Catherine Cookson

Catherine Marchant

The Mallen Streak

15-year-old Cissie Brodie tries to keep her family of nine together when their parents die of cholera in 1832. After they are evicted from their cottage, she finds a shanty on the fells but soon encounters enmity from the landowner's son and daughter.

The Dwelling Place

Known for the wit of her writing, in her lifetime Catherine Cookson became the UK’s most widely read novelist. When the Cookson Estate discovered the unpublished manuscript of Saint Christopher and the Gravedigger in the attic of her home, they unearthed a gem for Cookson’s many fans. 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… Mad or not, John has some secrets he’s been keeping. But if he can’t stop talking, they won’t stay secret for long.

Saint Christopher and the Gravedigger

A blind girl who is sent to stay with her grandfather stumbles upon a kidnapping in their small town.

Go Tell it to Mrs. Golightly

A Novel

The Silent Lady

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. While Cookson had authored previous autobiographies, none have truly touched upon the tragedy and personal anguish she experienced until now. For the first time, she reveals the worst years of her life—her constant battles with illness and a series of devastating miscarriages, the damaging jealousy of her friend and her struggle to be taken seriously as a writer. But what shines through most is her strength in the face of adversity, her deep love for her husband, Tom, the solace she found in her art and her unmistakable character. Before I Go is an inspiring story of resilience and a must for any Cookson fan.

Before I Go

The Black Velvet Gown

Poverty-stricken dock laborer John O'Brien defends his family from a drunken father and brother before falling in love with his sister's seemingly unattainable teacher.

The Fifteen Streets

GLASS VIRGIN, The

Alison Read was orphaned as a small child and became the ward of antiques dealer Paul Aylmer. As Alison matured, so did her love for Paul, a man who had never made the slightest romantic overture toward her. How could she get the man who had been a loving father to Alison the girl, to realize that Alison the woman had very grown-up feelings toward him?

The Lady on My Left

Provocative 16-year-old Vanessa was a member of the powerful and avaricious Ratcliffe family, and Angus Cotton a rough diamond who lived down among the goods yards. Events were to draw the pair together.

The Round Tower

Tilly Trotter has devotedly served Mark Sopwith at Highfield Manor for twelve years. 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 blind she knows that it's time to leave her native Tyneside. A new love seems to offer an escape and so she follows her heart to America, sure that this will be the beginning of a better life. But new perils await Tilly across the ocean....

Tilly Trotter Wed

The Tide of Life

Bridget Dean Mordaunt was a woman of consequence in her own part of the world. Inheriting her father's businesses at the age of nineteen, by the time she was twenty-three in 1880, she was running them as confidently as any man. Yet the path destiny required her to follow was not an easy one. Her feckless cousin Victoria became infatuated with Lionel Filmore, the fortune-hunting elder son of an old but impoverished family living in the decayed grandeur of Grove House. Bridget had no illusions about Lionel, but Victoria's happiness was paramount to her. So a pattern began to form that would shape the lives of generations to come, a pattern of some good and some great evil, but all of it inexorably linking Bridget ever more closely with the Filmores and their house. THE BLACK CANDLE displays all of Catherine Cookson's narrative skills and shrewd perception of human strengths and frailties which have established her as our most widely-read and best-loved novelist. And in Bridget Mordaunt she has achieved a notable and highly distinctive addition to her gallery of remarkable women.

The Black Candle

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. The apple of Hannah’s eye is her pretty younger daughter, Rosie, who has just returned home after a spell in London. 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. 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.

Hannah Massey / the Fifteen Streets

Widowed and determined to protect her two children from the evil that awaits their return from Texas, Tilly Trotter reestablishes herself as lady of the manor under the belief that she has loved for the last time

Tilly Alone

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.

Our Kate

A legacy of hatred can be a terrible force in life, over which not even an enduring love and all the fruits of material success may prevail. Catherine Cookson explores this theme in a major novel that will absorb and enthral her readers as irresistibly as any she has written. Roddy Greenbank was brought by his father to the remote Northumberland community of Langley in the autumn of 1807. Within hours of their arrival, however, the father had met a violent death, and the boy was left with all memory gone of his past life. Adopted and raised by old Kate Makepeace, Roddy found his closest companions in Hal Roystan and Mary Ellen Lee. These three stand at the heart of a richly eventful narrative that spans the first half of the nineteenth century, their lives lastingly intertwined by the inexorable demands of a strange and somewhat cruel destiny. A DINNER OF HERBS displays outstandingly Catherine Cookson's true storyteller's gift.

A Dinner of Herbs

It was a wartime white wedding but it was not a love match. Annie Cooper married George McCabe for one reason only: she was expecting his child. Her own parents accepted the situation with a kind of pained resignation. The easy-going McCabes, and especially George's rumbustious mother, just took it in their stride. But Annie was a girl of spirit and determined to make the marriage work. George might not be all that bright, but he was good-natured and a hard worker once given a shove in the right direction. Annie applied herself to that task as she matured into a woman of character and resource. The family prospered even as it grew. She bore George four children, but it was the first who always held her heart in the hollow of his hand. From early childhood, Rance was a problem. There were traits in his character that were hard to excuse or even understand, but whatever trouble he got into, Annie would forgive him. Mother and son were bound together by an invisible chord; invisible but strong enough to become a noose for both of them.Spanning a period of nearly thirty years and set against a background of the Tyneside towns, The Invisible Cord is a novel of great power and warmth that explores several different kinds of love with a strong dramatic narrative that wholly engages from first page to last.

The Invisible Cord

Some women are destined to arouse in men either fierce hatred or insatiable desire. Such a woman was Katie Mulholland. At fifteen, a scullery maid in the house of the Rosiers, she had been raped by the master. Now, many years later, she had enough money to maintain three carriages if whe wanted to and she was on her way to see Bernard Rosier under very different circumstances. There was no pride in Katie Mulholland's heart, however, only fear, for half of Tyneside still talked about the way she had flouted convention, and sniggered about the way she had made her money. So she had decided that her only hope was to climb above them, and that she would conquer her fear with power...

Catherine Cookson

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