Catherine Cookson

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.

Fourteen-year-old Marie Anne Lawson, fleeing from something she could not bear to see, fell and broke her ankle. She was discovered by a local man, known as "the branded man" because of a disfigurement. This is the story of two women and the mysterious man who was to influence both their lives.

In this sequel to Catherine Cookson's collection of essays and poems, "Let Me Make Myself Plain", she offers a further selection of thoughts, recollections and observations on life - and death - together with more of the poems she prefers to describe as "prose on short lines".

This novel tells the story of a young girl, Lizzie, who was rescued from the streets and given the chance of a new life. Lizzie blossomed into a woman with ideals and expectations, and began to realize that she no longer needed the support of the man she had once regarded as her saviour.

The day Joe Remington brought his new bride to Fell Rise, he had already sensed she might not settle easily into his home just outside the Tyneside town of Fellburn.

It had never been the best of marriages. There was something potentially explosive just below the surface of life at Wearcill House, but when that explosion came it was in a totally unforeseeable and devastating form, plunging the Coulsons into an excoriating series of crises out of which would come both good and evil.

She could still scarcely believe her eyes, even if it was a long-overdue honour - after all her husband Rod had done for the town. There were a lot of Gallachers around Fellburn, and all were equally incredulous.

Fanny McBride was a cheerful and indomitable Tyneside widow with a large, cheerful family. Being a woman of resource, Fanny took on a job at the local 'Ladies', which was to prove a surprisingly stimulating experience. Then there was her long-standing feud with Mrs Flannagan, the problem of the favourite child's unsuitable marriage, and others.

Catherine Cookson is known and loved for her vibrant and earthy novels set in and around the North-East of England, past and present. Her autobiography makes plain how it is she knows her background and her characters so well. The Our Kate of the title is not Catherine Cookson, but her mother, around whom the autobiography revolves. Despite her faults, Kate emerges a warm and loveable human figure. Our Kate is an honest statement about living with hardship and poverty, seen through the eyes of a highly sensitive child and woman, whose zest for life and unquenchable sense of humour won through to make Catherine Cookson the warm, engaging and human writer she is today.

Ward Gibson knew what was expected of him by the village folk, and especially by the Mason family, whose daughter Daisy he had known all his life.

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. She was warm, and compassionate, and generous. And she was quick to sense the needs of a desolate, unhappy man. But Cissie was also a young widow: poor, and with a young son to support. And John Emmerson was one of the town's leading solicitors - a man of importance whose every move was watched by the local dignitaries . . .

When John O'Brien fell in love with Mary Llewellyn he knew there was a gulf between them that nothing could bridge - the gulf of the "Fifteen Streets".