Catherine Cookson

In 1880, four years after she had inherited her father's businesses, 23 year old Bridget Dene Mordaunt was running them with a firm and confident hand. When her feckless cousin Victoria becomes infatuated with Lionel Filmore, a pattern of some good and some great evil begins. A pattern that will inexorably link Bridget with the old but impoverished Filmore family and will shape the lives of generations to come.

"Following the breakup of her engagement, Kate Mitchell applies for a job as a part-time secretary at TorFret, the lonely house above the village on Neete Fell. There she works for Maurice Rossiter, head of a strange household composed only of men."--Page 4 of cover.

An Englishwoman's battle to hang on to her family's bankrupt estate. She is Beatrice, one of four daughters of a gambling landowner who died in debt. By hook or by crook, Beatrice intends to hang on to her patrimony, her schemes including marriage and busting other people's marriage. By the author of The Year of the Virgins.

Fiona, a young widow left badly off with three children, advertises for a lodger. The result is Bill and it's not long before she can't remember life without him.