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This is a gripping and heartrending novel set against the backdrop of the thriving tea trade in turn-of-the-century Tyneside 1905, India.
Clarissa Belhaven and her sister Olive have grown up on their widowed father's tea plantation. When he dies after a row with brash young business rival Wesley Robson, the sisters are forced to return to their father's family in Tyneside.
Clarissa is shocked by the hard lives of the locals, and dreams of opening her own tea room which could be a safe haven for them. Then Wesley Robson comes back into her life, bringing with him the power to change Clarissa's life for ever!
| Territory | Publisher/Agent |
|---|---|
| World | Darley Anderson Agency (Camilla Wray) |
| UK & Commonwealth | Headline |
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An enthralling northeastern saga of the 1930s. It's a tale of passion, poverty and survival as the Depression brings Tyneside to its knees.
Eighteen-year-old Clara Magee is devastated when her father commits suicide, leaving his family with nothing but gambling debts. Facing ruin, the Magees are forced to sell their business, a fancy-goods shop, to a German couple whom Patience resents. Despite her mother's disapproval, Clara befriends their daughter Reenie and hot-headed son Benny.
Patience thinks old family friend Vinnie Craven would make far better company for her daughter, and Vinnie's admiration of Clara is obvious to all. Yet her heart lies elsewhere -- with Reenie and Benny's dashing elder brother Frank.
When Frank leaves abruptly for Germany, a disappointed Clara tries to dismiss her feelings for him and eventually agrees to marry Vinnie. Clara hadn't bargained for Vinnie's violent temper, however, and his growing fascination with Mosley's Fascist party is disturbing.
But the greatest shock is still to come!
| Territory | Publisher/Agent |
|---|---|
| World | Darley Anderson Agency (Camilla Wray) |
| UK & Commonwealth | Headline |
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A powerful saga of the Northeast that sweeps through Edwardian England and into the turbulent days of the First World War.
In times of poverty, times of struggle and times of war, the people of Tyneside are portrayed at their most courageous.
Emmie Kelso was rescued as a child from a dingy Gateshead tenement and sent to live with the MacRaes, a generous mining family. Now an intelligent and spirited young woman, she volunteers at the notorious Gateshead Settlement - a place where the middle class live and work among the poorest.
She is swept off her feet by handsome Tom Curran, a miner, but soon learns that he is brutal and violent. When war breaks out, Tom enlists and to Emmie's surprise she fails in love with the MacRae's eldest son Rab, a conscientious objector.
But dark times are ahead: Rab faces execution for his political beliefs. And the end of the war brings Tom home...
| Territory | Publisher/Agent |
|---|---|
| World | Darley Anderson Agency (Camilla Wray) |
| UK & Commonwealth | Headline |
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Tyneside, 1923: Catherine McMullen, or Kitty as she is known, is seventeen, restless and rebellious. Defying her mother, who has always insisted her daughter would never go into service, she takes a job as a lady's companion in a grand house.
But her desire to better herself won’t be dampened by domestic chores, and, much to the amusement of her fellow staff, Catherine embarks on a programme of self-education.
With her new-found knowledge, soon the ill-educated, illegitimate and streetwise Kitty McMullen is a ghost from the past, and Catherine leaves the North-East to make a fresh start.
But there will be many hardships and heartaches to come before the child of Jarrow finally comes home
| Territory | Publisher/Agent |
|---|---|
| World | Darley Anderson Agency (Camilla Wray) |
| UK & Commonwealth | Headline |
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A COMPELLING AND HEART-RENDING SAGA INSPIRED BY THE LIFE OF CATHERINE COOKSON’S MOTHER
To escape the malign interest of her possessive and jealous stepfather, Kate Fawcett is sent away from teeming Tyneside and finds work at Ravensworth Castle. She soon attracts the attention of charming, headstrong Alexander Pringle Davies, a distant cousin of the Earl, who risks incurring the wrath of his family by courting lowly Kate. But when Kate finally succumbs and allows herself to be seduced, Alexander is forced abroad by his father and into an unwanted betrothal.
Discovering she is carrying Alexander’s child, Kate goes home to face the wrath of her stepfather and the censure of their neighbours and resigns herself to a lonely life of drudgery. But it is her daughter, Catherine, who gives her life meaning and keeps Kate from giving up – that and the thought that Alexander might one day return to claim her and her angel child.
| Territory | Publisher/Agent |
|---|---|
| World | Darley Anderson Agency (Camilla Wray) |
| UK & Commonwealth | Headline |
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1906, The Ravensworth Arms, Lamesley, Gateshead. Kate Fawcett, a barmaid fell into the arms of a mysterious stranger and conceived an illegitimate child.
The child grew up to be Dame Catherine Cookson OBE.
Heavy with the shameful sin that a child out of wedlock would bring to her family, Kate agreed that her mother Rose would bring Catherine up as her own.
This is Rose’s story…
Through a skilful blend of fact and fiction, Janet MacLeod Trotter brings us a compelling and heartrending saga inspired by the life of Catherine Cookson’s grandmother.
Janet McLeod Trotter is the author of seven sagas, all published by Headline. The first, Hungry Hills, gained her a place on the Sunday Times Young Writers Award. She is currently a TV reviewer for the Newcastle Journal and lives in Northumberland with her husband and two daughters.
“Well researched and highly readable…compelling and utterly convincing” Northern Review
“Janet MacLeod Trotter pulls no punches, tells it like it is and taps directly into your emotions” Northern Echo
“A gritty, heart-rending and impassioned drama”Newcastle Journal
| Territory | Publisher/Agent |
|---|---|
| World | Darley Anderson Agency (Camilla Wray) |
| UK & Commonwealth | Headline |
Top of page | Back to author page