Catherine Cookson became one of the world's most popular novelists, celebrated for her compelling stories of love, loss, and resilience. Her writing is characterized by a keen eye for detail and strong female characters who resonate deeply with readers. Though initially acclaimed for her regional focus, her readership rapidly expanded globally. Cookson's extensive body of work cemented her legacy as a beloved contemporary author whose narratives captured the human spirit.
Volume 2 opens with a seventeen-year-old Mary Ann struggling with the painful business of growing up as her first love, Corny Boyle, leaves for America. It follows her through her eventual marriage to Corny, and the joys and trials of being a wife, and a mother to six-year-old twins, Rose Mary and David.
Set in a richly detailed world, the story follows the Gillyvors, a unique group whose lives intertwine with themes of adventure and discovery. The narrative explores their challenges and triumphs, delving into their relationships and the impact of their choices. As they navigate through their environment, readers are treated to a vivid portrayal of their culture and the trials they face, making for an engaging and immersive experience.
John Emmerson was a lonely man. He had a wife, a son, friends, but he was isolated from all the people and events about him by the tragedy of his past. Then, he met Cissie, and for the first time his loneliness eased a little. Cissie was everything his wife Ann was not. And, she was quick to sense the needs of a desolate, unhappy man.
Rooney was 35 and the only one of the dustbin gang still unmarried, having avoided four widows and two spinsters. But it all went flying out of the window when he moved into Ma Howlett's place, where the rug of his comfortable old habits were yanked from under him, and life became complicated.
Describing the worries and hardships of life in a Durham mining village, this book features Maggie Rowan's consuming jealousy at her sister's good fortune in marrying a long established family friend. Beneath Maggie's forbidding exterior is a desire to be loved.
Harry Blenheim had always been known as the nice bloke, an inoffensive man whose existence was as dull as ditchwater. 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 his family but ruined his career.
In the fifth of the series, Mary Ann discovers that life is indeed a sad and funny affair. In her attempts to come to grips with the painful business of growing up she is hard pressed, but nevertheless determined, to remain her old irrepressable self.
The Broadhursts were a mining family and, to outsiders, they appeared to be happy, loyal and united. But it was Jinny - wife, mother, sister - who held them together. Her pride and her strength prevented their fears and hates from overwhelming them. There was Jack, her younger son, trapped into marrying a shrew; and Lottie, her sister, who was not quite...normal. And there was Larry, the bright one, the handsome one, who was obsessed with the memory of the girl who had jilted him. She was married now, they said, and happily too. But now he was suffused with anger, together with pain and a reborn longing. He vowed she would not make a laughing-stock of him again. But could he do what his pride told him he must...?
