Matty is fifteen and, in his Tyneside home in the 1960s, this means it is time for him to leave school and follow his father into the docks and get a job in ship building. All Matty really wants, however, is to work with animals, tend them, help them and care for them. But he has no qualifications and his parents have no real understanding of his ambition – they won’t even let him keep Nelson, the old stray dog he befriends and takes home. Yet, finally, it is because of Nelson that Matty gets permission to go on a camping holiday with his friends, Joe and Willie. And this holiday, on a farm high on the fells, will take Matty through unexpected dangers but to a new and satisfying way of life. An exciting and heartwarming tale that will strike a chord of recognition with all children with a desire to choose their own path in life.

Mary Walton was the apple of her da's eye.  For long now he had been out of work, and Mary was his only comfort during those dark years of the Depression, when unemployment and a nagging, ambitious wife gnawed away at his self-respect.  Once he was a man who had held his head high with Geordie pride; now his only hope was that Mary would escape from the grinding poverty of the Tyneside slums that had held him a prisoner for so many years.But then something happened to Mary that shattered all his dreams of her future--an event that was to split a family and influence its members for generations to follow...From the Publisher7 1.5-hour cassettes From the Inside FlapMary Walton was the apple of her da's eye.  For long now he had been out of work, and Mary was his only comfort during those dark years of the Depression, when unemployment and a nagging, ambitious wife gnawed away at his self-respect.  Once he was a man who had held his head high with Geordie pride; now his only hope was that Mary would escape from the grinding poverty of the Tyneside slums that had held him a prisoner for so many years.But then something happened to Mary that shattered all his dreams of her future--an event that was to split a family and influence its members for generations to follow...

Catherine Cookson was one of the world's most beloved writers. Her books have sold millions of copies, and her characters and their stories have captured the imaginations of readers around the globe. Now, available for the first time in this country, comes one of Cookson's earliest and most stirring historical romances: The Fifteen Streets. John O'Brien lives in a world where surviving is a continual struggle. He works long hours at the docks to help support his parents' large family. Many other families in the Fifteen Streets have already given up and descended into a dismal state of grinding poverty, but the O'Briens continue to strive for a world they are only rarely allowed to glimpse. Then John O'Brien meets Mary Llewellyn, a beautiful young teacher who belongs to that other world. What begins as a casual conversation over tea quickly blossoms into a rare love that should have been perfect. Fate steps in, however, when John is accused of fathering the child of...

Hannah and Humphrey Drayton were regarded by all who knew them as the perfect married couple. However, all was not as it appeared on the surface, and after years of tyranny and loneliness, Hannah could no longer bear this stuffy City broker. The only relief she had was from his absence on Thursday evenings, when he played bridge with a group of acquaintances, and at weekends, which he spent with an elderly couple who regarded him as the son they had never had. Hannah, in despair and in the face of her husband’s ridicule, took refuge in her writing, and it was the completion of a book for children that took her to the office of a publisher, a visit that was to change her life. There she was to meet David Graventon, an assistant to the publisher, and a man she was soon to think of as her Thursday Friend. Taking advantage of Humphrey’s absences, she and David would meet and talk, visit the theatre and the cinema – activities she had never enjoyed with her husband. He, of course, knew nothing of Hannah’s ‘other life’, being preoccupied with protecting what he imagined were his future interests. And even when he became aware that she was seeing someone his thoughts of revenge were hamstrung by a secret of his own. Then an event occurred that was to destroy all his prospects, causing him to plan a bitter retaliation for what he regarded as his wife’s betrayal. As for Hannah, her Thursday Friend was to become the saviour of her very existence – but would he manage to resolve his own not inconsiderable personal difficulties and offer Hannah the happiness she craved? With its deceptively simple theme, The Thursday Friend is a remarkable novel that explores the complexities of human relationships.

Catherine Cookson’s personal story, Our Kate, made plain how it was she knew her background and her characters so well: she lived in it and with them, under conditions so hard and primitive that, as one reviewer of Our Kate wrote: ‘It is a vivid, raw, tenacious existence which she recollects; at times almost more than the eye can endure.’Being born illegitimate was only one of the difficulties she lived through, but the stigma was to dominate her consciousness until well into her middle years, when, in the calm of a happy marriage, she was able to accept all the varied influences that had formulated her character, and to write it all down in this masterful exercise in self-therapy and reconciliation.Our Kate of the title is not Catherine Cookson, but her mother, and it is around her that the autobiography revolves. Her mother is presented with all her faults yet, despite these, she comes out as a warm and loveable human figure. And against this background we see cast in relief the young Catherine going to ‘the pawn’, fetching the beer, being ignored because of her birth, collecting driftwood from the river and coke as it fell off the gas-carts, for she lived and struggled through the era when work was scarce and social security non-existent.This is an autobiography that is also the story of a period. It is a bleakly honest statement about living with hardship and poverty seen through the eyes of a highly sensitive child and woman. No one can read Our Kate without realising that good can come out of bad and hope can conquer despair, and ultimately it is a very happy book.

