Tilly Trotter isn't like the other girls in the villages of County Durham. Tall and coltish, she's not afraid of taking on man's work to help out the grandparents who raised her. There's an unusual beauty in her too, a beauty that's envied by the local women and lusted after by the men.

Even the approach to Christmas fails to excite restless Agnes Conway, the twenty-two-year-old manager of the sweet and tobacconist shops owned by her feckless father. There are dark secrets in Arthur Conway's past, and these come tragically to light when Agnes's younger sister falls pregnant by one of the notorious Felton brothers. And Agnes herself has a secret, which she knows she must keep from her father: her relationship with Charles Farrier, son of a local landowner, who outrages his own wealthy, pious family by proposing marriage. However Charles is not the only man who could shape Agnes's furture, as his brother Reginald makes no secret of his admiration for her. But she could not have foreseen how significant a part he is to play in her destiny... The Wingless Bird is an absorbing story of love and the harsh realities of Britain's class system.

Can love overcome prejudice? Even in the worst days of the recession, the McQueen family remain upbeat. This is what keeps them strong — when all else fails, you can always laugh. Like many of the residents of Fifteen Streets, they are as blunt as they are big-hearted. So imagine their shock when Bridget McQueen brings home her African husband. Colour Blind is an absorbing story of prejudice, racial tension and family feuding in the 1920s.

Catherine Cookson is one of the most popular and most read English authors of all time, with more than 100 million books sold. She didn't begin writing until she was in her forties, doing so as a form of therapy after a miscarriage and subsequent mental breakdown. Her writing was informed by personal experience, but Cookson was also at heart both a feminist and a socialist. Although many critics, particularly male ones, put down her work as nothing more than romance fiction, in reality she addressed profound social issues that impacted the poor working class in Britain during the beginning of the 20th century. These conditions had a particular impact on women. Cookson was able to write authoritatively because she herself experienced extreme poverty and hardship as a child, yet through hard work and determination was able to take an alternative path in life. Her personal story is retold in countless variations through her novels. Although she did write several autobiographies and books specifically about her own life, each Cookson novel replicates the tale of a heroine who is disadvantaged in some way by the circumstances of her birth and goes on to succeed through hard work and personal conviction. Although Cookson wrote her first story at the age of 11, she did not embrace writing as a career until she was in her 40s, and it wasn't until some ten years later that she finally began to enjoy the financial benefits.

Britain's most widely read author of the late twentieth century, Catherine Cookson published more than 100 books, including The Fifteen Streets, The Black Velvet Gown, and Katie Mulhollond. Set in England's industrial northeast, her novels depict the social, economic, and emotional hardships of that area. In the first essay collection devoted to Cookson, the contributors examine what Cookson's memoirs and historical fiction mean to readers, including how her fans contribute to her position in the cultural imaginary; constructions of gender, class, and English and Irish identity in her work; the importance of place in her novels; Cookson's place in the heritage industry; and television adaptations of Cookson's works. Cookson's work tackled topics that were still taboo in the early post-World War II era, such as domestic abuse, rape, and incest. This collection places Cookson in historical context and shows how skillful she was at pushing generic boundaries.

This is a real life detective story, tracking down the missing father of one of Britain's most famous authors - the father she didn't want anyone to know about literature out of the personal tragedies of her working class upbringing and early life in the industrial North East. Her biographer gives this account of her search to discover the truth of Cookson's childhood and the mystery of her father's identity. As the story unfolds, the reader is led to a deeper understanding of the demons that drove Cookson to become one of the most popular novelists of her day. It is a story of terrible poverty, of harsh lessons learnt generation after generation, but also of hope and eventual reconciliation.

Government and corporate interference have robbed the public of access to point-of-view programming. Through subterfuge, suppression of dissent, and thought control, Washington (with eager assistance from Madison Avenue) has locked out the ?creatives? and the educators >