Allie Cresswell

"My earliest memory is of you, Arthur. We were children, running across the garden at Granny's house. The sun on your hair made it look like copper wire. Then you stopped, and I cannoned into you. We both went headlong into the rockery. It was 1964, the summer before I started school, so I was nearly five. You would have been just three. It's strange, isn't it? That my first memory is of you. Or maybe it isn't very strange at all."Prudence and Arthur take a nostalgic trip down memory lane to the '60s and '70s; turbulent, changeful years that contrasted with their idyllic childhood at 'Salad Days, ' the market garden run by Prue's extended family. But was it idyllic? Tragedy makes uneasy waypoints in their journey of recollection, and Arthur's overbearing father casts a dark pall. How did he inveigle himself into Prue's close-knit family circle? What was his hold on them?As Prue and Arthur retrace their youthful attempts to get to the facts, it's clear that truth and memory aren't always the same.What of the mysteries that defy the clarity of hindsight? The uncanny auspices of eccentric Mrs Glenister, latest in the line of 'peculiar' Glenister wives-why did she only materialise at times of calamity? And most oddly of all, why, in all their reminiscing, does Arthur never speak a word?Memory is a curious thing-unreliable and awkward. Shaping it into an account Prue and Arthur can both live with might take a lifetime. Or two.

Suddenly-widowed Maisie sets out to clear her late husband's collection; wonky furniture and balding rugs, bolts of material for upholstery projects he never got round to, other people's trash brought home from car boot sales and rescued from the tip. The hoard is endless, stacked into every room in the house, teetering in piles along the landing and forming a scree up the stairs. It is all part of Clifford's waste-not way of thinking in which everything, no matter how broken or obscure, can be re-cycled or re-purposed into something useful or, if kept long enough, will one day be valuable. He had believed in his vision as ardently as any mystic in his holy revelation but now, without the clear projection of his vision to light it up for her as what it would be, it appears to Maisie more grimly than ever as what it is: junk. As Maisie disassembles his stash she is forced to confront the issues which drove her husband to squirrel away other people's rubbish; after all, she knows virtually nothing about his life before they met. Finally, in the last bastion of his accumulation, she discovers the key to his hoarding and understands - much too late - the man she married.Then, with empty rooms in a house which is too big for her, she must ask herself: what next?

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One evening, Viola goes missing.The explanation-a visit to her son-seems doubtful and her women friends' messages go unanswered. A spiky, caustic woman, Viola's heavy drinking makes her tiresome company, but they know nothing of her troubled past.Yet, Maisie misses Viola. Recently, their shared love of gardening has almost blunted Viola's barbs, and Maisie is much in need of a close friend. Her house is a building site, her daughter's wedding is looming. Most worrying is her friendship with handsome, formidable Oliver Harrington. She cannot work out what he wants from it, nor, really, what she wants, either. She barely has time to wonder where Viola has gone.As Maisie grapples with her present-day preoccupations, Viola's tale unfolds: a dark landscape of tragedy and suffering. Their two stories collide in an explosive finale. Can the two women rescue each other? This third book in the Widows series stands alone. A story of weeds and wildflowers, tenacity and tenderness, and containing potentially upsetting details of domestic abuse, alcoholism, and bereavement, this is ultimately an affirmation of the strength and power of women's friendships.

Burned-out author Dee needs fresh inspiration. Impetuously, she abandons London and her good-for-nothing boyfriend to go wherever her literary quest takes her. Journey's end is a remote village on the shores of a wild estuary, overshadowed by a ruined pele tower. She rents Winter Cottage and waits for a story to emerge.The bleak beauty of the whispering dunes, the jacquard of colour and texture of the marsh and a romantic tree in a secluded glade-The Trysting Tree-all seduce Dee. Nevertheless, the secretive behaviour of a handsome neighbour, lights across the marsh, a spurious squire and a bizarre, moonlit encounter all suggest there is something odd afoot.Local gossip and crumbling graveyard inscriptions give Dee the opening she needs. She begins to weave hints about the tragic history of a local family, feuding brothers and a fatal fire into a sweeping historical saga. Her characters clamour for a voice as the tale spools effortlessly onto the page-demanding to be told. Dee feels more like its instrument than its instigator.As she becomes enmeshed in the local community, Dee is startled to find her fiction unnervingly confirmed by fact, her history still resonating in the present-day.Is she being guided by echoes of the past?

