Catherine Cookson

At twenty-one, Jinny Brownlow's life is not going as well as she had hoped. She's working at a dead-end typing job at an engineering firm and has just been dumped by her fiance for her own roommate. Outside of work her only hobby is her local theater group, but even there she's just a general helper and not credited with having any talent at all. Something needs to change in Jinny's life, and it may have to be Jinny herself. "A bloody cultured handmaiden...Yes, that's a good description of you. So agreeable, so polite, so damned eager to please." These are Ray's words to Jinny the night he confesses he's gotten her roommate, Emily, pregnant. Ray had apparently found Emily a more willing bedmate, and he reminds Jinny that things might have worked out had she been more cooperative. Thinking this over after Ray's departure, Jinny recalls the past year with a sigh. Her experiences with men have been disasters. Jinny's lonely life -- working the day away at her desk and sitting alone in her tiny apartment at night practicing French and listening to her radio -- seems destined to continue indefinitely, until one day the owner of the firm, Mr. Henderson, calls her into his office. Known to be a devil of a man who works longer and harder than everyone else, Bob Henderson seems an unlikely candidate to change Jinny's life. When she's called to do typing for him she's terrified but refuses to cower like the other secretaries and ends up earning his respect and affection. On the same day, Hal Campbell, leading man in her theater group, goes out of his way to take a special interest in Jinny and her personal problems, and she realizes she may not have to be as lonely as she thought. Each of these two men will be an important part of Jinny's changing life, inspiring her to become less of a "cultured handmaiden" and think more about what she wants, but she's holding out for the perfect man -- one who will treat her like a princess while respecting her beliefs about marriage and her hesitancy to give herself to any man outside those sacred bonds. After a twisting, unpredictable search, in the end Jinny discovers that there just might be someone for everyone after all. "The Cultured Handmaiden" displays the beloved Catherine Cookson's powers at their fullest and her enduring themes of hardship, love, virtue, and hope.

his only comfort during the dark years of the Depression when he is faced with both unemployment and a nagging, ambitious wife. His only hope is that Mary will one day find a way to escape the grinding poverty of the Tyneside slums.

Dr Rodney Prince has never seen a girl look more out of place in the grime of the Fifteen Streets than Kate Hannigan. And as their paths continue to cross, Rodney cannot fail to be drawn towards her. But as an unlikely romance blossoms, the union fuels vicious gossip amongst the denizens of the Fifteen Streets.

Angus has ambitious plans for his future, plans that had never included Vanessa - until now .

Annabella Lagrange had the kind of childhood that most can only dream about. The only child of an aristocratic couple, raised on their magnificent estate in the English countryside, she was loved by her parents and coddled by servants who acquiesced to her every whim. She was allowed to do anything she wanted, except, of course, to stray too far from her wing of the house. But her seclusion didn't concern her too much, because when she grew up, she planned to marry her handsome cousin Stephen and live happily ever after. However, on the morning of her tenth birthday, Annabella ventured farther than she'd ever gone before. Overcome with curiosity, she opened a forbidden door that led into her father's private quarters, and what she found there showed her with shocking clarity that her father was not the man she thought he was. And though she couldn't know it at the time, the events of that day set in motion the uncovering of a secret that had been kept for many years. So begins the remarkable story of Annabella Lagrange, a sensitive, beautiful young woman who was raised as a lady. But when she turns eighteen, she learns the surprising circumstances of her birth, and her entire world quietly crashes around her. Suddenly she's forced from the genteel surroundings of her youth into the rough, lower-class society of Victorian England, where only her quick wit and determination can save her from starvation. Catherine Cookson was one of the world's most beloved writers, and in "The Glass Virgin" her powers are at their height. Rarely has a heroine been portrayed more sensitively or a situation more compellingly. Filled with passion and drama, "The Glass Virgin" is a rare treat for lovers of romantic fiction.

