Windsor Selection S. Series

Nancy Ann Hazel was the young and high-spirited daughter of a country parson. Her courage and fortitude were soon tested by the challenges of a controversial marriage, when conflict and tragedy alike had to be faced and overcome.

The Fifteen Streets

by Catherine Cookson

Published 22 March 1979

Set in 1910, this tells the story of one family's fight for physical and moral survival in the poverty and squalor of the dockland slums of Tyneside. At the centre is the apparently impossible love affair between rugged docker John O'Brien and Mary Llewellyn, a schoolteacher. With elements of tragedy, humour, intrigue and love, this simple tale affords plenty of scope for imaginative and evocative production.Large flexible cast

The Silent Lady

by Catherine Cookson

Published 5 March 2001

Her major new novel, written in 1997 when the most remarkable author of our time was nearing the end of her life. The woman who presented herself at the offices of the respectable firm of London solicitors was, the receptionist decided, clearly a vagrant who had been sleeping on the streets. When she asked to see the firm s senior partner, Alexander Armstrong, she was at first shown the door but then the entire office staff were disrupted by Mr Armstrong s reaction when he learned his visitor s name clearly Irene Baindor was a woman with a past, and her emergence from obscurity was to signal the unravelling of a mystery that had baffled the lawyer for twenty-six years. What Irene the silent lady of the title had been doing, and where she had been, gradually emerged over the following weeks as Armstrong met the unlikely benefactors who had befriended her and helped her to build a useful and satisfying life in a sheltered environment. Now, at last, she was able to confront her tortured and violent past and find great happiness and contentment with the help of old friends and some newer ones. Displaying all the skills in plotting, scene-setting and characterization that made her Britain s best-loved storyteller, and drawing on her own first-hand experience of working-class life between two world wars and the 1950s, The Silent Lady is a fitting tribute to an irreplacable author."

The Moth

by Catherine Cookson

Published 1 January 1986

Robert Bradley, a young man of independent mind and spirit, gave up his job in the Jarrow shipyards to work at his uncle's old-established carpenter's shop in a small village. Life with domineering Uncle John and his family did not always prove easy, however, and on Sunday Robert was glad to set off alone exploring the Durham countryside. At a friendly wayside inn he heard talk about Foreshaw Park, the sadly run-down estate of the once wealthy Thorman family, and walking home in the moonlight he had his first strange encounter with Millie, the ethereal girl-child of that house whose odd ways and nocturnal wanderings had led to her being known locally as 'Thorman's Moth'. The time came when a sudden and dramatic turn in Robert's affairs brought him a much closer involvement with the Thormans of Foreshaw, and especially with the elder daughter Agnes who shouldered so many of the burdens of this troubled household and who alone of all her family loved and protected the frail unworldly Millie.
But this was 1913, and anything beyond the most formal relationship between servant and mistress had to face the barriers and injustices of a rigid social hierarchy that was soon to perish in the flames of war.

The Mallen Girl

by Catherine Cookson

Published 21 January 1974

Even as a child Barbara was beautiful, but as her beauty grew so did the affliction which shadowed it. She was becoming totally deaf. Yet living in an almost silent world protected her from what could be a worse affliction - to know the truth of her own origins. Barbara had another protector in Anna Bridgmore who knew that truth, and was haunted by the thought it must one day be revealed to this girl she cherished like her own child. And among the surrounding hills and valleys of Northumberland, it was a long-relished scandal...

Mallen Litter

by Catherine Cookson

Published 4 November 1974

A chance reference to the triplet sons of Dan and Barbara Bensham as the Mallen litter creates a bitter resentment in Barbara that is to have far reaching consequences. Barbara married Dan on the rebound from a disastrous passion for her cousin, Michael Radlet, himself now married and father of Hannah. Neither Barbara nor Michael can escape the memory of their love for each other, and when they meet again it leads to an explosive situation.

Rosie of the River

by Catherine Cookson

Published 5 October 2000

When Fred Carpenter suggests to his wife, Sally, that they should take a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads, she is filled with trepidation. Nevertheless she summons her courage and they and their bull-terrier Bill set off, with Fred at the helm of Dogfish Three. Sally's misgivings are soon justified, as a series of disasters, human, nautical and canine, threaten to ruin their holiday. Then everything changes as they make friends with the boating fraternity and encounter the remarkable fifteen-year-old Rosie, whose family history stirs their curiosity and sympathy. As a result, Fred and Sally decide to support Rosie's efforts to better herself - and are rewarded when she finds love and happiness.

The Mallen Streak

by Catherine Cookson

Published 22 January 1973

Mallen of High Banks Hall had many sons, most of them out of wedlock. But to all of them, he passed on his mark - a distinctive flash of white hair running to the left temple known as the Mallen Streak. It was said that those who bore the streak, borne by the sons generation after generation, seldom reached old age or died in their beds and nothing good ever came of a Mallen. The lives of all those connected to the family, by blood or otherwise, was touched by the Mallen curse. Thomas Mallen, heir of High Banks Hall, found himself a ruined man as he faced disaster and financial ruin in the turbulent 1850s. Amid scandal and disgrace, he was forced to sell the Hall and adjust to a new and very different mode of living. With him went his two young wards and their indomitable governess. Then into their lives came the Radlet brothers of Wilbur farm, one of whom bore the unmistakable Mallen streak.

Tilly Trotter Wed

by Catherine Cookson

Published 12 January 1981

For twelve years, Tilly Trotter had devotedly served Mark Sopwith as nurse and mistress; a wife in all but name. Now he was dead, and her whole future lay in the balance. At least one of his grown-up children was extremely hostile, determined to banish her from Highfield Manor as soon as possible and, to make the situation even more difficult, Mark had left Tilly four months pregnant. But she was no stranger to trouble and hardship, and would meet these new problems with the same courage and resolution that she had displayed in facing up to earlier crises. Fate still had a lot in store for Matilda Trotter - good and ill alike. She would make a real marriage, and this would take her from her native Tyneside to experience all the wonders and perils of a strange and distant land. Tilly Trotter Wed is a story of wide scope and imagination, and the first of Catherine Cookson's books in which a large part of the action takes place away from England - in the vividly evoked pioneer Texas of the 1850s.

The Simple Soul And Other Stories

by Catherine Cookson

Published 3 September 2001

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

In the title story, a disillusioned husband decides to call on an office colleague he has always slightly despised, and finds himself having to re-evaluate his own family relationships in the light of what he discovers in the other's home. In the three stories that make up 'The Forbidden Word', the first set in the 1920s, the second in the 1950s and the third in the1980s, Catherine Cookson traces the changes in attitudes to marriage and pregnancy that have taken place in the last eighty years.

In other stories a shy bachelor begins to make friends for the first time in his life among the people who like himself have taken refuge from the Blitz in the London Underground, and a much put-upon young woman who makes up her own mind to escape from her family's domestic exploitation of her. The reader catches a glimpse behind the scenes in a large department store, and learns of the havoc that a husband's passion for cricket can cause.