Lucy Bailey is not a girl to take no for an answer. When she asks her friend Billy Wellington to help her rescue a stray dog, she has no idea of the potential repercussions. A serious crime is committed while Billy is absent from the children's home where he lives and, when suspicion falls on him, the police decide that the safest thing for everybody is to lock him away in a mental institution.Lucy refuses to believe that Billy has done anything wrong, and enlists her cool-headed t...

When Annie Jackson's father doesn't return from war, her mother remarries. But while the outside world thinks Leonard Spode is a loving husband and father, behind closed doors he reveals his true colours - and Annie is forced to grow up very quickly. In her brave attempts to expose Spode for the monster he is, she finds himself branded a trouble-maker, and sent to a children's home - wher she discovers she is pregnant.One thought keeps Annie going: that Spode will one day be brough...

On the day of his dad's funeral, ten-year-old Jacky Gaskell meets Frank McGovern for the first time. For when Frank is hanged for a murder he did not commit, Jacky's mother Maureen feels she must tell Jacky the truth: Frank was his real father. On the day of the execution Maureen loses the only man she ever truly loved and must now raise her three children, Brian, Ellie and Jacky, alone.Once the scandal gets out, there is little sympathy from the neighbours, and Jacky has a hard ti...

When Rosie Jones' sweetheart Sean Quinnan is killed in a building accident, she knows the blame lies with her childhood tormentor Joe Brindle. But though Rosie longs for justice she has more pressing matters to deal with - when she find she is carrying Sean's baby she is disowned by her mother and loses her job.Salvation comes in the form of war veteran George Metcalf. He's prepared to make an honest woman of her and accept another man's child as his own. Although he doesn't stir h...

Ten-year-old Amy Farthing miraculously survives the sinking of the Lusitania, but loses both her parents in the disaster. However, on her arrival in England, her rich paternal grandfather, Godfrey Farthing, disowns the little girl, for reasons he will not divulge. Although she is confused and hurt by his behaviour, Amy is thankfully welcomed by her maternal grandmother, Beth, and quickly exchanges her life of privilege in New York for the hard realities of a mill town in Yorkshire. Despite...

Mining engineer Tommy Birch goes off to war, leaving his new wife Rita behind in Pontefract. On the front line, Tommy runs afoul of a German mine and is reported as missing, presumed deceased by his fellow soldiers. But Tommy isn't dead.Found behind enemy lines, wearing only a pair of boots stolen from a dead German, Tommy is picked up by the enemy who believe him to be one of their own. He spends weeks recuperating in a German military hospital, where he ...

The only life Dove McKenna has ever known has been one of the open road. Living with her parents and her brother in a show wagon, travelling from town to town, performing for folk happy enough to pay them for their entertainment, whilst dismissing them as 'gippos' and 'thieves' behind their backs.But it is not until after their mother's death that they settle in one place long enough for Dove to really feel her difference. The McKennas set up camp on a patch of barren land just out...

When Susan, Jimmy and Billy Bairstow are found alive in their bombed home, they are nicknamed 'the miracle children'. But losing their parents and having to live with their Aunt Dorothy doesn't feel very lucky. Especially when, unable to cope with all three children, Dorothy sends Billy to an orphanage.Susan and Jimmy are shocked and lonely, and when they then hear that Billy has died, they decide to run away. It is on this same adventure that they meet Freddie. Susan feels the fir...

Eleven-year-old Billy Clegg and his big sister Peggy disappear from their home in Leeds after a suspicious fire in a local mill. The owner says the children caused it by lighting fireworks on Mischief Night. Their widowed mother Betty, badly injured in the incident, doesn't know if her children are alive or dead. She prefers to think of them as being elsewhere.Following a series of accidents and adventures, the resourceful duo find themselves a long way away from bleak pos...

When Lily Robinson sees the telegraph boy cycling down Perseverance Street, she knows that he's coming to deliver bad news. Clutching the telegram in her trembling hands, at eight months pregnant and mother to three-year-old Michael, Lily learns that she must now face life as a widow. Fortuitously, she is soon visited by acquaintances, Bernard and Edith Oldroyd, who, hearing of her plight, offer to take Michael home with them for the weekend and Lily gratefully accepts.But to her h...

Hope Street may be just an ordinary terraced street in Leeds, but it's the world to Maggie Fish. And when her father returns home from the war the whole family looks forward to happier times. But then Maggie's mother dies giving birth to a little boy, leaving Johnnie Fish a bitter widower. He can never look at his son without remembering that this child caused his wife's death.By contrast, Maggie can do no wrong in her father's eyes and he pushes her forward to sing at Hope Street ...

Billie Challinor's mother dies during an air raid, but the child grows up confident that in her jazz musician father Chas she has the best dad in the world. Seeking refuge from the London Blitz by moving to Leeds, kindly landlady Liz Morris befriends them: the scarred, wisecracking man, who isn't afraid to overstep the mark if the cause is a good one, and his clever and resilient little girl. Billie needs every ounce of courage she possesses when her father joins the Army just before the D...