This gritty story is set in a small mining town in South Yorkshire and follows the early part of Stanley's life, his parent's love affair, and their struggle to cope with the hardships and tragedies of that time. Born in 1919 into a mining family Stanley is determined not to follow the path marked out for him and he sets out to follow his ambition and become a farmer. It proves to be a difficult path beset with adversity that he endeavours to overcome with humour and tenacity and along the...

In this book we follow the second part of Stanley’s life with his beautiful and feisty wife Doris beside him. Still both in their twenties, they are completely focused on making a better life for themselves.Moving at last from the mining village where they were both born, they find themselves living in a cottage that is barely habitable, but using all her ingenuity, Doris turns it into home, while Stanley, ever resourceful, finds ways to earn the extra money they will need.Fr...

Stories … They are the building blocks of our lives. They are our memories. They are how we come to know our history. They are our escapism and entertainment. Some fact, some fiction, and some are a clever little mix.These thirty-one stories are fiction. Short and scary. Delivered to you in small, terrifying bursts, much the way you’d experience each individual room in a haunted-house attraction. They were specifically written to be enjoyed by both the not-too-young and old alike. ...

'Forty-eight hours, that's what they reckon, isn't it? Forty-eight hours. If you don't find them in that, likely they're sodding dead...'A cabbie's just been beaten up, there's a drunk and disorderly in the interview room and a possible child abuser on the way in. Nothing unusual there, then, just a pretty normal Christmas holiday for DI Resnick and his team.Normal, that is, until Dana Matthieson calls to report her flatmate, Nancy, missing.Dana's had a pretty grim ...

1868 OttawaD’Arcy McGee is assassinated. As John A. Macdonald cradles his friend’s bloody head, he blames transplanted Irish terrorists: the Fenian Brotherhood. Within a day, Patrick James Whelan is arrested. After a show trial, Whelan is publicly hanged.That much is history. Did Whelan do the deed?What if Clara Swift, a mere slip of a girl, sees the trace-line of a buggy turn off Sparks Street, moments after the murder? What if housemaid Clara understands her dead ...

'As heart-warming as it is heartbreaking, this novel is unputdownable' Sunday Express.Tarabeg is a small village on the West Coast of Ireland. In the aftermath of the Second World War, two women are waiting there for ambitious Michael Malone to return home.Rosie is the local schoolteacher and most people think she is promised to him. Just a few have guessed that he has secretly begun to woo Sarah, w...

* Don't miss NO REGRET, the brand new novel from Martina Cole. Coming October 2025. *She has always kept quiet... until now...Dark and dangerous, GOODNIGHT LADY by the 'undisputed queen of crime writing' (Guardian) and Sunday Times No.1 bestseller Martina Cole features the powerful, beautiful and fearless Briony Cavanagh, London's most infamous businesswoman, and mistress of her own fate...In the sixties, ...

The Yorkshire detectives reopen an old murder case and stir a royal scandal in this "dynamic, surprising mystery" ( Publishers Weekly).Reginald Hill "raised the classical British mystery to new heights" when he introduced pugnacious Yorkshire Det. Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his partner, the callow Sgt. Peter Pascoe ( The New York Times Book Review). Their chafing differences in education, manners, technique, and temperament made them "the most r...

Sally, who married young to escape her appalling childhood, is often left to bitterly reflect on the hand she has been dealt. She is, on the whole, happy caring for her handsome husband, his mother, her own three children, one of whom has a disability, and her Walter Mitty sister. Then suddenly her world comes crashing down when her husband leaves her with no warning. She is helped unexpectedly by a friend whose advice stands her in good stead and by hard work and sheer determination she s...

**The third book in the stunning Gibson Family series**, perfect for fans of 'Call the Midwife', Dilly Court and Catherine Cookson********Lancashire, 1848. Preparations are under way for Annie Gibson's wedding to Bilsden's wealthy mill owner, Frederick Hallam. But not everyone is as pleased as they are.Frederick's daughter is horrified at the prospect of a new, attractive stepmother arriving at the house on Ridge Hill. Even...

All she wants is a family of her own...Lottie is just three years old when her Mammy dies and she is sent to the workhouse. A childhood spent in poverty, skivvying for other people, leaves her with no prospects, no family...Yet Lottie is bright and has ambitions for a better life. And when an opportunity arises at the local Chapel, Lottie seizes her chance. But will she ever be anything more than a workhouse child?

Heartache and hardship in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Orphans of Halfpenny StreetBridget has always been the one to take on the responsibility for looking after her family. With a drunken, violent mother, an unemployed brother who can't stay out of pub brawls and a wayward sister vulnerable to the smooth talk of shady men, it's hardly surprising when she falls for cheeky local lad, Ernie.But when he breaks her heart, she is drawn to...