Product Description High above the river stood the small terrace of miners' cottages known as Fenwick Houses. Here, during the hazardous years of the Depression, lived Christine Winter, a girl blessed - or cursed - with that indefinable appeal that drives men to the brink of obsession. Three men dominated her life: her brother Ronnie; Sam, whose devotion was deep and loyal; and Don Dowling, cruel and tormented, who made it his life's ambition to possess her. To Ronnie and Sam she was joined by a thread of harmony; but Don was the needle through which the thread was drawn, and the point was sharp and deadly... But then, one day, a stranger came to the river bank and Christine found herself changed beyond recall. From the Publisher BRITAIN'S BEST-LOVED STORYTELLER Catherine Cookson's novels are about hardship, the intractability of life and of individuals, the struggle first to survive and next to make sense of one's survival. Humour, toughness, resolution and generosity are Cookson virtues, in a world which she often depicts as cold and violent. Her novels are weighted and driven by her own early experiences of illegitimacy and poverty. This is what gives them power. In the specialised world of women's popular fiction, Cookson has created her own territory' - Helen Dunmore, The Times

Coming up sixteen, Tilly Trotter is different from the other girls in her village. Tall for her age and coltish, she is not afraid of taking on ‘man’s work’ to help out the grandparents who raised her in a cottage at the edge of the Sopwith Estate, only a few miles from the bustling Tyneside towns of County Durham. Testing times lay ahead for Tilly, often hard to endure and even bringing her the undeserved taint of being suspected of witchcraft. Tilly, with her unusual beauty, envied by the local women and lusted after by the men, only loves one man – farmer Simon Bentwood. She is heartbroken to discover he is betrothed to another. A spurned suitor takes a terrible revenge, and a betrayal forces her into the cruel drudgery of the local mine and puts her life in danger. But Tilly refuses to let her spirit be broken – determined that all this will only serve to make her stronger – and she grows to become a young woman of innate courage and fortitude. Set at the beginning of the Victorian era, this is a compelling story that follows the shaping of a young woman’s life and destiny.

In the brooding north country hills, a man and a woman fought for the passion they felt for each other that the world branded a disgrace… Agnes Thorman – the proud but forlorn mistress of a once-grand estate, whose society forbade her the man who was her equal in all but name… Robert Bradley – a gifted craftsman, as visionary and challenging as the dawning new age. He had yet to seize his dream, which could destroy the woman he loved… And Milicent Thorman – the strange, wise girl-child fated to play a shocking part in the lovers’ unfolding destiny… The lives of these three are woven into a compelling story with the masterly touch of Catherine Cookson.

Davie Armstrong struggles hard for his place at Cock Shield Farm and finds himself at odds with the owner, a man of mordant temper and villainous pride. He watches as his master, Angus McBain, publicly thrashes young Molly Geary for refusing to name the man who 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. But 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 emotionally and physically crippled, Amos will learn to wield the power of frightening intensity over everyone around him… Feathers in the Fire is a dark tale of love, loss and redemption set on a tenant farm at the end of the nineteenth century.

As has been said before, Mary Ann Shaughnessy is no ordinary child. She first won a place in the hearts of thousands of readers in A Grand Man, described by Alan Melville in a broadcast as “a quite enchanting novel, written by someone who obviously knows the mind of a child as well as she knows the mean back streets of Tyneside.” Mary Ann firmly believed that when her father took on the farm job she had largely contrived to find for him, he would be set for life. Away from the temptations of the town, doing the kind of work he was meant for, he must slowly but surely turn into the angelic being Mary Ann knew him to be. But Mary Ann did not count on the frailties of human nature nor the sheer contrariness of others, which destroyed all her well-laid plans…In this second novel of the Shaughnessy saga, Mary Ann returns in this delightful, warm-hearted and humorously observed story of life set in northern England.

When Mary Ann is sent from her native Tyneside to become a pupil at a high-class convent boarding school on the South Coast, the idea in her benefactor’s mind was that she should be turned into a little lady. In this, the third story in the Mary Ann series, Mary Ann is seen again as that irrepressible child of Tyneside in all her cheeky delightfulness. As usual, however, despite the seemingly over-powering difficulties, everything is sorted out satisfactorily in the end.