Showing results by narrator "Anne Dover" in All Categories

Lillian is distraught - she must register for compulsory war work. Emily is also furious - her dream job as a chef will have to be put on hold, whilst Alice must abandon her plans of college. Staring at an identical letter, Elsie feels a kindling of hope, and down in London Agnes is packing her bags with a smile. Sharing grief and joy, lost dreams and gained opportunities, the five new bomb girls will find friendship and strength that they never before thought possible.

Set in 1920s London, this is the inspiring story of Kate Goss' struggle against poverty, hunger and cruel family secrets. Her mother died in a fall, her father has vanished without trace, and now her aunt and cousins treat her viciously. In a freezing, vermin-infested garret, factory girl Kate has only her own brave spirit and dreams of finding her father to keep her going. She has barely enough money to feed herself, or to pay the rent. The factory where she works begins to lay off people and it isn't long before she has fallen into the hands of the violent local money-lender.

Coming up 16, Tilly Trotter is different from the other girls. Tall for her age and coltish, she is not afraid of taking on 'man’s work' to help out the grandparents who raised her in a cottage at the edge of the Sopwith Estate. Testing times lay ahead for Tilly, often hard to endure and even bringing her the undeserved taint of being suspected of witchcraft. She only loves one man, farmer Simon Bentwood, and is heartbroken to discover he is betrothed to another. A spurned suitor takes a terrible revenge, and a betrayal forces her into the cruel drudgery of the local mine.

Jessie Burton is lively and intelligent - she wants more than the respectable life in service her mother has planned for her. Times are changing; railways are being built across the land, bringing new freedom and possibilities. Jessie tastes that freedom when she meets an ambitious young navvy, newly arrived in Yorkshire. The attraction between them is overwhelming. And Jared Wilde is determined to make Jessie his wife.

Yorkshire Dales, 1850. As a terrible storm rages, Annabelle Wallis is shocked to find a distressed young woman at her cottage door, heavy with child. Moments later a baby girl is born. But by dawn, the mother has vanished, leaving behind the helpless child wrapped only in a silk peacock shawl. When news spreads that Lady Eliza Hartley, sister to a wealthy estate owner, has been found dead, Annabelle realises the terrible secret she has stumbled on. Terrified she’ll be blamed for Eliza’s death, Annabelle flees to the slums of York, where she plans to raise the orphan as her own.

Gwynna had fallen from grace once, bearing a stillborn child out of wedlock. Determined to have a respectable future, she finds a position for herself as a nursemaid at Hungerton House. But just as she begins to find her feet, the secrets of her past are revealed. She is swiftly dismissed but not before she becomes the target of a lascivious groom. And even afterwards she is pursued by Hungerton, an evil old man who wishes to send her back to the gutters.

Annabella LaGrange was the only child of a wealthy family, owners of a glassworks in the North-East of England. When Annabella was seven, she thought the world a delightful place to live in, and only occasionally wondered why her parents never took her beyond the gates of their magnificent country estate. When she was ten she decided that the seclusion didn't really matter because when she grew up she would marry her handsome cousin Stephen and never be lonely again.

Marjorie is the pretty one of the Preston sisters. So pretty that when a performer at her sister's music room breaks her leg, Marjorie is asked to fill in as the assistant to the singer Denby Sinclair. He offers to take her with him, away from Lancashire and into London theatres. It seems as if her dreams will come true, but Denby is not what he seems. He has a dangerous secret which, if it were to be revealed, would ruin her. Marjorie, however, is reckless and will take any risk for a chance to work on the stage.

Born in the workhouse and adopted by a former suffragette, Frances Brakespeare was encouraged from an early age to be strong, independent and to pursue a career as a doctor. The tragic loss of the love of her life in the Great War propels Frances to commit to her one true vocation. Rebelling against the unfair treatment of female doctors Frances is dismissed from her London post and things continue to take a turn for the worse when Izzy, her benefactress dies and Frances finds herself homeless.

Her name was Hannah Boyle, but to the people of the village she would always be 'The Girl' - Matthew Thornton's bastard. Savagely treated by Matthew's wife, Anne, she fled for protection to the devil-may-care horse-dealer, Ned Ridley, who had earlier befriended her. But, as the waif grew to beautiful womanhood, she became an object of desire to the local young men, and even to her half-brother. Against her wishes, she was married off, but Hannah kept on fighting for the man she wanted: Ned Ridley, who adored her and taught her the meaning of true love and passion.

