all-work at a farm near the Cumbrian border. She hopes this will be a welcome relief from the workhouse she knows too well.

But when she meets her brutish employers Jinnie realises she has only exchanged one life of drudgery for another. She is grateful when one of the sons befriends her, but it isn't long before Jennie sees how tempting life is beyond her place of work . . .

Rosie finds it hard to cope with her eldest sister's over-possessive nature. Since the death of their mother Beatrice has been insufferably dominating, taking over the running of the house and ruling their father and servants with an iron hand. She glories in being the mistress at Pine Hurst and never dreams of leaving.

But when the girls' father dies unexpectedly their security is threatened, and Beatrice must lay plans to protect this most prized possession.

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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.

Volume 1 follows Mary Ann, a young girl living in poverty in a dockland tenement on Tyneside, from the ages of eight to thirteen. She is determined to bring about a better way of life for her family and, to the amazement of the gentle parish priest, Father Owen, and the rage and consternation of her arch-enemy, Sarah Flanagan, Mary Ann's tenacity eventually pays off.

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ROONEY
He was the only one of the dustbin gang who was as yet unmarried. He'd worked for the Corporation as a dustman for fifteen of his thirty-five years, and his mates all agreed he was too canny to be caught, having avoided four widows and two spinsters in ten years. Rooney liked life to follow a pattern - that and his independence was what made him tick.

But it all went flying out of the window when he moved into Ma Howlett's place. 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 BLOKE
Harry Blenheim had always been known as 'the nice bloke' an inoffensive man whose existence many thought was as dull as ditchwater. But then, at the office Christmas party, he gave in to the demands of the vivacious Betty Ray, and the scandal that followed not only split up his family but ruined his career.

Harry reasoned that, with luck, he could have avoided it all, but the roots of the problem lay much deeper. There was his rapidly cooling marriage, and his hatred of his unscrupulous father-in-law. Now Harry was in real trouble, and it would take all the efforts of his dearly-loved daughter Gail and his staunch friends Janet and Robbie Dunn to help him pick up the pieces and start to live again...

THE GARMENT
Motherhood is every woman's right and the natural outcome of a happy marriage. What then is the answer 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 own marriage is a sham and will never bring her the fulfilment she desperately needs?

Grace Rouse is faced by 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.

The final outcome, however, does not conform to pattern, and Grace is forced to wage a war between a man who can give her children and a man who passionately desires children but can only give them his name.

SLINKY JANE
In Battenbun, Northumberland, there live four Puddleton men - Grandpop, Old Pop, Pop and Peter. Three of them have two things in common: a cast in one eye and in the other, a glint for the opposite sex. Peter, his mother's only joy, has no cast 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 never an eel has been known to visit. Men creep through the woods to find this Slinky Jane but which one, the eel or the strange girl?

HANNAH MASSEY
Proud and canny, ignorant and intensely ambitious, Hannah Massey is a born ruler. Her kingdom may be only a working-class household in County Durham, but within its walls her iron will governs a predominantly male family and her word is unchallengeable law. Now, in late middle age, her ambition is still not 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. Rosie had gone south, so Hannah thought, to escape the passionate pursuit of a young man she had known for most of her life. Her return is shrouded in mystery and evasions, and when the truth does come out, Hannah's world is torn apart.

THE FIFTEEN STREETS
Life in the Fifteen Streets was tough - a continual struggle for survival. Some families gave up and descended into a dismal state of grinding poverty. Others, like the O'Briens - and especially John O'Brien - fought grimly for a world they were only rarely allowed to glimpse.

John O'Brien caught his 'glimpse' on the day he met Mary Llewellyn. Mary, with her slim body and soft brown hair; Mary, who lived well, had beautiful clothes - who worked because she wanted to, not because she had to...

When John O'Brien fell in love with Mary Llewellyn, he knew there was a gulf between them that nothing could bridge - it was the gulf of the Fifteen Streets.

KATE HANNIGAN
Dr Rodney Prince had never seen a girl who looked more out o place in the grime and squalor of the Fifteen Streets than did Kate Hannigan. He knew she had suffered at the hands of men: Tim Hannigan, her 'father' was a vicious bully; John Herrington, a smooth-talking seducer, had left her with his child.

But Rodney Prince's desire for a family had been frozen out by a wife who'd wanted Harley Street, not a Tyneside slum. By contrast, Kate glowed with a warmth that far outshone the hard, brittle beauty of Stella, and exposed the emptiness in his heart.

And so, between Rodney Prince, a wealthy man locked in an unhappy marriage, and Kate Hannigan, a bastard child of the slums, grew a love that opposed all the concepts of an Edwardian society...

THE LONG CORRIDOR
To outsiders, Dr Paul Higgin's life appeared to be happy and contented. Everyone had a good word for him, and his home life appeared to be ideal. At thirty-six, 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 facade that Paul and Bett Higgins presented to the world concealed a welter of hate that had grown worse with the passing years. Between them stood the barrier of the past - of secrets that, were they known, could affect everyone around them. Unable to forgive each other, they led their separate lives - until Bett decided to allow her spite and resentment to culminate in revenge on the husband she did not love...

HERITAGE OF FOLLY
The Batleys and the Cadwells owned neighbouring farms on the beautiful, wild Northumbrian coast. But there all similarity ended, and enmity began. 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. Employed by Ralph Batley, Linda soon found herself in a very difficult situation. For not only had she unwittingly become a part of the feud, but she began to feel a strange admiration for Ralph, who made it painfully clear that he had no use for her either on the farm or in his life. 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 TIGER
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 she knew more of Michael's past and the fate that had forced him to live in isolation, Rosamund's initial feelings of dislike changed to compassion...and then to something deeper....

The woman who presented herself at the offices of the respectable firm of London solicitors was, the receptionist decided, clearly a vagrant who had been sleeping on the streets. The clothes that hung on her frail body were filthy, and she seemed unable to speak. When she asked to see the firm's senior partner, Alexander Armstrong, she was at first shown the door - but when Mr Armstrong learned the name of his visitor, all the office staff were amazed at his reaction. For Irene Baindor was a woman with a past, and her emergence from obscurity was to signal the unravelling of a mystery that had baffled the lawyer for twenty-six years.
What Irene - the silent lady of the title - had been doing, and where she had been, gradually emerged over the following weeks as Armstrong met the unlikely benefactors who had befriended her and helped her to build a useful and satisfying life in a sheltered environment. Now, at last, she was able to confront her tortured and violent past and find great happiness and contentment with the help of old friends and some newer ones.