This is the second book in the Highbury Trilogy, but stands equally well alone.Thirty years before the commencement of Jane Austen's 'Emma', Highbury is a thriving and populous village. The Bates family has seen a decline in their fortunes. Partly in an attempt to ease their finances and partly in answer to her own thirst for adventure, Jane Bates leaves Highbury to become the companion of the invalid widow Mrs Sealy in Brighton. Life in the new, fashionable seaside resort is exciting indeed. A wide circle of interesting acquaintance and a rich tapestry of new experiences make her new life all Jane had hoped for. While Jane's sister Hetty can be a tiresome conversationalist she proves to be a surprisingly good correspondent and Jane is kept minutely up-to-date with developments in Highbury, particularly the tragic news from Donwell Abbey.When the handsome Lieutenant Weston returns to Brighton Jane expects their attachment to pick up where it left off in Highbury the previous Christmas, but the determined Miss Louisa Churchill, newly arrived with her brother and sister-in-law from Enscombe in Yorkshire, seems to have a different plan in mind.

Winner of an 'Honourable Mention' award in the Readers' Favourite competition and recipient of the coveted One Stop Fiction Five Star Award.The final instalment of the Highbury trilogy, Dear Jane recounts events hinted at but never actually described in Jane Austen's Emma; the formative childhood years of Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, their meeting in Weymouth and the agony of their secret engagement.Orphaned Jane seems likely to be brought up in parochial Highbury until adoption by her papa's old friend Colonel Campbell opens to her all the excitement and opportunities of London. Frank Weston is also transplanted from Highbury, adopted as heir to the wealthy Churchills and taken to their drear and inhospitable Yorkshire estate. Readers of Emma will be familiar with the conclusion of Jane and Frank's story, but Dear Jane pulls back the veil which Jane Austen drew over their meeting in Weymouth and the emotional, physical and spiritual tolls of their secret engagement.

Thirty years before the beginning of 'Emma' Mrs Bates is entirely different from the elderly, almost entirely silent figure familiar to fans of Jane Austen's fourth novel. She is comparatively young and beautiful, widowed - but ready to love again. She is the lynch-pin of Highbury society until the appalling Mrs Winwood arrives, very determined to hold sway over that ordered little town.Miss Bates is as talkative aged twenty-nine as she is in her later iteration, with a ghoulish fancy, seeing disaster in every cloud. When young Mr Woodhouse arrives looking for a plot for his new house, the two strike up a relationship characterised by their shared hypochondria, personal chariness and horror of draughts.Jane, the other Miss Bates, is just seventeen and eager to leave the parochialism of Highbury behind her until handsome Lieutenant Weston comes home on furlough from the militia and sweeps her - quite literally - off her feet.

The Talbots are wealthy. But their wealth is from 'trade'. With neither ancient lineage nor title, they struggle for entrance into elite Regency society. Finally, aided by an impecunious viscount, they gain access to the drawing rooms of England's most illustrious houses.Mrs Talbot intends her daughter Jocelyn to marry well, to eliminate the stain of the family's ignoble beginnings. But the young men Jocelyn meets are vacuous, seeing Jocelyn as merely a substantial dowry. Only Lieutenant Barnaby Willow sees the real Jocelyn, but he is deployed to war.The hypocrisy of fashionable society repulses Jocelyn-beneath the courtly manners she finds deceit, dissipation and vice. She stumbles upon and then is embroiled in a sordid scandal which threatens utter disgrace for the Talbot family. Humiliated and dishonoured, she is sent to a remote house hidden in a hollow of the Yorkshire moors, irrevocably separated from family, friends and any hope of hearing about the lieutenant's fate.Jocelyn's incarceration in the mysterious old mansion forces her to reassess her values - and the values of the society she was so anxious to be part of.

A novel of love, loneliness and loyalty. Readers are staying up all night to read this story of a British woman and the stately home which is her fortress and her prison.Considered a troublesome burden, Evelyn Talbot is banished by her family to their remote country house. Tall Chimneys is hidden in a damp and gloomy hollow. It is outmoded and inconvenient but Evelyn is determined to save it from the fate of so many stately homes at the time - abandonment or demolition.Occasional echoes of tumult in the wider world reach their sequestered backwater - the strident cries of political extremists, a furore of royal scandal, rumblings of the European war machine. But their isolated spot seems largely untouched. At times life is hard - little more than survival. At times it feels enchanted, almost outside of time itself. The woman and the house shore each other up - until love comes calling, threatening to pull them asunder.Her desertion will spell its demise, but saving Tall Chimneys could mean sacrificing her hope for happiness, even sacrificing herself.A century later, a distant relative crosses the globe to find the house of his ancestors. What he finds in the strange depression of the moor could change the course of his life forever.One woman, one house, one hundred years.