This collection is set against the background of places already familiar to Catherine Cookson's readers - the North-East, the South Coast and London, with a time-scale stretching from the 1920's to the modern day.

The woman who presented herself at the offices of the respectable firm of London solicitors was frail, and her clothes hung off her body. She asked to see the firm's senior partner, Alexander Armstrong, who was amazed when her learnt her name. For Irene Baindor was a woman with a mysterious past.

It is the early 1920s and Kate Hannigan is happily married to Dr Rodney Prince, who has willingly accepted her illegitimate daughter, Annie, as the eldest child of their household. Everything seems to be going well for the Prince family, but soon spiteful rumours about Kate's earlier life seem to haunt both her and Annie.

At the end of the Second World War, Matthew Wallingham returns to his family home, blinded by his injuries and uncertain about his future.

But he could not have known that someone else was planning a different kind of revenge, and that the outcome would shake the very foundations of the Overmeer family. The Blind Years, another of Catherine Cookson's part-mysteries, part-love stories, once again displays her consummate skill at portraying the nuances of family conflict.

ROONEYHe was the only one of the dustbin gang who was as yet unmarried. He'd worked for the Corporation as a dustman for fifteen of his thirty-five years, and his mates all agreed he was too canny to be caught, having avoided four widows and two spinsters in ten years. Rooney liked life to follow a pattern - that and his independence was what made him tick.But it all went flying out of the window when he moved into Ma Howlett's place. And once the rug of his comfortable old habits had been yanked from under him, Rooney found that life was much more complicated than he had imagined!THE NICE BLOKEHarry Blenheim had always been known as 'the nice bloke' an inoffensive man whose existence many thought was as dull as ditchwater. But then, at the office Christmas party, he gave in to the demands of the vivacious Betty Ray, and the scandal that followed not only split up his family but ruined his career.Harry reasoned that, with luck, he could have avoided it all, but the roots of the problem lay much deeper. There was his rapidly cooling marriage, and his hatred of his unscrupulous father-in-law. Now Harry was in real trouble, and it would take all the efforts of his dearly-loved daughter Gail and his staunch friends Janet and Robbie Dunn to help him pick up the pieces and start to live again...

HERITAGE OF FOLLYThe Batleys and the Cadwells owned neighbouring farms on the beautiful, wild Northumbrian coast. But there all similarity ended, and enmity began. For between the two families raged a violent and bitter feud - a feud so powerful that the very name of Cadwell made Ralph Batley seethe with uncontrollable fury.Into this stormy atmosphere came Linda Metcalfe, a young agricultural student, who innocently became involved in the tension between the two households on the day of her arrival. Employed by Ralph Batley, Linda soon found herself in a very difficult situation. For not only had she unwittingly become a part of the feud, but she began to feel a strange admiration for Ralph, who made it painfully clear that he had no use for her either on the farm or in his life. But then the past erupted into the present, forcing Ralph to change his attitude to Linda and resolving the whole Batley/Cadwell heritage of folly...THE FEN TIGERDeep in the wild fen country, Rosamund Morley lived a cloistered, poverty-stricken existence with her sister Jennifer and her alcoholic father. She was the prop and stay of the family - and it was she who ran for help the night her father set his bed alight after a drinking bout. That night was to change the course of Rosamund's life - for, fleeing through the woods, she met Michael Bradshaw, the man she christened the 'Fen Tiger'.When she knew more of Michael's past and the fate that had forced him to live in isolation, Rosamund's initial feelings of dislike changed to compassion...and then to something deeper....

This volume contains two novels by Catherine Cookson, "The Long Corridor" and "Kate Hannigan".

Only after returning from his well-attended funeral did Fiona Bailey realise just how much she would miss Davey Love.

The events of this novel, set on the Northumbrian coast in the 1960s, take place over one day, a period during which everyone involved discovers that the consequences of an innocent meeting between two young people are far more significant than the event itself.