The fourth book in Anna Jacobs' beloved Ellindale series. Lancashire, 1934. When Tam Crawford is unexpectedly bequeathed some money, he can finally realise his dream of settling down in the beautiful village of Ellindale. Tam knows he can be impulsive - his nickname isn't Crazy Tam for nothing! - but this time he is determined not to be ruled by his big heart and hot head. Yet somehow, within just one day, he has taken on a fiancée and two children to keep them out of the poorhouse - or worse.

There were plenty around Fellburn who said Maggie Rowan was as plain as a pikestaff, a woman consumed with jealousy at her sister's good fortune in marrying well. But Maggie Rowan, with her dogged determination to succeed, had two raging ambitions beneath a cold and forbidding exterior: to become the mother of a child whom she could love and to escape from the life of the miner's cottage to one of the big houses on Brampton Hill. When she marries the easy-going Chris Taggart, her marriage is planned shrewdly and without sentiment.

To outsiders, Dr Paul Higgins' life appeared to be happy and contented. Everyone had a good word for him and his home life appeared to be ideal. At 36, Bett Higgins could still pass for a much younger woman, not just in looks but in the way she loved the company of people half her age. A grand couple, some might say. But once the surgery was closed and the curtains drawn, the façade that Paul and Bett Higgins presented to the world concealed a welter of hate and ill-conceived bitterness that had grown worse with the passing years.

When Cissie Brody was 15, fever swept the English countryside, killing her parents and leaving her to care for her nine younger siblings. Rejecting the offers of town officials to care for the children in the workhouse, Cissie is determined to keep the family together and moves them to a cave-like dwelling place on the Fells.

Doctor Frances Brakespeare continues to settle into her new life in rural Somerset at Orchard Cottage Hospital, striving to improve the medical treatments on offer to the community. After successfully establishing a mother and baby clinic, Frances is determined to move with the times and add family planning advice to her roster – but are the residents of Norton Dene ready for such progress or will she face opposition?

Dora Preston has guts, but it will take more than that for her to break free from Hedderby and make a life for herself on the stage. Then she meets Gideon - and pursuing her ambitions becomes even harder. Gideon has returned from the fighting in India only to discover that an impostor has stolen his inheritance. He has vowed he will claim his birthright, but his enemies are ruthless and desperate. Arson attacks, crime and drunkenness have beset the Lancashire mill town, but the forces of goodness are rallying and are determined to prevail, whatever it takes.

Emmy Carter's mother is a prostitute - and her life has made Emmy determined to avoid the same fate. But Emmy is beautiful, so attracts unwanted attention; her mother's protector has his eye on her, as does evil Marcus Armistead, her employer's nephew. Marcus is excited by Emmy's virginity and has her kidnapped, but Emmy hits him over the head and escapes. Marcus, further enraged, kills her mother and becomes even more determined to rape Emmy, but the combined efforts of the local parson and Emmy's young suitor manage to keep her safe from harm.

Life on the Fifteen Streets was a continual struggle for survival. John O'Brien grew up in abject poverty, confined to the hardships of the Fifteen Streets. Labouring on the city's docks and trying to keep his loved ones safe from the drunken wrath of his father and brother, this is the only way of life he knows. Then John O'Brien meets his sister's teacher.

In 1845 Annie Gibson can finally leave Salem Street. Her dreams of being able to open an elegant dressmaking salon in the High Street of Bilsden, a Lancashire mill town, have come true. And she is going to take her father and his second family with her, away from poverty, away from the Rows. But Annie has not left trouble behind. Someone is trying to undermine her business. Her family have their own ideas about what they want to do with their lives.

Roddy Greenbank was brought by his father to the remote Northumberland community of Langley in the autumn of 1807. Within hours of their arrival, however, the father meets a violent death and the boy is left with all memory of his past life gone. Adopted and raised by old Kate Makepeace, Roddy found his closest companions in Hal Roystan and Mary Ellen Lee. These three stand at the heart of a richly eventful narrative that spans the first half of the 19th century, their lives lastingly intertwined by the inexorable demands of a strange and somewhat cruel destiny.