What secrets hide beneath the veil? When her mother departs for a tour of the continent, Georgina is sent from the rural backwaters to stay with her cousin, George Talbot, in London. The 1835 season is at its height, but Georgina is determined to attend neither balls nor plays, and to eschew Society. She hides her face beneath an impenetrable veil. Her extraordinary appearance only sets off gossip and speculation as to her identity. Who is the mysterious lady beneath the veil?Amory Balfour attracts the same kind of unwelcome attention. The son of slaves, adopted and educated by a wealthy white couple, he is now a prosperous businessman, respected by his peers but still distrusted because of the colour of his skin.Can Georgina and Amory help each other to overcome the stigma of being different?The Lady in the Veil continues the story of the Talbots in The House in the Hollow, but stands equally well alone.

**The new novel by the best-selling author Allie Cresswell****A prequel to the award-winning Tall Chimneys**The Talbots are wealthy. But their wealth is from 'trade'. With neither ancient lineage nor title, they struggle for entrance into elite Regency society. Finally, aided by an impecunious viscount, they gain access to the drawing rooms of England's most illustrious houses.Mrs Talbot intends her daughter Jocelyn to marry well, to eliminate the stain of the family's ignoble beginnings. But the young men Jocelyn meets are vacuous, seeing Jocelyn as merely a substantial dowry. Only Lieutenant Barnaby Willow sees the real Jocelyn, but he is deployed to war. The hypocrisy of fashionable society repulses Jocelyn-beneath the courtly manners she finds deceit, dissipation and vice. She stumbles upon and then is embroiled in a sordid scandal which threatens utter disgrace for the Talbot family. Humiliated and dishonoured, she is sent to a remote house hidden in a hollow of the Yorkshire moors, irrevocably separated from family, friends and any hope of hearing about the lieutenant's fate.

Minnie Price married late in life. Now she is widowed. And starving.No one suspects this respectable church-goer can barely keep body and soul together. Why would they, while she resides in the magnificent home she shared with Peter? Her friends and neighbours are oblivious to her plight and her adult step-children have their own reasons to make things worse rather than better. But she is thrown a lifeline when an associate of her late husband arrives with news of an investment about which her step-children know nothing.Can she release the funds before she finds herself homeless and destitute?Fans of 'The Hoarder's Widow' will enjoy this sequel, but it reads equally well as a standalone.

Jane Bates has left Highbury to become the companion of the invalid widow Mrs Sealy in Brighton. Life in the new, fashionable seaside resort is exciting indeed. A wide circle of interesting acquaintance and a rich tapestry of new experiences make her new life all Jane had hoped for. While Jane's sister Hetty can be a tiresome conversationalist she proves to be a surprisingly good correspondent and Jane is kept minutely up-to-date with developments in Highbury, particularly the tragic news from Donwell Abbey.When the handsome Lieutenant Weston returns to Brighton Jane expects their attachment to pick up where it left off in Highbury the previous Christmas, but the determined Miss Louisa Churchill, newly arrived with her brother and sister-in-law from Enscombe in Yorkshire, seems to have a different plan in mind.

Thirty years before the beginning of 'Emma' Mrs Bates is entirely different from the elderly, silent figure familiar to fans of Jane Austen's fourth novel. She is comparatively young and beautiful, widowed - but ready to love again. She is the lynch-pin of Highbury society until the appalling Mrs Winwood arrives, very determined to hold sway over that ordered little town.Miss Bates is as talkative aged twenty nine as she is in her later iteration, with a ghoulish fancy, seeing disaster in every cloud. When young Mr Woodhouse arrives looking for a plot for his new house, the two strike up a relationship characterised by their shared hypochondria, personal chariness and horror of draughts.Jane, the other Miss Bates, is just seventeen and eager to leave the parochialism of Highbury behind her until handsome Lieutenant Weston comes home on furlough from the militia and sweeps her - quite literally - off her feet.Mrs Bates of Highbury is the first of three novels by the Amazon #1 best-selling Allie Cresswell, which trace the pre-history of Emma and then run in parallel to it.