Celie Marlow begins working in the Latimers' kitchen when she is only ten,learning her art from Mrs Harper. By the age of 18 she has become a talentedcook. But when she falls in love with a Latimer, all their lives change withfrightening swiftness.Driven from her home, Celie finds unexpectedsuccess in a new venture with her old boss - then loses everything once more.Thrown on to the streets of Liverpool, penniless and desperate, she will have tofin...

Tomboy Grace Tooley meets Rupert Bradley when her eldest brother's sudden death forces her to take on burdens beyond her years. From then on, Grace gives her heart to her brother's wealthy friend, but he sees her as a mere girl and marries a woman from his own station in life. They meet again when the Great War has changed them both. Grace has suffered loss and pain and emerged as a strong, passionate woman. Rupert, nearly broken by the horrors he has endured, has been humiliated by the br...

Sara Hamilton loves Jack Andews from the moment he risks his life to rescue her. As she nurses him back to health, the gently-reared doctor's daughter and the softly-spoken railway labourer discover an innocent yet steadfast passion.But Sara's snobbish sister Alice hates Jack and all he stands for. When their father dies and leaves the sisters penniless and homeless, Alice is the one who decides they will go to Liverpool and make their fortunes as dressmakers. And ensures that Jack...

As they dazzle all the men at Queen Victoria's jubilee ball, Beth and Milly Goodwin seem to be mirror images of one another: beautiful, graceful and rich, they can take their pick of any man in St Helens. Only those who know them best realize that Milly's dark brown eyes hide a wild, untamed wantonness, while Beth's silvery-grey ones betray her idealism and kindness. But the only man in the room either of them wants is the one who could destroy both their lives. Hugh, sixteenth Lord Thornl...

To Sir Robert Blenkinsopp, his frail, exquisite wife Amy is just another possession - to be used, misused or discarded like anything else at Newton Law, his grand estate on Northumberland's wild moore. The gamekeeper they call Duffy thinks he has never seen anything quite so brave as Amy Blenkinsopp as she faces up to her husband - and is overjoyed when the brute is found unconscious at the bottom of his own staircase, deprived of the power of speech and movement. With the help of Sir Robe...

Rose Alley is one of the city's worst slums - a place where hunger, filth and violence are a way of life. It's no place for proud Queenie Logan and her daughter Gillyflower. And it seems Queenie's dreams of escape will come true. Transformed by Miss Hunter's School for Girls, Gilly opens a successful dressmaking shop. And though she always thought she would marry the boy next door, soon she is courted by one of the richest young men in the city. But they have made a terrible enemy, who lur...

Annie Abbott, daughter and only child of a poverty-stricken hill farmer and his downtrodden wife, who runs away with a theatrical group at the age of 15. Eventually hearing that her parents have died, Annie returns to the Lakes to claim the farm.But now she has an illegitimate daughter - and virtually no one will speak to her. Only a local landowner, who is engaged to marry another woman, comes to help her.Praise for Audrey Howard'A joy to read . . . . This saga is,...

Beautiful, wilful and untameable, Kitty Hayes has only ever loved one man. From the moment she met him, she believed with all her heart that her adopted brother Freddy would one day be her husband. When he chooses to marry her pretty, feminine, despised sister instead, it breaks more than her heart.Torn between fury and sorrow, Kitty makes her own brilliant match. She doesn't love Ben Maddox - she scarcely notices him, even though he is fascinated by his headstrong bride. It is onl...

When Abby Murphy discovers she’s heiress to one of St Helens’ largest glass works, her whole life is turned upside down. Torn from her poverty-stricken family and forbidden to see her childhood sweetheart, Roddy Baxter, she is forced by her tyrannical grandfather to become a lady.Then Roddy disappears and soon, it seems inevitable that Abby will have to marry her grandfather’s chosen successor, Noah Goodwin, and bear his children. Trapped in a marriage where she is little more than...

Briony Marsden has led a hard life, forced to do the work of a grown man while enduring her drunkard father’s taunts and blows. But when he goes too far one day, her fate becomes even worse as she makes her way alone in a heartless world. Not quite alone. She has a friend - Lizzie Jenkins - who will do anything to help Briony re-open Moorend Mill. And Chad Cameron, the richest man in the district, has always admired Briony’s spirit and determination. When her fortunes are at their lowest, ...

Kit Chapman is the beautiful daughter of a rich Lancashire mill-owner: a man who exploits his workpeople ruthlessly. She is to inherit the business - but only if she can prove herself as hard and determined as he.Joss Greenwood is a weaver, driven with his family into abject poverty by the new machinery. Now his life is dedicated to the struggle against the factory owners.Kit and Joss, two people from very different, hostile worlds, meet by chance up on the moors they both ...

Brought together by friendship, torn apart by love...Meg Hughes, Tom Fraser and Martin Hunter were friends who had grown up together in the grinding poverty of a Liverpool orphanage. Their prospects looked bleak until the friends were sent to help out at Hemingway Shipping Line's emigrant lodging house. Then their youthful high spirits blossomed into their plans for the future.But the First World War brought an end to those plans, and threatened to separate...